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Business of Machining - Episode 20
240 Plays8 years ago
"I'm not the host, we're co-hosts" and for now, they want to keep it that way. For these two, paying it forward and reciprocity keeps the wheels turning. Blade Show has amazing products but for Grimsmo, the people and interactions are the bread and butter(knife). Today, he plans to chop up 20 billets of timascus. Got heartburn? It might be your workholding. Saunders racks his brain about his current system and Grimsmo offers some perspective on plausible solutions while the Richard King Scraping Class is hard at work. The 30-year-old Okamoto grinder turns out some impressive results when subjected to the 5-Block test.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Origin
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 20. My name is John Grimsmough and I'm here with my lovely host, John Saunders. I'm not the host, we're co-hosts. Co-hosts, alright. You're my co-host, dude.
00:00:14
Speaker
I was actually thinking about that and how early on you and I had a conversation about doing this together. And it's not a partnership in most of the literal direct senses, but it's a partnership. It's not because we've already been doing this. It was just to sort of switch to record it and share it
Sponsorship Stance
00:00:30
Speaker
publicly. But then we sort of thought, well, where might it go? And when do you have those conversations? And we've had a lot of people ask us to come host the show. We've thought about, we've had some people approach us about being sponsors.
00:00:41
Speaker
And for now, at the risk of speaking for John Grimsmough, for now, our sort of thought was, look, this is just our time with each other. And perhaps what we would do is just ask folks that enjoy the podcast to support our respective businesses. So go buy one of John Grimsmough's tops or spinners or knives. And for us, you know, our products are either YouTube and Patreon or the Saunders Machine Works products. We make like, you know, Tormach fixture plates and Bridgeport power drawbars and so forth.
00:01:11
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. And I mean, we have many directions we could go with this, as you said, sponsors or guest speakers or interview people or all kinds of stuff. But for now, I'm pretty happy with just keeping it straightforward.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to lose my... The intimacy of my time with you. Don't tell Meg I said that. Exactly. She'll be jealous. No, but this podcast started out as a conversation between just the two of us to, you know, business therapy each other. And it's been super helpful and we're sharing that experience. Dude.
Blade Show Reflections
00:01:50
Speaker
Blade, how was it? Blade Show. So last weekend, as we talked about last podcast, last weekend was Blade Show and it's four days of non-stop, just if I'm not sleeping, I'm working. Is it four days? Wow, that's crazy. Three days of show and then the pre-day. So we were there Thursday to Sunday.
00:02:10
Speaker
This is our sixth time to Blade Show and it was absolutely the best one we've ever had. Just the response from our fans and customers and people coming up to us and other makers talking to us. I go there for the people, not necessarily to sell stuff, not necessarily to market our brand, but to be able to be there and interact with people directly is invaluable.
00:02:34
Speaker
You shared it, but you still have a booth. You display your wares, right? Yeah, exactly. So we shared a booth with our good friend Brad Southerd, who's also a knife maker, very well-known knife maker. And he's been doing it for about 10 years, compared to our six years.
00:02:49
Speaker
you know both of us are fairly well known so we have a good a similar crowd of people that want to come to both of our tables so sharing up was perfect and just fantastically busy and exhausting and exactly what I want from a show like that like cram it all into four days and had so many wonderful conversations I can't even remember half of them but I had a guy come by and he's like
00:03:17
Speaker
He's like, my shop is two blocks away from yours. And here we're meeting in Atlanta. That's hilarious. Like 1,000 miles away or whatever it is. And it turns out he's the woodshop teacher at Mohawk College, which is close to us at the risk of divulging my location, my secret layer location. No, but yeah, so he's the woodshop teacher at the college here.
00:03:43
Speaker
It'll be really good to have him as a friend, as a local friend, because obviously he's tied into the pool of college students for potential intern hires, et cetera.
00:03:56
Speaker
So what you just said there, what an awesome thing. So same thing happened
Networking and YouTube Beginnings
00:04:00
Speaker
with us this week. We had the local machining high school teacher come by. We bought them 200 bearings. They're actually making fidget spinners to give out, which is a win-win for the students to make parts, and then also for them to try to raise awareness about what machining is to people who have no idea. So that's awesome. So he came by, and we were talking, and there were a couple other little things like that that happened this week. And it really tied in.
00:04:24
Speaker
With what I thought about what use we were on a week you and I got a joint email from somebody saying hey we need hire somebody and I just thought to me this is how you lay the groundwork for for trying to be a successful entrepreneur is what I did.
00:04:39
Speaker
It's why I started my YouTube channel 10 years ago. I expected nothing out of it. I just wanted to see if I found somebody who would be willing to be a mentor, good mentors, I think look to see is that person going to keep paying it forward. And I wanted to show somebody, hey, I'm giving back. It's not totally self-absorbed. I want to learn myself and I want to better myself, but I also want to give it back some. And that's what helped us.
00:05:03
Speaker
good interns and we've got good quality people and that's how I found our newest person who's going to start next Monday working on Arduino and Automation. To me that's such a better way than trying to put out Craigslist or ZipRecruiter ads because there's that kind of scary thing where it's the person that's looking for a job that's the one you may not want to hire.
00:05:27
Speaker
I know that sounds bad and I don't want to queer somebody on that process of using that because sometimes you have to, but boy, when you're tuned in like you said with people that are in the know, what an awesome way.
Knowledge Sharing Online
00:05:41
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:05:43
Speaker
You know, I've had my YouTube channel for about the same time and I started it for the exact same reasons, just to share and just to kind of document the process. You know, I used to do it before that on all the forums, machining forums and then before that car forums and everything. And I just wanted to share what I was working on because I thought it was kind of cool. And in sharing your problems and mistakes and issues, you learn so much from the feedback.
00:06:05
Speaker
you know, it kind of grows to this thing that now you have this kind of audience of people that in their own rights are influential, you know, local teacher kind of thing. And opportunities arise when you share, you know? Yep. Yep, totally.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, so I did four videos each chronicling each day at Blade Show, put them up on YouTube. I actually edited them quickly and got them up relatively on time. And yeah, really excellent feedback from
Declining Paris Knife Show Invitation
00:06:34
Speaker
that. So it was just fantastic.
00:06:36
Speaker
Awesome actually got invited to the Paris knife show in September, which I had to turn down unfortunately, but Paris France Paris France. Oh my gosh Yeah, and he said there's only four spots left and I'm asking you if you want to be Have a table there along with all these other world-class knife makers and I'm like, holy crap That's just way too soon to consider and yeah, right interesting Good for you though. That's cool. Yeah, it was very cool
00:07:03
Speaker
What have you been up to since you got back?
Post-Show Activities
00:07:05
Speaker
Since I got back, I took Monday off. I spent a lot of time with Meg, my wife, and got to pick the kids up from school and just have some good family time. Tuesday I came in, I worked my butt off. A lot of admin stuff when you go away, just a ton of email and a bunch of stuff to ship out.
00:07:25
Speaker
things like that. So that was good. I got to machine a little bit of stuff. And then Wednesday was field trip, end of year field trip with my son. So that was awesome. Went to big indoor trampoline park. And I'm all sore from that now. Muscles you don't normally use. And then yesterday I got the machine running.
Machining Tymascus Parts
00:07:44
Speaker
Timascus. I've got these 20 billets of Timascus that I need to chop up into and make rask parts from.
00:07:52
Speaker
What's a billet? It's like a flat bar. Yeah. So yeah, it's like a two inch by 10 inch by eighth inch thick or so. And then I get two handles and three clips out of each one. And each one's a slightly different size because they're all handmade basically. That's so weird. That's so funny.
00:08:13
Speaker
Do they keep the two inch thickness or the two inch front y-axis? We're going about 1.9 to 2.1, which defines how many clips I can get out of it or clip placement or all that. So essentially each piece needs its own piece of code.
00:08:31
Speaker
that would drive me nuts. Just like, oh. So how do you, is this the, do you make like an 18 inch soft jaw, if I remember? Okay, so that's what you do for here, for this? Yeah, so I made the 18 inch stepped carved smart jaws, which works great. So I just put the material in, hammer it down, tighten it down, and then it's in there very well. So then I cut down to about six thou floor left and then break them out after that. But yeah, I mean, each piece is $500 in material.
00:09:01
Speaker
So you do not want to mess this up. So I did two and good so far. Do you, uh, do you don't, when you clamp it, the one eighth inch thickness, you know, that's eight times diameter or eight times thickness and Y axis, the vice compression as you cut it out, doesn't squeeze it and cause problems. No, only if you make the floor too thin. Like if you go more like 2000, the floor, it'll crumple the part near the end. Okay. But 6,000 enough.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, it seems to be. I did nine the first few, and then I changed it to six, and we'll see how it works out. But it's such kind of gummy material that you can't just throw the end mill down and profile around it, eighth inch deep. And I want to use a small end mill to get a better yield from the parts, right? Sure. So I'm using a 332nd foreflood end mill. And so instead of plunging it down and profiling around, I'm basically ramping down around the whole profile at two degrees.
00:09:59
Speaker
kind of babying it but I got the code it used to take me an hour to machine this thing and now I got it down to 16 minutes so I'm super happy with that because otherwise I was thinking it's gonna be like 20 hours of individual machining but now at 16 minutes I'm excited so I'll bust through most of it today
00:10:17
Speaker
This is Tymascus? Yes, so this is a titanium Damascus, forge welded titanium. It's two or three different types of titanium. They're just folded together. Exactly, yeah, forge welded together. So I actually got the guy who makes it to give a little two-minute spiel about it in my day four blade show video, which I put up. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so that was really cool. He explained the process. Nice guy. That's crazy.
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah, I am
Exploring Workholding Solutions
00:10:49
Speaker
having a pretty significant heartburn. I guess I wasn't even sure if I wanted to get into this, but about work holding. I love our orange vices. They've treated us well. We've got a pretty good recipe with them using them as single station vices, using them as twin station vices, the carb smarts, clamping fixture plates directly down to the vice bodies. Like seriously, I think I'm pretty happy with how I've done all that.
00:11:18
Speaker
using individual, like you do, individual vices as, we span fixture plates across multiple bodies, like one fixture plate that's large, but then we also do the individual ones like you have, where it's one sort of aluminum top that just goes right down.
00:11:34
Speaker
I love the idea of a palette system though. I really do. So forget about money, which is very difficult to do, but just forget about money. The ideal thing would be
00:11:52
Speaker
permanently, meaning you could pull them every once in a while if you needed to clean, but permanently mounted, you know, say call it three or four pallet bases, and then on top of that you could still have a vice. You'd lose some Z, but Z to date hasn't been a problem for us, at least in the Haas. Yeah, I mean 20 inches of Z is, I don't make parts that big.
00:12:16
Speaker
26 on ours. Really? Yeah. Cool. So no, no real issue there. And the idea of being able to pull things on and off the repeatability, you can still have them span multiples, multiple bases, so larger parts and much, much more off. That's the problem right now. Like literally this morning, Jared, we've got, he's running the Haas and he's running
00:12:42
Speaker
Maybe one, if not two, tormachs. I know one tormach on a part right now. And he's like, hey, what do you want me working on? And it actually makes you anxious as a person here. Not because you're trying to extract more value, but literally Jared's
Pallet System Debate
00:12:59
Speaker
like, hey, what do you want me working on? Employees don't want to be bored. They want stuff to work on. So being able to offline fixture or do other stuff is,
00:13:08
Speaker
Huge. Right. Now, I mean, you can absolutely palletize the orange vices and like they work as fixture plates and you can have offline fixtures as well. I feel like the absolute repeatability of them is a little sloppier than I would like. The way that the pins kind of drop into the holes in the orange vise and then you have to make, you know, fixtures with super accurate pin.
00:13:34
Speaker
So I get up to a thou of wiggle from my fixtures, which is not ideal.
00:13:42
Speaker
What about, well here's the other question, you and I, I before my oranges had a glacer and then tormachs and I don't, neither of those are what I would consider high end. The glacer's are largely the same foundry as shard's vices or that's been proven at least on some of the models. So I guess my point is, is there a better, are,
00:14:07
Speaker
Is that just the normal? Are oranges better or worse? Are we holding them to a higher standard than they should be held? Yeah, maybe. But that's the standard we're allowing ourselves to chase.
00:14:22
Speaker
But I mean, in my eyes, like right now, we've got the orange vices fixture based. And if I had four fixtures of the same thing, I could easily offline load three of them while it's machining one, and then have Barry just hot swap pallets all day long. I haven't gotten to the point yet where I've made that many pallets, because a pallet's $100 in metal.
00:14:46
Speaker
Plus the intricate amount of time, the hours it takes to make new palettes the way that I complicatedly designed them. The other alternative is obviously the Pearson palette system. And I think the only benefits to that over an orange vice as a base is that it might be slightly more accurate just due to the integrated pins and all that stuff. And faster change out times, but by five seconds maybe.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah, the additional speed isn't crazy. That's not what it's about. It's more about the difference is orange is a vice. It's squeezing it in. And I do find you have instances where that causes problems of bow and so forth. Right. If your pallets are too thin, then yeah, for sure.
00:15:34
Speaker
Well, the way we use them for work holding and so forth, I would much rather have a ball lock system, I believe. I need to play with one. We have one here that Jay left after the open house. It's not mine, but he's letting us play with it to evaluate it.
00:15:53
Speaker
And there's something about, I struggle with an orange that has dowel pins in it, is tricky to get in and out, especially if you span two vices with a fixture. As far as location.
00:16:12
Speaker
It's very hard to pull it in and out. It gets heavy, and the pin alignment gets really tricky. We could switch to diamonds. And again, this may still happen with pallets, because pallets, the Pearson speed, it's a tough thing to say. Speed change pallet system, I think.
00:16:31
Speaker
still has pins either diamonds or one of them is one of them may be round the rest are diamonds or something like that but so you have to lift straight up for sure but this idea that you could have it's i think it's going to be and maybe i'm making this up in my head maybe i'm not right but this idea that you could have different parts
Automating Pallet Changes
00:16:47
Speaker
you could just turn around and there could be a job shop product next to product A, next to product B, and you just throw in whatever one which makes it. And then you've got a lot, I think less time and material and cost in the palette over the orange, making the orange custom things.
00:17:06
Speaker
I don't know. I gotta write it down. This is good stuff. I don't know if the cost of palettes would be much different. I thought I read on Jay's website just yesterday that he would prefer to sell you a full palette as opposed to having you make your own for, I forget what reason.
00:17:27
Speaker
Well for the, no for the big, they just came out with a new Tormach model or like a smaller one where I don't think, I don't think they want you to make your own but for the normal one you can definitely buy the bushings and all that. I don't want to, like that's my point. I just want to have, I just want to say hey let's use an 8x12 or 10x16, here's one on the shelf. Yeah they're not cheap, they're
00:17:49
Speaker
200 bucks. But right now, I don't want to sit here and make... I'm out of time. Our machine is... The Haas is booked. The Haas is booked solid for the next three weeks, period. Which is great. That's fantastic, yeah.
00:18:05
Speaker
I don't have time to stop and switch over and make eight, and maybe I could, maybe I should do that when we do have downtime, make eight orange bases. And I don't know, he does sell them though, I think, right? Yeah, so maybe I'm not judging apples and oranges here. And I think kids are $150, whereas I'm spending $100 in material. That you should buy. Yeah, but then shipping them to Canada gets expensive and it all adds up.
00:18:33
Speaker
I bought, from Alrow, I forget what it was, two or three sticks cut up into the 20 inch and a quarter extra size, and they ended up being 56 bucks delivered for the material load. Yeah, that's not too bad. That's two inches thick. You don't have to go that thick, really. Yeah. I've got one that's, I think, half inch thick, and it does bow when you clamp it. Yeah, exactly.
00:19:01
Speaker
So I think anything smaller than one inch would be foolish. One and a half would probably be solid. The one thing with the orange, using the orange vise as a fixture and using the regular dowel pins that they supply with the thing, they're long and they're a couple tenths under nominal size. And when you try to pull the fixture up off of it, you have to pull it up straight up like half an inch or more. And any wiggle, any rock becomes super annoying.
00:19:30
Speaker
Soon after I got the moori and the oranges, I turned these threaded, it's a dowel pin on one side and it's threaded on the other so that they actually thread down. Interesting. And it's domed on the top side and they stick up just maybe a quarter inch off the surface. So the lift up is super nominal.
00:19:53
Speaker
That's a really right once you you're just locating once you've cleared it you want it out exactly so I actually sent a picture of that to Eric and orange vice Early on and never heard back, but I was thinking this would be like a great great product You know I did a little addition or somebody to make them and sell them on the side now that I have my Nakamura I could actually make them a little bit easier and more accurately, but no, but I use them is what I'm saying You know what? I mean like that's fixture pins right so
00:20:21
Speaker
But then it's absurd, too, because they're coincidentally about the same price. An orange vice is $2,000. The speed change palette is $2,000, includes the palette. And then it's like, wait a minute here. But the ideal, well, actually, I don't know why. It doesn't feel ideal. Putting an orange vice on top of a Pearson, first of all, it's $4,000 for a station, which is absurd.
00:20:46
Speaker
But it doesn't feel right, like it just seems like you're sacrificing Z, you've got a complicated stack of things, like there's no way, you know, just to me it seems like you've got too many layers of sandwich where there's no way you're not improving your tram of the parts, if you wanna call it that, or accuracy. And the overall rigidity would, it's bound to go down just due to all the sandwich stack.
00:21:11
Speaker
And I was thinking about, you could make a vice. I know the, who is it? Who makes that quick lock? Chick.
00:21:20
Speaker
It has like a center solid, so it doesn't have a screw. It has side arms that use the vice that pull down with the vice. So there's no center screw. So you, you, I was thinking, well, you could probably take a quick lock and make it a Pearson compatible. Interesting. And then you don't have to have the top palette and that feels a lot better because now you're just putting a vice directly onto a ball lock. Mm-hmm.
00:21:48
Speaker
But I'm trying to think through, what's this ideal workflow scenario that helps? Because as much as I say $4,000 is absurd, that is cheap when it comes to keeping machines up, having a good workflow. That's one of the things I've learned about Lean that was so obvious, but I never could put my finger on it earlier. Lean has nothing to do with Lean money. Lean has to do with,
Implementing Lean Principles
00:22:14
Speaker
This example of a great setup or a lean workflow would be for if you have a product, let's say you're going to go start running your spinners in the Maury, you would have a cart, and on that cart you would have all the tools loaded into the tool holders, all the extra tools, all of the fixtures, all of the setup sheets, and all of that. Well, good grief, that may be $6,000 in tool holders, carts, dedicated stuff.
00:22:38
Speaker
It could all be largely redundant. And that may be worthwhile because $6,000 relative to labor isn't necessarily that much. And it's an investment that may or may not depreciate to zero, blah, blah, blah.
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah, but relative to uptime of the machine is golden. I mean, if the machines are running nonstop while you're organizing all that stuff for the next job coming up, then I'm far from that scenario, but I would like to get there, obviously.
00:23:10
Speaker
If I can come up with a reasonable way to automatically load the Pearson pallets or something like those, hopefully, I think it would just be those. Now, when you say automatically.
00:23:25
Speaker
I mean it in every sense of the word. All right. All right. I got it. Now the tricky thing is they have to be lifted straight up. So you think about doing it with an orange. It's not easy. So it may be foolish. And obviously there's the whole like, nobody else has done it yet.
00:23:42
Speaker
It can't be with a robotic arm because of the weight. Robotic arms that could lift 30, 40, 50 pounds are way too expensive. So it'd have to be something different. And I have some ideas in my head about, you think about a system that just extends in and then lifts up. So more, think about, instead of it being like an articulated arm that kind of comes in from the top, think about something that just, it's like a force.
00:24:08
Speaker
Yeah, like a fork that just slides in and then the whole fork is lifted up from the base. Like you can get a lot of strength that way. And then you can, okay, think about it. Yeah, think about it like if you ever saw those old school tape drive systems at like big computer data centers that would go in, fish a tape out of a VCR or whatever it was and come back. So then you could go put a cart next to the machine and have it run all, that's how I make money. That's how I get this thing going is when the machine can run overnight with a system like that.
00:24:38
Speaker
See, if you had a system like that, then you need absolute consistency over everything. You need four pallet stations or three or whatever that never move, as you said. And they're all spaced exactly 2.456 inches apart. And they all have the same Z obviously. And there's no vice on the machine. And if you need a vice, it goes on top of the fixtures.
00:25:02
Speaker
That's all doable. Yeah, it is totally all doable. And if you're thinking of an automated setup, I'm pretty sure last week you revealed the... Yeah, so you just, I think the easiest way I can think of it, there's probably a better way. But yeah, you machine a feature that each feature has at least 5,000 or 10,000 deviations from the other one. And that becomes your QR code, that becomes your identifier. And that decides what programs are. And so your biggest limitation by far becomes two holders.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yes. And I guess mixing materials, because from a recycling standpoint, we keep aluminum and steel separate. Right. I gave up on that a long time ago.
00:25:45
Speaker
But you don't make any chips. Exactly. A bucket of chips a month is good for us. But yeah, we vary so much between titanium and stainless in the same batch that it's like, I'm not separating this. Oh, sure, sure. So why would you? They're both great companies. That makes it kind of awkward and hard because I like orange, I like Pearson. But why would you not rather have a Pearson speed palette on orange?
00:26:11
Speaker
I'm actually seriously considering it. I've got the two oranges now. I love them. I do change a lot between fixture setup and vise setup, and I love having the two vices side by side to do my 18-inch Carve Smart Jaws, you know, things like that. I don't ever see myself doing anything bigger than that. Like, I don't need five orange vices as vices, you know. I'd love to have five pallet stations.
00:26:36
Speaker
and still two vices. But like you sometimes put your five vices across and do you ever use them as vices that long? I did one job for that railroad part. But so, I mean, even with Pearson's, there's only four, I only have four, yeah. You could still, you could figure, like I'm thinking your 18 inch Timascus strip, you could just run it and why.
00:27:05
Speaker
I never thought about that. Because I've got 20 inches in Y. Yeah. And you could just do some toe clamps or, you know, Mighty Bites. I've tried that. Maybe. I'm really liking the soft jaws, like the method that it's using. And I'm sure there's a way to do kind of clamps to make the same thing on a fixture. You're right. You're right. Or vacuum it. I wish I knew you don't have a vacuum anymore. I actually just put it on yesterday.
00:27:31
Speaker
Oh, you kept your vacuum. Oh yeah. You don't get rid of something like that. I didn't realize you were using it. Why don't you use it for the time ask us? I have used it before, but if you break through, you're screwed. Oh, I'm familiar with that. Don't break through. Yeah, but you know, it's a $500 piece of material that if it starts chattering, you're hooped.
00:27:51
Speaker
is, oh, so chatter will cause lift and it will break through. Anything will cause lift. But if you can, oh, that's a problem too. I would actually custom make a vacuum plate for it because, you know, like our vacuum is on one inch center. So in this case you'd only get, you couldn't get the two inches. So I, but if you went 1.75,
00:28:10
Speaker
times, you know, 17 times 14 pounds per square inch. That's 416 pounds of clamp down pressure. Given the little, what little load you're putting on, I'd be okay with that. I just know that back in the tarmac days, I used to try to do it like that and it was just always so dicey.
00:28:29
Speaker
That's a good lesson. Think about that. Different machine, different skill level, different recipe, different knowledge of tools. Different rigidity and accuracy and Z accuracy and all that stuff. You're right. Maybe I'm discounting it based on past experience, which is four years old.
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah. You could ramp down and leave 15 thou. You shouldn't. Gosh, with a vacuum, you shouldn't be pulling up 15 thou period. Right. Ever. It's just... See how it goes. If you leave the floor too thick, then it becomes much too difficult to break the parts out of it. No, no, but I do this all the time. When I do tabbing, I leave 15 thou and then I come and I cut the tabs down.
00:29:11
Speaker
So grant down to 15 and then you can stop, evaluate it, measure whatever, and then start working that 15 down to 5. Right, and still leave 5 so you don't break through. Yeah, that is a possibility. Point being, there are 10 different ways to do the same thing.
00:29:32
Speaker
Right. It's just weird like how I was just thinking about how I just don't use, I don't need vices as much anymore. I want to lower the hurdle of using things like Pit Bulls and Mighty Bites and other clamps because right now it feels unfun.
00:29:53
Speaker
It's like fusion is still just a little bit too clunky in my opinion on importing a Pitbull and pulling up that. And I want to get better at that. So maybe it's making like a Pitbull template file, which has the profile, the trough and the part already in it. And maybe it's a Pearson or an orange body part blank already in it.
00:30:12
Speaker
So it's as simple as me. That's it, John. Holy cow. And then I just changed some dimensions that move that location. Pit bulls are expensive, but they're reusable. So pulling them between fixtures isn't a big deal. And then machining the material fixtures, not a big deal. And now all of a sudden you've got a much better workflow. Like I just dislike vices.
00:30:31
Speaker
I totally agree. I mean, it's super nice to be able to clamp one piece of material that's like four inch cubed or something, but that's one vice. You need one vice to do that. And literally, the only thing I use two vices for is doing these bars of tymascus or damasteel or something like that, which, as you mentioned, could be done in a different method, in Y's fascinating idea.
00:30:54
Speaker
If I do the Pearson, I'm literally going to put a Wilton Camlock vise on one of them because it's a drill press vise, but it's so fast and it holds plenty pressure for a lot of quick stuff. That's going to drive people nuts. I love it. That's awesome.
00:31:15
Speaker
But yeah, I've got two vices on a table that I could easily put five vices on right now. And seeing this massive cavern of space on the empty side has been kind of just depressing for a little while. But I just put the vacuum table on it the other day, and it's kind of nice to be able to fill up that space and make it usable. We're going to use it to cut the custom foam for our cases, our knife cases.
00:31:41
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, so I did a quick test yesterday using one of the gold Lakeshore carbide end mills, the aluminum ones, and it cuts beautifully, so it's going to work very well for us. Cool. You can't possibly cut fast enough. I got to see like 800 inches a meter or something. Yeah. Exactly.
00:31:57
Speaker
I told you though, I mean, there's still nothing wrong with bootstrapping. There's times to turn it off, but if I were you, I would get some maybe steel or aluminum, just green some, and this I would not, this I think you have my permission to do this. Not that you ever need my permission, but you could make some bases similar to the orange that just fit next to them for $100 in steel, and then you can drop a third and fourth fixture right onto those.
00:32:26
Speaker
because, well, it's the carrier as well. If you want to keep it similar, you know, the screw hold down carrier. Yeah. That's what I don't like. I don't know how much room you've got on your fixture, but two, two vertical screws that just clamp down through the body of that fixture down into the base are plenty good. That would be, yeah. Hmm.
00:32:51
Speaker
Think about that. Literally, now all of a sudden you're running four knives every night. That is a worthwhile investment of your time. Absolutely. I mean utilizing the machine space, which is something we're not doing.
00:33:06
Speaker
Yeah, I need to put a lot of thought into that. I mean, as you know, running a business and I don't have the machine manpower that you do, like you've got Jared and Noah who can run the machines and things like that. I don't trust my guys to run my machines yet.
00:33:21
Speaker
There's so many things I could do and I need to focus my time specifically on the high output activities. That's what this is. Exactly, yeah. And it's an excellent conversation because making more fixtures increases my personal output then totally worth it.
00:33:39
Speaker
Well, and it lets you have, you know, yes, Jared and Noah are learning and they're running these machines, but it's by and large still something that I'm orchestrating. I'm very involved. Totally.
00:33:53
Speaker
The solution for you is, I know you've become fixated on getting some help in the shop, but I don't think that's a mistake. I really don't. I think that'll be helpful. But one of the things that's been bothering me a lot this week, and I was on my list to talk about, and we're going to get there and that's fine, is the darn point in the E-Myth about there's a difference between managing your employees and just delegating versus absconding.
00:34:20
Speaker
And I'm guilt. I don't know. That's what bothered me. And it's kind of ticking me off. And, you know, I don't this been week. We've had Richard King here scraping all week. We've been working on the Okamoto grinder. I've had customers coming in, like all that fun, normal stuff. And, you know, I've just been telling has been a couple of times I told Zach and Noah, like kind of just figure it out or go watch this video or give it a shot and I'll come take a look when in a perfect world, I would say, OK, guys, let me let me walk you through how this works.
00:34:48
Speaker
But there's not enough time to do that. You want to be able to have them figure it out.
Delegation and Employee Management
00:34:56
Speaker
What are you up to today? Cutting up more that time, I ask us. Oh, that's right. See if I can get the lathe running, making delicious parts all day. Sweet. You?
00:35:08
Speaker
Last day of the Richard King class, it's been super helpful. Okamoto is phenomenal. We did the five block tests where you put a block in each corner and then the center of the grinder and then you measure them when you pull them off and four of those blocks are within two tenths and one of them is off four tenths across 16 by 32. That's impressive.
00:35:31
Speaker
It's good, right? It's very good. Yeah, okay. You would love the four tenths to not be four tenths, but it's a 30-year-old machine that had a chuck that was about as rusted as, well, yeah, I'm incredibly happy. And we'll have a video walking into more of the detail, but that's a big win. And now we've been working on lathes and machine alignment, measuring and tolerating. It's just such good content that I don't want to be away from that.
00:35:58
Speaker
you know, two job shop jobs to run. I've been really, I've been actually having a lot of heartburn on this fixturing thing. I've had a couple of going to the coffee shop and just thinking about fixturing and sketching things out. And do I invest in pit bulls? Like big, like do you think, like I've been, I've been, it's been giving me a little bit of heartburn. Are you, are you making progress on it or are you stuck constantly? Like, like you've got 10 options, you just don't know which way to go.
00:36:24
Speaker
Honestly, now I'm just mad at myself because what I just realized talking to you was just go right down. What is it? The cost of the base unit, the cost of the accessory, the pallet, the top end, the speed to make it, the automation capabilities. How do you lift up? I need to just go just do what I'm good at, which is take the emotion out of it and just make lists and think about
00:36:46
Speaker
I think the ultimate merit is that you can put a vise of various sizes on top of a Pearson and you can't, well you could do vice versa but that's weird. Oh you could actually do, but I don't, that's weird, I don't know. You could put a Pearson on top of an orange and hold it in the vise.
00:37:03
Speaker
But the thing with the orange bases is that they are not automation compatible unless you made yourself some air cylinder center gripper jaw thing. You know what I mean? But the Pearson system is totally automated. Yes, agreed. And I've had... And if you want to make yourself a robot here that changes pallets for you, the choice is becoming more obvious.
00:37:24
Speaker
And I think the nice thing about Pearson is I'm honestly going to have a four inch vise or a tool maker's vise and a Wilton, I mean, seriously, like it's going to be hilarious, but a little Wilton Camlock vise in a Haas because a lot of times I just need to get a part in there, grip it with a couple hundred pounds or plenty, just plenty, and do some work on it and get it out. I don't need to be built in parallels. You can index the size. It sounds so tasty. And, um,
00:37:51
Speaker
the suitability of the versatility of orange vices maybe doesn't suit our business style. You know, somebody who needs vices and Carbsmart jaws 14 times a day and holds big parts all day. It's super useful with an orange vice or six of them, but we don't, we want fixtures.
00:38:10
Speaker
Well, hey, I got to release that video today, actually. We did a test with Seco, or Niagara tool, ripping with an end mill steel, just going crazy with, you know, in 4140. And I had part pull out in the orange because I tightened it, my normal, like, tightened down. And after a pull out, I used a torque wrench to 100 foot-pounds. And that's something you're not going to do on a Pearson, I don't think. You know, 10,000 pounds of clamping pressure out of an orange vice is awesome. That's not the business I'm in, though.
00:38:40
Speaker
Right, right. Me neither. I do such light, delicate cuts generally that I just want to hold a lot of parts. The other huge thing, which I didn't mention, but it matters is that we tram in some of our parts relative to the fixture.
00:38:56
Speaker
plate, the part itself. And so that's not possible to do in my experience with the orange because of the way, and I hope it is with the Pearson. That's a question. But basically the idea of being able to trim in a part offline, like on a work table and then drop it onto the Pearson where you're not putting the same kind of stresses into it as you are with a clamping system and the alignment is huge. Yep. And then you're not wasting time, machine time to trim in the parts. Yeah.
00:39:28
Speaker
Okay, quick side question for you because I wanted to ask you. If there are many projects, little side things, improvements, things that I want to make, should I take the time and make them myself or should I hire it out to all of the machinist friends that we have that are looking for work?
00:39:47
Speaker
So this one's easy. I maybe at my own peril don't like doing the latter. I just find that doing business with friends stinks because I like supporting them and so forth, but it interferes with the relationship. Um, and like, I wouldn't want to make parts for you. I just, I just don't, sorry. I value the friendship. And, um, so,
00:40:12
Speaker
subbing it out yes or having it done or buying it is generally what I would encourage I'm thinking myself like I look around my office right now and I'm like there's so much stuff that I need to do and so I think I'm gonna do like a and for me I'll probably do it on a Saturday or Sunday because it that makes me feel better that I'm not cutting into my own work week but I need to turn off my email turn off my computer and just do you'd be amazed what you can get done in four or six hours but
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, send it out. Try it with one thing. Well, that's the thing. And when I say friends, I don't mean super close friends. I mean just like instant machinist acquaintances who offered time. They're like, hey, I've got downtime on my machines.
00:40:52
Speaker
So send me something to CalPay. You're probably going to get it back dialed in. If you're going to send it to some guy who just bought a tormach and you want to throw him some money because he's getting started, that's awesome. I would just tell yourself, think through how you're going to handle if the part doesn't meet expectations. Are you going to walk them through it and say, hey, you need to know that this didn't work? Are you going to ask for a refund? Are you going to ask them to remake it? Are you going to just smile and say, it was great, and then throw it away? Seriously, think through that.
00:41:23
Speaker
Good stuff. Sweet. All right. So I did need to cut you off there a second ago. That's good. That's very good. Yeah. All right. Are we done? Sweet. Sounds good. I'll see you next Friday. Sounds good. Crush it. Crush it. OK, bye.