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Mentorship & Support, Decision Making, Moving Into A New Shop, Water & Coolant Delivery Systems, & Airlines
168 Plays5 years ago
Plugged Into The Pipeline Having a brain trust is valuable to your business and personal growth. Whether it's social media, family, friends, a mentor, or a business/entrepreneurship group, the benefits are innumerable. Entrepreneurship bears a shocking resemblance to parenting, especially when it comes to receiving unsolicited advice.
Your Win = Crap Shoot? Saunders shares memo that brings a new perspective to evaluating decisions. Although it's easy to think a good result is from your skill and intellect, you might be surprised to find that it's more like rolling the dice.
NYC CNC Chip Rag Stay updated with the shop, shop tours, upcoming events, and other important developments in the manufacturing industry by signing up for the free NYC CNC Newsletter!
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WHAT A BEAUT. All the machines are in the new Grimsmo Knives shop and it looks incredible! With a loaner grocery box truck, the team will be able to finish moving the remaining items.
WATER, COOLANT, & AIR
Grimsmo and Saunders talk details about water, coolant, and ways to make supplying coolant/water to the machines more efficient.
BIG BADA BOOM AT SMW An air line disconnects and whiplashes wildly against the adjacent wall, scaring the crap out of everyone. Saunders shares the story on WhatsApp and Rob Lockwood has an easy solution---almost too easy. Let's just say that the Air Fuses are on order....and maybe a few new pairs of pants.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction & Hosts' Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business Unmachining episode 154. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. This is the podcast sharing the story of two Johns who about 10 years ago started a self-taught journey through
00:00:16
Speaker
CNC machining, but also manufacturing entrepreneurship. And every Friday for geez, three years, we've, we've talked intimately and candidly to share our successes and struggles and be our own little mini support group. Yeah. And I still love the fact that this, this did not start as a podcast. This started as you and I just like supporting each other. Right.
Entrepreneurship & Support Networks
00:00:40
Speaker
Right, and I think it's something that, you know, it's funny, I would actually happily participate in an entrepreneurship group, like a small curated or a good group of folks, not just that anybody can come and go and, or you form a rapport with folks like this, but, you know, this is different because it's you and I across, you know, across in different countries. It's funny. Yeah. Hours away from each other, but yeah.
00:01:08
Speaker
But anyway, it is good. I've never met somebody we were actually just talking about on the NYC forums, somebody who, I think it was in St. Louis, found a really good group. I think it was actually through like a business book club, but okay, great. Like maybe they're on same thing, just called something different. And it gives you the chance to share about that kind of thing.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yeah, I've certainly heard of a couple in Toronto I've heard about and some local friends have been part of other ones. I mean, it's like with anything, you need at least a group of like-minded people, whether they're friends or colleagues or this kind of impersonal group that becomes a personal group.
00:01:48
Speaker
I'd say we kind of get that just through a bit of social media, through Instagram, through our WhatsApp chat. But there's a more personal side that doesn't always get shared in those slightly more public venues that you just don't get the intimacy, you know? Right, right.
Mentorship & Advice on Parenting
00:02:05
Speaker
Who do you, like, if you ever have a real dilemma about something, do you, who do you go to or call? I don't know if I do often enough.
00:02:17
Speaker
to be honest. No, yeah, that's fair. I mean, this is I'm thinking of some things I thought of that have been more like every year, like twice a year, maybe sort of situations. Yeah.
00:02:30
Speaker
Like I'll certainly run ideas by you or by, I don't know, whoever else can answer that question. But I have a lot of people in my life that do offer advice, but I don't know if I have like my one time guru that it's like, man, if I'm really struggling, I talk to this guy.
00:02:51
Speaker
And I, a small part of me envies people that do that have that mentor. That's like, it's like, man, he can, he's been there. He can answer the questions and, you know, um, but I don't know if I'd need it. I don't know. That's a good thing. I, uh, it's, it's your, your comment there reminded me of, uh, the advice I received on, on parenting when my wife and I first
00:03:16
Speaker
I never had our first kid and it was hilarious. It was from my boss at the time and his advice was, the hardest thing about parenting is learning to graciously accept the unsolicited advice from everybody else around you.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, very true. Maybe that's why I don't share too much with too many people because I don't want unsolicited advice. I don't need Joe Blow's opinions on everything. I did the phone a friend a while back and it was
Practical Outcomes in Delicate Situations
00:03:51
Speaker
a situation that I was struggling to handle it right. It was delicate. And I did what I think you should do, which is I wrote down some notes. I slept on it. I tried to think about it from a couple of different perspectives, which is not always easy to do, especially when the emotion is still flowing.
00:04:11
Speaker
But then I think what I did differently, which I'm proud of is, or I'm proud of because it wasn't intuitive, but I knew it was right after I did it, was I thought not so much about the past, the events that had led us to this dilemma, but rather what are the practical outcomes? And sometimes that involves hard decisions. Sometimes in this situation, the word attorney could have come up, wasn't gonna go to that though.
00:04:39
Speaker
And, uh, but you think about, okay, how does this really get solved and what's the closest to a win for, for us or for the view or for the other person, et cetera. Um, after I felt comfortable that I had put in my equity, my time, my thinking, um, I actually called one of the people on that list. I've talked about that like list of five or 10 people where I try to like look up to them or think about them. And this time I called one of them and, uh, I am in
00:05:05
Speaker
like it just left me feeling incredibly warm and proud inside because
00:05:12
Speaker
First off, I'm glad I had done the legwork. I think that's something that it's easy to sometimes skip and just be like, tell me how you'd handle this. Well, no, let's show the other person that you've put some time into it first. Exactly. Yep. And it just gave me a huge, it gave me an amount of confidence to handle the situation. By the way, this may sound like it's like, think of this as nothing more than a really bad outcome with a vendor or something where you've got to stick up for yourself. That's sort of a thing.
00:05:38
Speaker
But you've got to know where you're going to put your foot down, how things are going to resolve. What's going to happen if the other person just says, no, like literally what's your next move then? Is it a letter from an attorney, letterhead, that kind of a thing?
00:05:51
Speaker
Um, and, and, and so again, not so much looking at the past, but how do you solve this? Um, and so anyways, um, it was a good, it was the right move to call that person and talk through it. Yeah. Yeah. I could see that for sure. I struggle with it, at least as bad as you, if not much worse about that internal dilemma of like, should I do this or should I do this? And you're always like running through all the ideas and, and you know, weighing the burden in your own, on your own shoulders. Um.
00:06:20
Speaker
So to ask somebody else that you know can at least shed some insight on it is very valuable. And I'll certainly ask you for things. But if it's things that are non-technical, I realized I talk to my wife all the time about these kind of bigger picture things. And she's definitely my closest confidant with regards to what's really going on.
00:06:45
Speaker
And it's super nice to have, to have that support system right there. I mean, she's always, always been there for me. And she can give me that rational outside perspective, because she's not, you know, an active part of the business, but she kind of, through what I, you know, say she knows what's going on. But it's, yeah, it's a bit of an
00:07:02
Speaker
unemotional outside perspective that sometimes I need that little, you know, kick in the pants. Oh, that's good. She'll push you or she'll... Sometimes. Yeah. Or she'll show me the obvious truth when I don't see it because I'm so deep in the weeds.
00:07:20
Speaker
I really respect folks that have marriages and partnerships where the spouses support each other versus the, and sometimes it's just humor, and that's okay, but the spouse is where it's like, oh, my husband's business, or he's always doing that, or she's always doing that, or that kind of tongue-in-cheek attitude, which is, again, there's a humor outlet that's fine, but I really like it when it's like, no, let's figure this out together. We're in this.
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And thankfully, we've always had that relationship where, yeah, it's supportive either way. I mean, she supported me for the first 10 plus years of a relationship. I did, you know, basically nothing. And, and she worked the job to be able to bring money for the house. And now it's switched and it's awesome. Yeah. You know?
Decision-Making Processes vs. Outcomes
00:08:10
Speaker
Speaking of all of this, actually a really good segue to an article that I read last week that that rocked my world, like really good article and written by a guy who's incredibly smart, actually in the investing world. But but I like that he talks about the psychology of decision making and it's kind of it's kind of a how the world works type of thing.
00:08:34
Speaker
The memo talked about how gambling has similarities to investing and frankly, pretty similar things to business decision-making in the business world and entrepreneurship world. And what he said is so obvious, but also counterintuitive on the surface level, which is you cannot tell the quality of a decision from its outcome.
00:09:04
Speaker
So what he's saying is and his words are just so so eloquent that I I think any way I'm going to describe this as a disservice to him, but what he's saying is that
00:09:16
Speaker
just because the outcome of the decision met what you wanted it to be doesn't mean how you came to that decision was correct. And, uh, this is relevant in today's world because you've got folks like, uh, Masa son who, who made a, and I'm not intimately familiar with it, but my understanding is he made a lot of money on Alibaba and, and, and lost somebody elsewhere. But you know, the, the outlier home run of Alibaba brings him to,
00:09:43
Speaker
the soft bank status, which leads to things like WeWork. And humans are hubristic and arrogant, frankly. And then we think because we nailed something that we're good. And so what Howard is saying, the fellow brothers member, which I love, is that what he cares about, what you should care about is not whether the decision worked out well for you, which is kind of weird.
00:10:06
Speaker
but rather what was your process? This is not pulling in the whole day to Jay Pearson, the E-Myth type stuff, Dale Carnegie stuff of thinking about what was the inputs that led you to have conviction about making that decision because that over time is something that you can repeat and refine such that the majority of your outcomes are favorable, but there's too many other variables that affect an outcome.
00:10:32
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because sometimes you just get these freak wins and you're like, oh, that was a good decision. All right, I'll keep doing those. Yeah. When in fact, it was like a crap shoot, you know? Yeah.
00:10:43
Speaker
When like at the end of Guy Raz's podcast, How I Built This, he always asks the entrepreneur, do you feel that, what mix of skill versus luck? And I really don't like that question, partly because I think Guy Raz is so sharp that that's kind of a cheap question. And everyone kind of gives the same answer because nobody wants to say it's either one, but nobody wants to admit they got so lucky. And I think this is a much better way of talking about that. Like we're all fortuitous.
00:11:11
Speaker
you and I benefited massively from the fact that we were born at a certain time. We happened to be into computers and that led us probably to have a higher likelihood to early, on an early stage, embrace things like YouTube and dive into CNC machining when no one was doing this like they are now at the home level. Exactly. That's a luck element, whatever you want to call it. Now, there's a lot of hard work that went behind it. I'm not saying
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, but timing and everything. Yeah, we are very fortunate to have, yeah. Growing up, my dad used to say, what is it? We're not lucky, we're fortunate. Right. Because luck is a very random thing, but fortunate is like, you know, good circumstances and, you know, things have worked out well. It's good luck has this, yeah, this element of unpredictability to it.
00:12:06
Speaker
almost like the difference between speculating and investing is you speculate on something like gold, which means you buy it and then you wait to see if the price goes up or down, but you don't control it. There wasn't a lot of decision necessarily making that wouldn't do it, but most importantly, it doesn't offer any return in the interim, whereas investing
00:12:24
Speaker
It means you buy something that throws off a yield or return or so forth or a machine tool that produces something. Then at the end, you're still making some part of your bet based on whether you think that asset may appreciate or depreciate or how much it would do so.
00:12:42
Speaker
backgrounds before we knew each other was actually shockingly similar, like this technology, this hands-on, this tinkering, which is probably not different than a lot of folks listening. If the difference... So in some respects, that was investing, not speculating, because even if this hadn't worked out, the knives or Saunders or whatever we're doing, it would have invested into something very similar. We just wouldn't have this podcast.
CNC Machining Newsletter
00:13:05
Speaker
You're right. We were investing in ourselves and our skill base. And at the time it was probably just fun. I mean, I certainly didn't stay up every night going, I'm working towards my future. It was like, I'm just, I'm building a computer cause I need it and it's fun. And I need it for this reason, but you know, it's actually investing in, in your future. And it's not just, uh, you know, gaming for 18 hours a day or something. Right. Right. It's awesome.
00:13:31
Speaker
I wanted to throw out one thing before we switch over to your shop, which is to anyone who's listening. If you're interested in some of the on-goings that we have had at our shop through NYC CNC videos, the shop tours, stuff that's upcoming events, et cetera, what we're doing is we've been working a while on a newsletter format that's going to be
00:13:54
Speaker
not only kind of a recap of what we've got going on, but we're going to tie it into a bit with the industry to talk about stuff that we've seen that's interesting in the machining and manufacturing space.
00:14:05
Speaker
The idea there was that I think we need a newsletter that kind of encapsulates our community of stuff, but the things that I enjoy reading are not necessarily focused just on a company, but rather how does it help the recipient of it? So I think that's what's interesting is, hey, what are we seeing? What are we hearing? Kind of turned it into a little bit of a mix between, again, manufacturing news, but on a very curated,
00:14:32
Speaker
Basis we're not going to turn this into something. That's just a newsfeed of anything. That's in the PR world. You know what I mean? Anyway, so if you go over we'll put a link in the description but also just on the NYC CNC home page there's a newsletter sign-up Two years from now you have your own magazine Well, it's funny because I I've been looking around trying to look and there's the obvious There's a couple of obvious outlets, but there's nothing like every other
00:15:01
Speaker
Industry, my wife and I were talking about this, actually pulling the lives. The fashion industry is littered with these, now these are daily. We have no desire to do a daily newsletter. We're thinking it would be once a month, maybe twice a month. But these kind of news things, I subscribe to one that's more in the business world. And there's nothing like that right now in this world. Cool. Yeah. That's awesome.
00:15:28
Speaker
First Kern hits Canada headline city first CNC machine hits Canada So, how's your week going Let's see where do I even start
Challenges of Moving the Shop
00:15:49
Speaker
All the machines are in. We have moved the shop. It took two days to move everything in, and even the rigors were bummed that it bleated into the second day. They're like, oh, this is the first time in over a year that an expected job took more than I thought it was going to take. Oh, any noteworthy takeaways or lessons learned, or was it just a lot of stuff?
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah, just a tiny bit of miscommunication on their end, ate up some time in the morning before they even got to us. Well, looking on Instagram, it looked like, sorry, go ahead. They didn't get to us till afternoon, but they had to load up, they had to load up the two U-Mac machines and the Kern three crates before even coming out. So that was part of it.
00:16:39
Speaker
But yeah, it's certainly nerve wracking. That part doesn't go away. I was watching them forklift machines and I was told Angelo, I don't think I could do this. I don't think I could, as a job, move these
00:16:54
Speaker
super duper expensive pieces of equipment and they're tipping around and they're bumping and it's just nerve wracking. But maybe that's me as the owner looking at it and just feeling scared. It's interesting. But they know their stuff. Yeah, exactly. You know where the center of gravity is or the weight is or the risk is. Right, right.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah. And that just comes with experience. And I could tell, I mean, the guy that, that moved all the machines, we had probably four or five guys from the rigors come in and out. And, uh, one guy moved all the machines. He did all the heavy forklifting and he's the same guy that's moved every one of my machines ever. That's awesome.
00:17:34
Speaker
What's nice is it looks like the mori and the nak were as simple as just throwing forks underneath it, lifting it, and you're done. Nothing complicated. It's so funny. I had no worries or fears or even hesitations about seeing the mori or the nak move around. I'm like, yeah, it's fine. Go for it. The current you're nervous about, the current's small. It's fairly small, but it's just new. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:18:01
Speaker
I'll tell you the Instagram, the one where you put the story up, I think saying that the tornos looks so lonely. I was like, Oh my gosh, the shop looks spectacular. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does. And it's even after the 3d model of the shop, even after designing it all in fusion, now that I'm standing in it and all the machines are in place, I'm like, Oh my goodness. There is actually a lot of room in here. Yeah. This is, this is wonderful.
00:18:28
Speaker
This is going to be absolutely fantastic. We can have the room to pull all the chip trays out, chip conveyors, maintenance things, all the doors actually open up properly. Like, right. Yeah. I had to position the current so that the chip conveyor in order to remove it and still have the current be in a good spot. Um, it comes out the garage door or the loading door. So that was, yeah, it was great. It was perfect. But it, that let me keep it a little bit closer to the wall.
00:18:57
Speaker
and still be able to get this thing out because it's a really long chip conveyor. Awesome. So it looks like you still have carry stuff out in the old shop or stuff that people can do? Yeah. So today, we're borrowing a box truck from a local grocery company that's a friend of ours. That's hilarious. They're like super fans. And they're like, hey, you want to borrow the truck? That's fine. Yeah, go for it.
00:19:26
Speaker
So they're going to come by around noon today and we'll load all that stuff. So yeah, today it's just all the small stuff, like our tumblers still there and one of the mis collectors and just, and all the hand stuff like boxes and small things, tables. Um, yeah. So I bet you by the end of the day, we'll be over 90% empty in that shop.
00:19:48
Speaker
Okay. I was going to ask, do you have like a hard date where you'd like to be pulled the door shut? Well, it's January 22nd today. I don't want to go into February. So I mean, it's still got this still got a week, a week and two days from today. We're like, we're fine. Yeah. Do you have internet at the new shop?
00:20:05
Speaker
We do, but I haven't figured out how to get it to work yet. I just, I've got to get one of the guys to look at it and it's supposed to be there. It's funny. That's like the hurdle of stopping me from moving into a new shop. It's like, I can't do anything if we don't have connectivity.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, basically I've just been streaming from my phone like the whole time so far, but, um, but yeah, the, we took over the previous tenants internet and got it switched over and stuff. And I think it's, it's a hundred, uh, gigabytes or megabytes up or down, up and down. It's like really fast. Wow. So I'm very much looking forward to that. That's awesome.
00:20:45
Speaker
Are you going to have an office or are you going to be out on the floor? Both, which is crazy. Um, and we'll see how, how
Setting Up the New Shop: Priorities & Installations
00:20:54
Speaker
it plays out. We'll see how much I use of either, um, all the little stuff, like anything that's a table or smaller, I'm not really that concerned yet with where it's going or how it's laid out or all that. And you know, some of the other guys are, and they're freaking out about it. I'm like, guys, they were just lifted up and move it. Like.
00:21:12
Speaker
All I care about is where the machines go, where the lights go, where the plumbing goes, where the airlines go. Those are the fixed assets. That's all I care about right now. Everything else will be super flexible. You're going to have two separate computers? I only have my one laptop right now. There's a shop computer as well, so we'll have one on the shop floor.
00:21:38
Speaker
I don't know. I don't like the thought of having two separate computers, even though everything is mostly cloud-based now, and that's great. It's not like the old days where everything was on your hard drive. Yeah, but I tried to do two computers for a short period of time, and just no. Just don't. So laptop works. I love my rolling desk. I will push that hard to folks that think they may want something like that. Yeah, in this shop, I wouldn't be able to roll into the office.
00:22:07
Speaker
Oh, with that, with that rolling desk, like you can, yeah, there's stairs. Um, so that left a bit of hesitation, but, but yeah, how, there's something I can't figure out about fusion is how to get multiple users happy on the same file. You can't, that's why you have to do like a derived design.
00:22:27
Speaker
Yeah, okay. I love what Fusion has done for us and for the manufacturing community, but I think they are short-sighted about the true ability. We're dealing with some team hub issues right now.
00:22:43
Speaker
Switching between team hubs requires you to close all your files. You can only have files open that are in the team hub you're in, and it's unacceptable to me if somebody, if I'm in a different team hub or collaboration, you can't ask me to close all my files that I've got open because that's part of my workflow, posting and tweaking and looking at to-dos.
00:23:07
Speaker
There's some security issues about data and I get that, but then between that and what you just said, which is kind of like, wait a minute here, we've done this ourselves where two or three people have accidentally opened the same pile at the same time. If you hit save, you now have a major versioning issue. Right. Or if somebody just leaves it open and forgets about it three days later and somebody else goes in to edit something else, then yeah, you got a version issue.
00:23:30
Speaker
It seems like a simple solution. I'm sure it's a very complicated multifaceted problem, but from a user standpoint, it's like, you know, it's like, Angela, you still got that file open? No. Okay. You close it. Okay. Now I can open it. And that's just, I mean, that's in the old shop when we were within, you know, four feet of each other. If we're in different rooms or different ends of the shop, it's, we'll figure it out.
00:23:53
Speaker
Well, no, I think they need to embrace what they do, I believe in their own PDM system vault, which is a much better access control. So where if you try to open a file that Angela's open, it basically won't let you or it'll have to prompt him or it will, it just has much tighter control around how it even allows that to exist or it forces you to open it read only, which sometimes that's fine. A lot of times I just want to grab a dimension or take a look at something. Right.
00:24:22
Speaker
We should try to ping somebody on where that's at, if there's changes to that, I guess, coming. Because, I mean, this is an issue that anybody with more than two users, even two users, even two computers,
00:24:39
Speaker
Right. If you say you're a solopreneur and you have two computers and you have a file open on one computer and you go to another computer and make some changes and save, then your first computer is now out of date. Correct. Yep. And that's annoying. Yeah. Agreed. From a like data standpoint with
Fusion 360 Limitations in Collaboration
00:25:00
Speaker
with like a design like yours, it's just imperative to not lose progress or know where you are. And I've still been pushing on them to offer some backup options, which they don't have them available, but there's ways to do it. I think they can do it for you, a sort of a thing where it's like, Hey, I need, I want a backup. Like I want, you know, the Norseman, I want a offline copy of all those solid models, as well as all the fusion files that have the cam built in, because I want to have those on a
00:25:29
Speaker
on a backup NAS or a solid state hard drive that I put in a fireproof safe or something. What are you thinking right now for water, for in coolant?
Plumbing Setup Challenges in the New Shop
00:25:47
Speaker
So, we've got the plumber coming in now. Let's see if plumber came in yesterday started the work, and you know with all the machines in there he kind of joked to me and he goes, when I initially quoted this job, this was an empty warehouse.
00:26:03
Speaker
It's going to be harder now now that everything's in the way. Um, not a big deal, but funny nonetheless. Um, so there is no water, no drain, no nothing in the shop right now. So we have to install, uh, sinks and plumbing and hot and cold feed and big return drain, um, into and out of the shop, which is a considerable expense and a job. Okay.
00:26:30
Speaker
But so basically, because the shops so big and far away from the water source, you can't just drain the sink back. So we have to pump the thing back using a what they call it.
00:26:45
Speaker
sump pump, sump pump, basically, it's like a closed container, closed drum, small drum with a pump in it. So it fills up the water, then the pump shoves it up with a check valve. Yes, we're installing two of those one on each side, and water lines will go all the way around the shop. And then my plan for coolant, I've got a fairly deep plan I'm working on will be
00:27:09
Speaker
feed a line of water to an area to like an IBC container or smaller. I'm going to get a DI water setup. Okay. And, and I'm going to get a mixatron, quality chems hooking me up with a
00:27:28
Speaker
What do they call it? The piston thing. The piston style. Yeah. I was just talking about this. Dosatron. Yeah. Yeah. So John Wiley from Qualicam has been really helpful. We've been having a lot of chats about all this stuff. And yeah, so he's hooking me up with one of those piston style mixers. And then I've got a drum of Qualicam Eco Pure 450 coming in. So I'm switching from the 251. Okay.
00:27:55
Speaker
to their more premium, I think it's vegetable based, still going to be a white coolant. It's still semi-synthetic, I think. Exactly, yep. I think, unless it's mostly vegetable. I don't know exactly. But it is, from their testing and research and their use in other aerospace places, in aerospace places, it's awesome on titanium and super alloys, which is 90% of what we do. Yeah.
00:28:24
Speaker
a little bit more expensive than the 251, but I was like, yeah, this sounds good to me. Let's do this. So that drum's coming in today. So then the plan is to
Coolant Management Plans
00:28:37
Speaker
So wall, like water input to DI setup to the mixatron to a container. So it's holding a small amount of premix or a decent amount, whatever, not an insane amount of premix. And then I'll have another pump after that that will then feed it to the machine. So I'm gonna run some plumbing to each of the coolanty machines. Okay, so that will all be static.
00:29:06
Speaker
Like none of that will move and you'll have a separate set of lines that will then feed mixed coolant. Yeah, to each machine. And then over time, I'm going to add various float valves and solenoids and autofill will not be that difficult to set up. So I'm really excited about that.
00:29:26
Speaker
Okay. I like that. I'm living vicariously through you as we sort of rethink our system, which is to stop moving ever to move around the volume metric amount of coolant, which is water. If it's 10% bricks, it's 90% or 10% mix ratio, it's 90% water. So don't move that water around.
00:29:48
Speaker
whether it's in buckets or totes or anything like just have that. Yeah. The time it takes us to premix a bunch of coolant and to hose it in. And in the old shop, we just had low pressure everything and it would take forever. And it's just a feels like a complete waste of time.
00:30:04
Speaker
absolute essence of you make a better decision when the right tool is available and we're thinking something a little bit different I think we'll have purified water lines run if not to every machine near every machine meaning if a machine is
00:30:21
Speaker
Maybe one line is bright between two machines. But then what we would do is we'll have a gallon or a barrel of coolant. And on top of it, we're debating between there's an agricultural pump style mixer that we saw that on our metal quest tour.
00:30:38
Speaker
or ironically that same piston style agitator. But basically you'll be delivering water right to there. You could do a quick connect to the coolant. You could mix right there. And we're thinking of a kind of pretty cool either Raspberry Pi with a interface system that would let you say how much coolant you want, what machine it's going to. That gives you some process control. There's some
00:31:03
Speaker
Beauties of building in some safety features like we have a it'd be a master off solenoid Back at the base tote, which would only open right when the raspberry pie lets it open and that would be restricted to certain hours exactly because i'm really Uh, I don't flood would be just terrible, right? Right. Um
00:31:24
Speaker
And there's some other practical ways of limiting that, like even with our IBC tote, which holds 200 and some gallons of water, we don't need that much. We only use that because, and you won't even need that if you have a DI system because you can just process DI real time. Correct. Yeah. I'm thinking of a plastic 55 gallon drum.
00:31:42
Speaker
I think that would be a good size for us. And so I thought about complicated systems with Arduino or Raspberry or whatever. And I just keep coming down to the, you know, you distill things down to the base core value and you work up from there, you complicate up from there. And I'm like, does it have to be any more complicated than a series of float valves and solenoids? Like all simple, like no brain, no logic, no mechanic, like, just like float valve goes up, solenoid opens, the line is already pressurized.
00:32:10
Speaker
I think you're right of keep it simple and make it work. The difference is when it comes to documentation, and you may not care about that, but I suspect knowing John Grimsmo over time, and maybe this is phase two, you'll benefit from having coolant logs.
00:32:29
Speaker
That's interesting. Long-term statistical process control to tool life, to production stuff. I don't know why you would ever want to get ISO or ANSI or anything, but there's something to be said for the data side of saying, okay, here's what the current, especially a machine like the current, every day of the year, we will know what the BRICS was in that machine.
00:32:54
Speaker
That's cool. And you're pretty close. But I agree. Once you start adding in the digital side of things, if it doesn't work, it's a nightmare. Right. So I'm going to start simple and complicate up from there as necessary. That's the other thing. So two things. First thing, my current plan is to distribute the same premix to every machine. And I think that's going to fail at some point, because I bet you the Nakamura needs more, a higher percentage of premix than, say, the Mori does.
00:33:22
Speaker
So I'm trying to balance all of the machines. I don't know what the curtain is going to need with the same percentage of premix and hope that they all end up the same. That's probably not going to succeed as great as I hope it will. What they do at Milterra, when Fraser and I toured it a week or two ago,
00:33:41
Speaker
So they have an RO system to a probably less than 55 gallon drum of RO water. And then they have that pressurized to lines at every machine. And then at each machine is where they premix their stuff. So they just have a garden hose that has pure RO water coming out of it, similar to what you were suggesting. And then they do their premix and they dump it in.
00:34:07
Speaker
So the reason I think that's also wins over time. Number one, I don't like the idea of leaving premix in the lines over time. I don't know why that bothers me. I just don't like that. Yeah. I talked to the quality chem guy about that. And he said, it's, it's not really a problem as long as it flows every now and then. And, uh, quality chem doesn't tend to get bacteria and mold and growth and like gross stuff. And I certainly haven't really seen it. Um, so anyway.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah, I hear you, but you know, I'm kind of like, yeah, comment stands like you just just I don't like that. I don't it's not it's certainly not a benefit. I'll put it that way. And we're not going to run the same coin in every machine.
00:34:50
Speaker
for sure. So having the ability to do different coolants or different concentrations to me is huge. I agree. The only downside is now you need a mixatron dosing station at each machine, which is fine. It just adds more expense, don't you? No, we'll put that on top of the barrel. So we're going to switch our VM3 to that 355. You're going to move the barrel as necessary?
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah, not a big deal. Wheelbarrow around's easy. Yeah. Uline has like a barrel thing. It's literally just pushing around. Not hard. Okay. The key is you don't have to move the water. True, yeah. And I like the concentration adjustment because in theory it should be pretty... I agree. Well, and then the other question is how readily does your coolant mix in?
00:35:43
Speaker
Like the metal quest guys just put straight water into the sump and then they're there. It's not a Raspberry Pi, but their Raspberry Pi system is I think it's a PLC software or something says, okay, you just added eight gallons of straight water. The current, the prior bricks was 6.2. You need to add X ounces of coolant to get to the goal bricks. And then they literally use this agricultural fuel pump mixer. It's so cool.
00:36:09
Speaker
to just add straight coolant into the sump, and that works if your coolant doesn't need a lot of physical agitation to mix in, and that's just a coolant-dependent thing. I think, ironically, also talking to the guy calling Kim about this, that if you... Some coolants are pretty easy, like just put water in somewhere, put coolant in somewhere else in the same sump, and it'll work out fine. Others, not a good idea.
00:36:37
Speaker
Right. That sounds really cool actually. Yeah. So where is this metal quest video? You've been promising it since like Christmas. It is, uh, I think the third, third back and forth of approval. So I think we're getting pretty close. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Awesome.
00:36:53
Speaker
The last thing I wanted to throw out, and then I got to actually run my daughter to school, is shout out to Rob Lockwood. We had an airline on a bar become disconnected. No idea why, but it was probably one of the scariest things that ever happened to me in a shop. I mean, I was shaking. No one got hurt, but
00:37:14
Speaker
This, I don't know, probably 30-inch soft line hooked into a barb on the corner of the shop, whipped around. Luckily, we had a ball valve on the other end of the shop that we could immediately shut, and that allowed it to just bleed off pretty quickly, which I'd never thought of having those ball valves for that reason.
00:37:34
Speaker
And I shared it on the WhatsApp and Rob shouted back, you can buy an air fuse and no, no joke. I was like, Rob, come on, stop, stop busting my you know what, for telling me there's an air fuse. Sure enough, there's an air fuse. And basically it detects if you have a blowout like that, like if your compressor starts dumping, which is what happens when you have a line get cut or disconnected and it shuts freaking off and it and it looks like the way it works. We just ordered one.
00:38:02
Speaker
It looks like it's just a spring system, so it automatically resets. It doesn't require you to replace it or physically reset it. Yeah, I saw the chat on WhatsApp, but I didn't pay too much attention to it. So it shuts off the air compressor.
00:38:17
Speaker
No, no, no. Think of it this way. Think of it, it's in line with your airlines, and when it's in normal use, let's say you're dumping 100 PSI at 20 CFM. I'm making those numbers up, but let's say that's not your normal, but in McMaster cells, the air fuses, they're 50 or 60 bucks.
00:38:37
Speaker
If your compressor starts dumping, it's 125 PSI at 80 CFM. So it's like four times the volume. Well, this air fuse has a resist, a spring in it that's resisting the fuse, the mechanical thing from being closed, like a check valve, basically.
Shop Safety Incident & Air Fuses
00:38:50
Speaker
If your air compressor starts dumping, it's way more pressure and it just forces that valve closed inside. It overcomes the spring pressure. Right, right. That's all it is. That's super cool. So you would need one at each line or drop or danger zone or something.
00:39:07
Speaker
Maybe. I mean, the one option would just be to put it back at your main compressor output because that should shut the whole compressor output off if it ever detects any line is cut. True. But then it would shut down the shop. Yeah. Trust me. After this, you'd be fine with that outcome.
00:39:25
Speaker
Sure. This thing whipped for, I don't know, 10, 15 seconds and the wall around it was, there must have been 75 black marks from the hose whip. What? Yeah. I mean, incredible. It was, I thought a bomb went off. In fact, our neighbor tenant called us to make sure we were okay. Whoa. So air fuses are going in. Freaky. Yeah. Hey, I gotta run.
00:39:52
Speaker
Sounds good, man. Good luck with the continuing the move. I'll talk to you next week. Sounds great. All right. Take care. Bye.