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Business of Machining - Episode 91
189 Plays6 years ago
Happy Halloween! Dry Ice anyone? It’s super cool! (pun intended) Check out this project another machinist did with dry ice.
Grimsmo talks about the benefits of quenching your blades in dry ice after heat treat, and is working on a palette that will also improve the process. Saunders is also working with dry ice to blast parts.
Before you become a mad machinist for Halloween, maybe this solution will fix your mill:
Did your machine stop working? Grimsmo tried many different ways to fix his Mori, but in the end he just had to UN-press his emergency stop button...and turn his machine off and on about ten times.
Keeping track of mistakes and solutions
It’s not just parts a machinist/entrepreneur needs to track, it’s also thought processes. Learn about how Saunders and Grimsmo use documents on their computers, and ERP software to keep track of everything going on in their shops and minds.
“It’s important to be able to easily search for the solution” - Saunders
SAUNDERS WANTS YOUR OPINION
Saunders is comparing different ERP softwares, so if you have implemented or used the small business ERP software from SAP, Oracle, or Odoo, Saunders wants to hear from you! You can contact him here.
The Grimsmo Team has a new addition to the shop: an Engis 24” plate lapping machine! No training required. Grimsmo and Saunders discuss the extent to which training is valuable for new machines.
Check out Grimsmo’s Instagram for pics of the new machine, and stay tuned on their YouTube channel for a video all about it.
Saunders is clearing up the shop to make more room. His philosophy to help him get it done?
“If we’re not using it, it’s not making us happy, and it’s not part of our story, it goes” - Saunders
Jumping write into November
Grimsmo does not have a completed pen and it’s the end of October, BUT he still thinks he can get pens into production in November.
Save your business A LOT of money by thinking about exchange rates
The Grimsmo Team is 100% Canadian! But their customers aren’t, which means not all their banks should be either. Grimsmo shares the plan that he and Barry hatched to save money on the business by thinking about exchange rates, monthly costs, service fees, and product subscriptions.
“For every transaction through Shopify, we’re paying a percentage transactional fee” - Grimsmo
That’s all for now folks!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 91
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 91. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Good morning. Good morning, sir. How's it going?
Machining Mishaps and Stressful Nights
00:00:12
Speaker
It's going good. Today is a great day. Oh, yeah? Yep.
00:00:17
Speaker
Yesterday night was stressful. I know I want to talk about that Instagram crate photo, but what's your take? What's your story? Is it related to the Instagram crate photo? Pretty much. No, it's separate actually. But anyway, I was coming into the shop this morning just now for the bomb.
00:00:39
Speaker
I, I ran the mail last night for a night run. It's supposed to shut off by itself. When I, if I come in and the red lights blinking, it means it broke a tool. It came in. I was like, no, okay. I hope it's the last tool that always breaks so that everything else is done. But no, this is like one of the first tools that broke. So the entire three and a half hour run did not get done. So I was like, no, but that's okay. I'll figure it out. It was a little treadmill. I thought you said it was a good, good day. Good night.
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not actually that bummed about that. It was just kind of funny. Oh,
New Equipment and Mill Troubles
00:01:10
Speaker
OK. No, but last night, so we got our new Angus lapping machine delivered yesterday, which was amazing. I'll get to that in a second. But then, so we were running the machine in the morning, and then we got the machine delivered. So we weren't running the Maury during that time, because it was between runs. And then a couple hours later, I go back to run the mill, and it's just locked out. And I'm like, why won't this work?
00:01:34
Speaker
And I'm like pushing the estop and turning it pushing the on button restarting the control a bunch of times taking the key in and out a bunch of times i'm like i don't understand there's something wrong like this won't respond i don't get it freaking me out like do i call dmg i don't know so all of us were down here like looking at it poking around looking at things.
00:01:52
Speaker
literally for two hours I took the door interlock switch completely apart so that because I thought that was the problem and then I'm like no this looks like it works fine there's no wires it's no fried nothing eventually I finally as I'm texting you guys on the whatsapp group
00:02:10
Speaker
And it helps to talk about things so that you think about it differently. As I'm halfway through texting you guys, I look over and because we moved one of the tables, one of the tables bumped the emergency switch for the chip conveyor.
00:02:29
Speaker
Which is like, first of all, your, your ship conveyor has an East. I guess that makes sense given that it could have somebody's arm in it, but exactly. It's kind of funny that it's, I guess, cause it's a separate. Well, cause my, my conveyor goes all the way up to the end of the teach East, um, chip conveyor. So it was my, I don't have any stuff. Oh, you don't have one of those tube ones.
00:02:48
Speaker
Well, the VF2 is a tube. The VM3 has a lift conveyor. I mean, it's a belt that you could hurt something
Resolving Machine Errors
00:02:54
Speaker
with. Exactly. Yeah. Well, yeah. So mine's like that, but it does have an e-stop. Anyway, it got bumped, and that ceased all motor functions. And I didn't realize, because I'm like, we didn't change anything. We didn't touch this mill the entire time for delivery. So I felt really dumb. However, after that, I'm like, OK, so that's the problem. Problem solved. Done.
00:03:14
Speaker
So I start up the mail, the error clears, but then five seconds later it gave an error like door switch timer over.
00:03:22
Speaker
And I'm like, what? Okay. So yes, I've been dicking around with the door switch, but timer over and I couldn't clear it for like another hour. I was trying to figure out, I called DMG, I created a support ticket. Um, it was like five or six PM. So I couldn't talk to anybody, but man, I think the book number six page number 6,782 of the FANUC manual talks about this issue.
00:03:46
Speaker
I looked there and I couldn't find it.
ERP Systems and Process Improvements
00:03:49
Speaker
I googled it. Yeah. So it's just driving me nuts. Restarting the control like 10 times did it. And then it's fixed. What? And I'm like, I'm so confused.
00:04:00
Speaker
So this is obviously payback for what you did to the Milterra's Matsura man. Yeah, pretty much same thing. That's crazy. What a what a poor design. So obviously the east because your your chip conveyor estop could just stop the chip conveyor itself. It doesn't necessarily need to tie into the machine controller other than.
00:04:23
Speaker
Perhaps a long-term issue. If you don't want to run the machine without a conveyor, but the fact that it does tie into the electronics of your controller, but doesn't give you an actual intelligent error is. Yeah. Chip conveyor pushed. Yeah. Yeah. That is odd.
00:04:39
Speaker
And I have had this problem once or twice before. It's so dumb, I don't even remember it. No, that's not funny. That's happened to me a few times on things like, whether it's mechanical machines or even things like my accounting software, it broke a link between Shopify and Zero. And there's like a simple setting.
00:04:59
Speaker
I know I've done it before, but I have absolutely no memory of it. And it's one of those weird things where it's like, I don't even know where I would store the information to troubleshoot that. And usually you're going to laugh. Usually I write myself an email with every single buzzword I could think of. So I can just search my own Gmail.
00:05:22
Speaker
because that's better than like, well, do I have a PDF or do I have a word document on the host? I have a word document on shop operations. So I have a troubleshooting page. Like what do you, where do you put this?
00:05:32
Speaker
In my case, I could put that into pro shop in the machine, uh, description, something for any, any notes or errors outside of manual territory. Oh, that's a good idea. Which is there a way in pro shop to do like a global, like could I walk up to your pro shop computer and just type conveyor and then find that?
Shop Modernization and Equipment Updates
00:05:57
Speaker
I don't know, but I don't think so. But you should be able to, because that would be cool. Yeah. Right. Because I don't want to have to search as important. Yeah. We're glad you got it fixed. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems to work. Mill ran great last night, except for the broken tool. But so anyway, so we got our Angus 24 inch lapping machine yesterday. It was enormous. How big is your current one?
00:06:24
Speaker
It's a 15-inch. This is now 24-inch with a full enclosure. So 15-inch looks like a glorified record player. 24 inches looks like you got another Dura vertical. Yep, yep. Literally, it's probably the same footprint as a FANUC Robo drill. Yeah. Oh my God.
00:06:43
Speaker
Maybe even the medium one, not a small one. But yeah, it's awesome. So we'll get more pictures and videos. As you say, I saw the crate photo. You haven't shown anything of it unpacked yet. Yeah. You've got to back away far enough to be able to see it.
00:07:05
Speaker
But yeah, it's amazing. It's got its own stand, its own enclosure, whereas the other one's a tabletop. Does it have a chip conveyor? No. But it's probably seven feet tall with the enclosure. The enclosure's beautiful, really nicely done.
00:07:22
Speaker
We're just waiting on a transformer now and our electrician to come in and put it in. Got it. I was going to ask, do they have to come? That type of machine that will come, they'll come train you on? Or is it just? Not this one, no. Okay. You can go down to Chicago and take their training class for free. Yeah. Oh, I don't necessarily have a problem with that.
00:07:44
Speaker
I don't always like the fact that somebody says you can't use this machines till we come train you. Sure. Sometimes that's probably the appropriate, but you guys are good to go with it. Yeah, because we've had the other one for quite a while. So yeah, we know exactly what to do. Whereas with the subpoena machine, if we do get that, they give like five days of training with it. They come to you? Yeah, they come to you for like 40 hours.
Machining Projects and Production Challenges
00:08:11
Speaker
Wow. Including the price, which is like, wow, super cool. Yeah. Yeah, that is cool. I've continued to wear two hats. One is the kind of growth entrepreneur recognizing the investment. The other is the fact that I'll probably never shake the fact that I'm a bootstrapper. So it's kind of like,
00:08:33
Speaker
you know for quote unquote free doesn't mean what you think not that you think it's free but um you look at uh i was actually looking at some i don't think they were old quotes for a machine tool um but you know the way they handled quoting for install it was it was just basically like i don't know a training trip
00:08:52
Speaker
to come out to you was like $3,400 plus fixed plus $1,200 per day, which is their way of dealing with, we don't know who we're going to send or what flights cost. So we're just going to basically round up. And that's a lot of money. It is, yeah. Yeah, I guess I didn't. In this case, I didn't think about removing that option and saving the money
00:09:17
Speaker
the theoretical money of that 40 hours. I'll keep that in mind. Which could be a terrible decision. But I almost say, hey, we were looking at actually, ironically, kind of a similar machine, just kind of exploring right now. And this was a company up in Minnesota.
Exploring New Technologies in the Shop
00:09:39
Speaker
And they were like, blah, blah, blah, sales demo, send us apart, whatever. And I was kind of like, can I just fly up to Minneapolis? I'd rather just ship you guys apart, fly up, and you guys have a whole showroom of different machines. We can meet your techs. We can play. That, to me, is so much more rewarding and value added. And they were surprised. But I was like, that's not a big deal. No, but it's unique. It's like when we send videos to vendors.
00:10:09
Speaker
with questions and descriptions and they're like, I've never seen this before. Right. Yeah, it is funny. It's cool. We were talking to a company yesterday about, have you ever heard of dry ice cleaning? Like blasting? Briefly, yeah.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool. It's not going to work for what I was thinking. I don't think at least, but it is a fascinating process for sure. Really? It looks like a pressure washer, but it has a dry ice. Actually, the really cool thing is it makes its own dry ice, so you just have to feed it. I believe just compressed air. I'm not even sure you have to feed it power. It doesn't need CO2 or something.
00:10:51
Speaker
I vaguely recollect scene, it just says only needs air, but I didn't get that far.
00:11:00
Speaker
I was also reading a random article about how easy it is to buy dry ice. Like, cause today is Halloween. Um, like you can get it from Kroger and Walmart and lots of places. I've never bought my own dry ice and I've always wanted to, even just for Halloween purposes. Right. Yeah. Me neither. I think my dad got some, some of those like Omaha steaks when I was a kid and it came in a dry ice cause styrofoam container. I was like, this is so cool. And then my parents are like, don't touch it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, one day I want to get liquid nitrogen for the shop, for the heat treating process. And really all it involves is like a $500 to $800 doer. And then a doer, D-E-W-A-R. It's the insulated container that you keep liquid nitrogen in. Cool. I don't recall seeing that in the Terminator movies, but OK.
00:11:56
Speaker
But yes, the yeah, so if I buy an $800 doer or get a used one, but I'd probably just get a new one, then locally, I can get it filled or they can come fill for me and it feels cheap.
00:12:10
Speaker
And then we can use that for the heat treat process, which should make the knives better and stronger and things like that. But a big reason I want to get it is just to play with it and like to show the kids and like put a flower in it and break it and all that stuff. It's obviously super cold, right? Negative 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. So you would take it out of heat treat and do like a quench in it or something? Yes. So you quench the blades down to room temperature and then you put it in liquid nitrogen for like another hour or something.
00:12:38
Speaker
Whoa. Because the way it was explained to me by my buddy Brad was you go from super hot like 1900 degrees and then you quench down to room temperature and then you want to drop the temperature down to 300 degrees in this almost linear fashion. Negative 300 degrees. But this is the scene. And then you can temperate after that.
00:12:59
Speaker
This is not the same as a cryo heat treat though. It is. It is. I've heard of heat treating that never gets hot. It only goes cold or maybe I'm misunderstanding it. Yeah, I don't know. I've never heard of that.
00:13:11
Speaker
Just uh, what little i've seen is really really cool if you look at the chemical is it correct to say chemical or the molecular probably is the better word excuse me molecular structure of how it allows the uh chains to form their natural strong, you know cubic or Aligned patterns and then you coincident simply to lock that shape in so that they don't
00:13:33
Speaker
distort themselves out. So you're basically looking at a perfect stack of cubes. But I wonder why, if the quench does that down a room temp and kind of locks that in, I wonder what going to negative 300 does.
00:13:47
Speaker
It changes, especially in the blade steel, and I don't know nearly enough about this, but there's martensite and there's austenite, I think, in the steel, and then it changes the value of the amount of one or the other or something like that. Interesting. So a cryode blade should hold an edge better. It should be one or two Rockwell points harder just by making it super cold after heat treatment. Interesting. Yeah.
00:14:15
Speaker
Oh, and you don't need like a permit. You just have to buy this thing. And it plugs in. You just need a storage device. The doer has to plug in, right, to keep it. Nope. Oh, I guess it doesn't plug in because you don't have the ability to pull. Liquid nitrogen itself is negative 300 degrees.
00:14:33
Speaker
Well, what keeps it from going into a gaseous form, the doer? It evaporates. Into your air, which is no big deal? Huh. It's just nitrogen into the air. Yeah, it's no big deal. I've heard that it can last like a month before you really need to top it off. And if you insulate the container, like Brad also made a plywood box with a bunch of foam insulation, and he said that extended his range by quite a bit. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, it is really cool. That's awesome. I was going to say something now. I can't think of it.
00:15:03
Speaker
Oh, I was hanging out with a friend who had, have you ever seen those super magnets that levitate around a platform of rings or whatever? Maybe I'll try to find a YouTube video. We'll put it in the podcast description, but it'll be like almost like a science fair type demo where they'll have a table or a track or a big donut type shaped object and they'll put a, um, they'll take a magnet or a metallic object or something and they'll,
00:15:31
Speaker
use their hand and they'll they'll move it into place over the track but it's not touching and then they'll let go and it will it will stay floating this is literally like star wars hovercraft yeah and then what they'll do is they'll push it they'll give it a little bump and it will follow around the track but then you can take the track
00:15:51
Speaker
And you can lift the track up and turn it around and it'll go work upside down. It'll work on its side. It is absolutely in every sense of the word either perceived as magic or define our laws of physics. No, I have never seen that, but that sounds awesome. So I'm going to tell you how it works. It's almost better if you see it first because it's just so darn cool.
00:16:17
Speaker
And I'm not gonna do a great job explaining, but basically there are imperfections in how super magnets or anything in the world is made. And what happens when you hold this object over the super magnet is the magnetic energy. It's not the word energy. Basically it finds those peculiarities. And let's say there's three different lines
00:16:44
Speaker
bad or flaws in the part. Well, think about taking a chopstick. If you put a chopstick through one axis, the part can still move a bunch. If you put it through a second chopstick, it can still move a bunch. But if you put three chopsticks through a part, it now has no more degrees of freedom. And that's what this is doing.
00:17:06
Speaker
which is super cool. Well, it's giving it basically three degrees of freedom while still allowing it to rotate in the ring of... Well, because it's the super magnet is acting on those inefficiencies as it moves around the super magnetic coil or the track, if you will. Really. I can't wait to watch this. Yeah. I'll email you this after we hang up here. Anyways.
00:17:33
Speaker
Um, we, okay. So you were talking about, um, uh, pro shops.
Advanced ERP and Inventory Management
00:17:40
Speaker
We are like teasing around with we've got this smart supply, uh, order fulfillment cabinet, which we're waiting on the iPad to show up for it to really use it. And then, um,
00:17:54
Speaker
Ed is reprinting shop labels. We're going to start considering changing up our Kanban cards, whatever, constant improvement. I kind of don't like the phrase constant improvement anymore because it feels just kind of like, sometimes I like to stop improving and just enjoy it. But you know what I mean? Anyway, we started putting pictures on the back of our Kanban cards.
00:18:18
Speaker
Because it was too confusing. What's this material for? What's the screw for? What's it look like? So we put pictures on the back. That was easy. Ed has this idea of QR codes. I actually just asked Jay Pearson because Jay, I think custom or had kind of an upwork type project of custom writing, something that will let people sort of scan. It's like a mini ERP.
00:18:41
Speaker
So scanning something and having that do something, generate a PO, pull up the link in your own little inventory system that can then let you push the PO button or see more about it. I like this.
00:18:57
Speaker
But then I pulled up Odoo again and I just had this thought of like, man, we're a lot more focused now. We have our fixture plates, we have our Mod Vice system. Those are the two cores. There's some accessories around that. And then we sell like the DeWaltz and other stuff, but holy cow, I really wish.
00:19:14
Speaker
I started mapping it out. Take a mod vice. A mod vice is generally sold as a kit. So it's two different machine objects with some parallel, some screws, some fasteners or like bars. But the core of it is a single assembly. I wish I had an ERP system that was everything. It had handled the accounting.
00:19:37
Speaker
The kit for the kit is what drove our website front end for what appears as the product, we could have the media for all the images hosted there. And then the ERP could also do the breakout of individual part and sub assemblies so that we could, we need to have a, we need to have a page on our website that lets people buy replacement parts, screws, parallels, all that we don't have that right now.
00:20:01
Speaker
And that could drive inventory levels, work order tickets. I basically want to take every product that we make, lay it out on a big table, and then have that live. It's an ERP. Have it own all the information for that stuff, the rev, the revisions, the notes. It's what you're doing, the manufacturing notes and processes behind it.
00:20:24
Speaker
but more tied in with website inventory levels, finished inventory levels as well, and sales and everything.
00:20:34
Speaker
I was talking to another guy, Ryan, who's on our ERP WhatsApp thread. And we had the same kind of conversation that I've had before. We were just kind of like, yeah, I really need to sit down and decide what. And I realized you could say this forever. I need to decide. And so part of me thought, wait a minute here. Let's just do the exact opposite. Let's make the quote unquote uneducated decision. What if we just
00:21:04
Speaker
sign up for Odo tomorrow and use it for a year or two. And this is going to sound crazy and maybe borderline irresponsible, but it was the way I was thinking out loud in my head. If in two years we learned that Odo is not the right fit and it costs us $20,000 to have a consultant come in and migrate that over to the right ERP system, that probably was still the right decision.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah. And that's where I'm at with Pro Shop. Because five months ago, whenever I started this, I was like, you know what? Let's just dive in. Let's just do it. Let's start tracking information. The migration doesn't worry me that much if I ever had to go to a different system. I mean, the fact that I now have five months of data, of process control, and
00:21:51
Speaker
uh, vendor contact history and purchase order history. And all this stuff that I've been tracking is like super duper valuable. I can't imagine going back to a way of not doing something like this now. So exactly that it's just dive in, try it for a good long while and then you'll learn. That's the only way you're going to learn really. Otherwise you're just guessing.
00:22:14
Speaker
Right. So here's my request to our audience. I'm going to self-limit to some of the major brands and general ERP systems out there. So I'd say that because we've had a lot of people mention some pretty
00:22:29
Speaker
Niche type or not super big or popular. So We're interested in odo and then things like the oracle has a small business one sap has business one. I think it's called Anyone out there has implemented or used? Sort of those three or something. That's similar We'd love to hear from you. That's the one
00:22:52
Speaker
criticism of a specifically Odo is it, and I haven't looked that hard, but I don't, I need to talk to somebody who actually uses it in the U S um, does it integrate with the banks like you expect? Cause you're never going to be able to proactively flush out questions. Um, and I recognize it's not going to be perfect, but someone who's been through that process will have a wealth of, of experience. I'd love to, I'd love to benefit from and share. Cool.
00:23:22
Speaker
Um, we, uh, we had somebody touring our shop yesterday and they, they, we were, I was walking into the back half of the machine shop Bay and it's, it's like completely empty. Now we, uh, on Monday, the last, I say the last manual machine, we still have one bridge port and one lathe, but, uh, but we sold all the rest of the manual equipment is now gone. Wow. Which is great.
00:23:51
Speaker
It's good. It feels right. It's equipment. I mean, I've said it before. We weren't using it. It wasn't making us money. It wasn't making us happy. It's not part of our story. I don't regret buying it. You make those decisions because they're good deals or you don't know where things are going and so forth. But it makes me feel better about focusing what we're doing and saving up for the next machine that we want to buy, which is 5-axis, turning center, all that kind of stuff.
00:24:21
Speaker
Cool. Yeah, that's good. Yep. And make it a room for it too. Yeah, not just making room for it, but those machines were sitting. It's not that they need maintained, but you just fast forward five years. What was I going to have done with that 17 inch lathe? It's a good lathe or that radiant arm drill. Nothing, John. Yeah, exactly. So I'm glad we made that call. Sweet. What else have you been up to?
00:24:51
Speaker
You've seen our mod vices, right? Okay. Yeah, I love them. So Ed came up with a phenomenal revision to the fixed side. So the mod vice has two sides, just like a fixed jaw or floating jaw type system. And the fixed side used to be kind of a little miniature L shape. So you'd bolt it down and it has a little tall area where you'd put either a solid bar or the talent grip.
00:25:20
Speaker
No problems with that. It worked great. We liked it. What we changed it to is a intrinsic dual station fix side, which is phenomenal. So instead of it going mean and L right now, like it used to be, um, it's not just a solid block has a single, um, low, single mounting location through the center.
00:25:45
Speaker
It's just been sufficient in our deflection tests. Then it has a two areas to locate so you can keep the solid bar and the talent grips on it. And if you want to switch them, you just rotate it when you go to mountain. OK. When you go to mountain on the fixture plate, if you've got the new fixture plate plugs in, which are selling like hotcakes. We just bought 10,000 and I think we're going to run out soon.
00:26:12
Speaker
Wow. They're cheap, but it's funny. And so if you want to mount the fixed side in your fixture plate, you just pull three pegs out in a row because the left two are your diamonds and the center is the screw. And if you want to run dual station mod vices, so you want to clamp from each side, you have a single center and variables on each side.
00:26:37
Speaker
So it's still a fixed job, but it's reversible. Correct. Yeah. That's cool. Think of it like this as opposed to before it was an assembly. It was the base and the back jaw was one machine piece. Say it again.
00:26:51
Speaker
the base, the bottom, and the back jaw was one solid piece. I think that's right. The new version is kind of like the center post of an orange dual station. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. You can come at it from one side or you can come at it from both sides. Right. Actually, I didn't even think about it, but that is
00:27:08
Speaker
That's kind of how it looks and works and all that. But it feels great. As soon as we saw it, I was like, yes, that's awesome. And it made me happy that we can, I think Ed made one before he even, shh, because we can. You know what I mean? When it was such a good idea and it's that idea of just improving your products and getting behind them and believing in them and then making them and made me happy that we aren't sitting on
00:27:37
Speaker
two or 300 pieces of inventory. We're doing batch work, but trying to do it pretty smart. I still need to get a fourth axis, I think, to make those better or to improve the process of making them. Anyway, it was, it was, it was a good feeling. That's awesome.
00:27:54
Speaker
So we got to get them up on the website. Oh, we just ordered, I just hired the Upwork guy to redo the Saunders website. Right now we have a traditional like dropdown menus where you can click on categories. We're going to change the whole website to be filters, which will make so much more sense because we're going to have
00:28:16
Speaker
Like right now we have Tormach fixture plates, Haas fixture plates, but we're gonna add, brother, we're gonna add FANUC, et cetera. So instead of having all these individual pages for all these brands, you just go to our website and then on the left, you can start picking Haas or the machine model or whatever, and it just filters all those products. That's cool, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it'll be great. Good. How about you?
00:28:44
Speaker
Um, Dan just busy cranking along. Like yesterday was a busy day getting that machine delivered and problem with the more, the morey, but, um, pen production today is the end of the month. Last day in October. Yeah. I told myself I would have finished pen by the end of October, which I'm still a couple of days away, but, um,
00:29:06
Speaker
But yeah, I want to sell pens in November. So today I'm going to be working on the slider of the pen, the little grippy part that slides down to release the pen. And it's tricky to figure out the knurled one. Well, it's machined. But of course you don't form, you machine the knurl in. Of course.
00:29:27
Speaker
So yeah, I want to make that exactly to print. And then the next part we make will be our variable one. And we'll tweak the dimensions on that to fit perfectly. Will we say it again? Well, because right now, if I make all the parts to print, it doesn't work. It doesn't work right. The design is flawed in a way that I need more clearance in certain areas than I thought I did, or than it looks like I do in CAD. So right now, they're basically not all interchangeable parts.
00:29:57
Speaker
They are, but they're all equally wrong. Huh. So I need to add probably just one or two thou to one part, but I got to figure out which part's going to be the best. Interesting. And then it'll work better. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So you're keeping what you parts you've made. You're not throwing them out and starting over. Yeah. We don't have a lot of inventory of parts. Okay. Who's it?
00:30:24
Speaker
Hmm. No, I feel like I've been in your shoes like everyone that's listening probably has words like
00:30:29
Speaker
We made 20 of something. They're not how we want to make them in the future, but they're perfectly fine. So why don't I finish the accessories or the other parts, the complement these to get the product. It's not like a compromise, right? That's not a blam, but no, exactly. Okay. Yeah. If they're functionally fine and nobody's going to know, then that's fine. Um, and then you move on and you get better constant improvement kind of thing. Um, but yeah, so today I'm going to make that slider and then that should be good.
00:30:59
Speaker
I've got these sweet quenching plates that I'm making for heat treat setup. Because right now we're quenching between aluminum plates, except they get hotter and hotter and hotter with every blade you quench. So I'm making a water cooled setup, which is epic. You can't quench the quench plates in water. You can. It's just awkward and they got to be super flat. Right.
00:31:25
Speaker
Like we've got a few and we're interchanging them, but I think water is the best answer. Best and most complicated answer. No joke though, adding surface area can, will really help like just machine some cooling fins into the backside of it. You'll, I don't know what you can do. The fusion will show you the surface area easily. And that can really help dissipate heat. That's a good idea too.
00:31:53
Speaker
to a non-water cooled setup, like to just aluminum, right? Yeah, but even if you're going to, you're, so you're going to add some pipe taps on each side and just drill cross drilled holes through it. Um, it's a sandwich design. So the inner one is all like zigzagged out. So the coolant flow through the entire thing. Got it. But you're still, I would still consider machining some, uh, you know, like that picture, that lap I made.
00:32:19
Speaker
Yeah, just do that, but a little bit deeper. Yeah, I did design some fence. Angelo actually...
00:32:27
Speaker
mirrored your thoughts and suggested the cooling fence too. And I'm like, man, why not? I feel like the water is going to suck everything out anyway, but we'll see. It goes back to the, uh, the like one year in, in I think college when I was really into, uh, saltwater aquariums and fish and learning and all that. And, uh, they have these little bio balls, these little blue, they kind of look like the Lego Christmas, not the Lego Christmas tree, the Lego like town trees that are round. Um,
00:32:55
Speaker
And the advertising for these bioballs is like, it's a, it's a probably about a one inch, um, sphere, but because they are zigzag cut, it's like seven times the surface area or something. Okay. Which is really cool to me. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. But nice.
00:33:17
Speaker
Um, yeah, I had a note that I wanted to bring up for just everybody out there. And it's funny because it keeps coming up, you know, it's like selective perception, but it's coming up with like four different people this week separately, but, um, it's, it's worth encouraging it. Cause it was a brow beat into me as a kid.
00:33:36
Speaker
um, by my dad and my grandfather, which is save money.
Financial Strategies in Business
00:33:42
Speaker
It's just, it's so, so, so good and important to do and to get in the habit of it and to not have the defeatist attitude of, well, I can't afford to save money start, even if it's 20 bucks a week start. And, uh, money does not make you happy, but it sure as heck helps give you some options in life. Yeah, right. Yep. Yep. Yep.
00:34:08
Speaker
One way that we've started doing it here in the business is past few months, Barry and I have been sitting down doing a bunch of financial stuff and finding areas to save percentages of money, whether it's on transactional fees or credit card fees or anything. And it's a significant amount of money. Good for you. And we're saving many, many percent. And we're putting all that money into a savings account that we're just going to grow. Yeah. That's the best.
00:34:38
Speaker
Like it's literally going to take zero dollars away from our traditional revenue because this is money we were paying to other people, but now we're saving it. So it's like the easiest way to save without any recourse basically. But yeah. Yeah. If you're, if you're listening to this in your.
00:34:53
Speaker
15 years old or 18 years old and you're maybe about to get your first job, start an ASP, automatic savings plan, where you just get 20 or 50 or 200 bucks, whatever pulled out of your paycheck. You never even see it. You'll never get used to it. You'll never succumb to that lifestyle creep. And you know, when you're, I remember, I remember vividly being about 21, 22 years old, starting my first job and thinking, how am I ever going to
00:35:21
Speaker
get to having money. How do you do that? And telling a 21-year-old, when you're 31, it'll be better. That's like, you're dead to me. 31 is life's over, right? But it just takes time. But how are you saving money like that, John? Are you just renegotiating or looking to do adjustments on service levels that get you better rates or what?
00:35:50
Speaker
That for sure. And also because we're in Canada and we buy a lot of stuff from the US, exchange rate is a big deal. So pay values to handle our exchange rate before, except they give you a horrible exchange rate. So it took a lot of effort, but we now have a legit US based bank account.
00:36:10
Speaker
that we transfer into, which has no exchange out of PayPal. And then we basically trade the money ourselves from our bank account to our Canadian bank account, getting the best exchange rate possible. And like we're saving several percent just on that for every dollar we make.
00:36:29
Speaker
If somebody, if you don't mind me asking, if somebody buys a product of yours and you keep that money in a US account and then you have to pay US expenses, you never have to foreign exchange that money. Correct. If we pay out of PayPal. Okay. Got it. Right, which we can't do for everything.
00:36:52
Speaker
You can't pay- A lot of vendors. The US bank, can you do a bill pay out of a US bank now? Yes, and we're doing that too now. Okay. Got it. Which is good. Because otherwise, for some things, we'd make US dollars, we'd convert it to Canadian, poorly, and then we'd buy American things with it, so we're converting back and forth. Convert it back. Sure. And that's- It actually could be 80% or something stupid. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
00:37:15
Speaker
So we're being very critical with that. And then even like when you buy something with a credit card, there's 2.9% processing fee or whatever it is. And when you're buying $15,000 worth of water jet stuff and you paid on your credit card,
00:37:30
Speaker
Well, where's that 2.9% going? Are they adding it to the bill or are they absorbing it themselves? So we're basically asking every vendor going, are you adding this or are you absorbing it? And if you're adding it, we'll just bill pay you and then not pay that 2.9% and then everybody wins. Right. So we're being ruthless with all that stuff.
00:37:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's being smart. They'll call it ruthless. Well, yeah, no, you're right. You're right. It's in everybody's best interest. I mean, PayPal is not going to be happy with us. They don't care. Yeah, but PayPal, ruthless with PayPal. My gosh, please. It's like the one ultimate irony is that
00:38:06
Speaker
You and many people rightfully aspire to share in the wonders of what Elon Musk is doing with things like SpaceX and Tesla. But I'll be darned if that isn't the guy who freaking helped make PayPal what it is. If anybody ever has lunch with him, that needs to come up.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah, we just converted McMaster from our credit card, which frankly was so easy to do because McMaster with credit card just auto pays everything. There's no paperwork on my end of our efforts. And you know, you get some credit card points, whatever those are worth.
00:38:45
Speaker
But no, I just converted it to open account and I do now have to, when I get a McMaster, we order from McMaster probably twice a week. So that means I do have to look at the invoice. I have to subtract the 2% discount that we get because they don't give you that number.
00:39:04
Speaker
Obviously, because it's, well, most vendors don't, I think because they want to make you do the math, other than give you that lower number automatically. At least that's my cynical interpretation. But we use bill pay on our bank site, so I don't have to mail. It takes me very little time.
00:39:22
Speaker
But that's 2%, John. That's 2% because you're not paying credit card? Excuse me. McMaster, as a vendor, will give us 2%, 10, net 30. So we have net 30 terms, meaning it's the same price as we would have paid with a credit card. But if we pay the bill within 10 days of receipt, we get a 2% discount.
00:39:48
Speaker
So most, like Alrow will give us net 10 terms. Most of the metal suppliers are thinner margin, so it'll be harder to get. You won't get net 2% on net 10, but some portion of that. But most, many vendors will give you net 10 with 1% or 2%. Cool. Yeah. I can't say I've heard of that, but I like it.
00:40:16
Speaker
But yeah, good for you, totally. Especially when you look right off the top, every dollar comes in through PayPal. We convert every dollar except for what we spend in US dollars. So that's the lowest hanging fruit. That affects everything. If I save 2% on my McMaster order and I might spend two grand a year there, OK, that's 20 bucks or whatever it is, 40 bucks. But you hit every dollar coming in with a better exchange rate. And holy moly.
00:40:46
Speaker
No, it's not only free money, but lots of businesses operate on margins that may be too low, 10%, 20%. So $20 of pure profit is really hundreds of dollars of revenue, John. Yeah. You just made. Yep. Good for you.
00:41:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah, we did the we upgraded our Shopify plan. So this is a good example. Did you get the plus? No, no. Sorry. I don't know. I can. Well, they called us about a Shopify plus is the upgrade. But oh, it's only one. This is a good example of being penny wise pound foolish for a while. I had resisted doing it because it bumped us from like round numbers to nine.
00:41:30
Speaker
I'm putting in my app code to log in to check. I want to say it moved us from 30 bucks a month up to 80 bucks a month. But because so many of our transactions do use the Shopify
00:41:49
Speaker
payment plan. So we are subject to what their credit card fee is. And so the credit card fee dropped, I don't know what, from like 2.9% down to 2.6% or 2.4%. So the math is actually pretty simple. It cost me $50 more per month in my plan to save
00:42:11
Speaker
0.5% or whatever. Yeah. So you just figure out what is that on a revenue basis of that charge and whether that makes sense or not. And it, and it did make sense. So we're now on advanced shop of no, no. Oh, wow. Advanced Shopify is two 99 a month. We are not on that plan. Whenever one is below that, I think it's the $80 a month type.
00:42:38
Speaker
With PayPal, we've been hounding them for about a year to give us a better rate, because basically once you bring in X amount of revenue per year, you do qualify for a better rate. And they've been telling me this for a while, so I keep calling back and hounding them and being like, okay, am I good for that rate? I know I've made your minimums, like we're making that much money. And eventually, finally, we got on the phone with the right guy. And here I'm thinking we might be able to save like 1% or something.
00:43:07
Speaker
So we go back and forth, back and forth, and he goes, okay, best I can do 0.3% savings. And I'm like, oh, that was a lot of work for, okay, I'll take it, of course, but the number in my head was a little bit bigger than reality. But anyway, so there's 0.3, add that to every dollar coming in. But then with Shopify,
00:43:27
Speaker
Every transaction through Shopify, we're paying a percentage transactional fee because we're not doing the Shopify payments like you are. We're doing everything through PayPal.
00:43:39
Speaker
So, I mean, every knife we sell, we spent like 20 bucks to Shopify or something like that. Several percent. So, I mean, like our monthly Shopify fees could be thousands of dollars. And he was saying the next big plan upgrade is Shopify Plus.
00:44:01
Speaker
which has a monthly fee of $2,000. And it was like, are you kidding? But the transactional fee is almost nothing. So it's like at a certain volume level, it does actually make sense. And then beyond that,
00:44:14
Speaker
It's makes a lot of sense, but it's like 2000 a month. Are you nuts? Right. But in the end, we're paying almost that much in fees. Sure. Same thing. Play the numbers. Try to figure it out. Make sure you can downgrade though. If things slow down for whatever reason, I want to be able to go back to the not 2000 month.
00:44:38
Speaker
Uh, version. Yeah. That's crazy. My God. I don't even, this is with Shopify. Yeah. I don't even see that. They don't even show me that option. I basically, oh, isn't Shopify Canadian dope to begin with? I think so, but pretty sure it is. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Cool.
00:44:57
Speaker
Sweet. What's going on today? Pens. Pens. Pens. Heat treat fixture or heat treat quench plate. I was going to run that yesterday, but the machine was down. But yeah, get that done.
00:45:13
Speaker
I bought these huge sheets of G10 from McMaster to make carrier rings for the bigger lapping machine. And then the new machine came with a dozen round blank carry rings already. And they both came in on the same day. McMaster came in yesterday as well. That's hilarious. This is amazing. I'm glad you guys did it, but maybe you should have told me so that I didn't spend $150 on G10 I'm not going to use. Right.
00:45:42
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, you can McMaster's great on returns. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll use it for something. We did a, did you see the solenoid upgrade thing we did? No. This is amazing. So anyone who has a Haas will know this. Um, there's a, uh, ball valve next to the spindle that you use to shut off the coolant ring around the spindle. Okay.
00:46:06
Speaker
Because otherwise, you have a hose next to the machine. Actually, how does your Maury work? How do you use the hose? I don't have a hose. Oh, my god. I know. Unsubscribe. How do you not have a hose? Yeah, it's painful. Wow. Well, I wonder how it works on other brands. But with the Haas, the hose only works when the coolant's on. But when the coolant's on, your spindle, all your coolant ring. So they should have the same pump. Exactly. Right. Some machines will have two pumps.
00:46:37
Speaker
Sure. And I guess that's could have been an option. Maybe that's a different way of tackling it. But all we did was we put a solenoid that is normally open. So very important. If it fails, it's open. We put a solenoid back between the pump and the coolant line that goes into the machine. And then when the Z is home, so we just put a, it's like a limit switch. When the Z is all the way up, it actually turns, it activates that solenoid and shuts off the spindle ring.
00:47:07
Speaker
Okay. Because I never need coolant when Z is home. Right. Of course. It's not possible that it could be cutting in that position. You're only really going to wash down when Z is at home.
00:47:19
Speaker
Right. So we have an override. You could still shut the ball valve off. That's what I like about this modifications. We didn't do anything that's changed the system. So if you need to jog Z down for some reason to wash down the spindle, that's fine. But on the VM3, it's a big deal because that spindle is a long ways away. The VF2 is real easy. It's right there. So that was a very good. That's awesome. Yeah, good idea.
00:47:43
Speaker
but I was proud because of how simple it was and I was proud because of the fail safe nature. At first we were thinking like, oh, we can have an Arduino and a sensors and like PLC. And then you're like, no, just simple. Yep. Awesome. So when can I order a pen? Soon. Okay. Good. Yep. Excellent. Yeah, this month I want to sell them this month for sure. How many more parts to make other than the neural ring?
00:48:12
Speaker
Five. A lot. Yeah. Okay. Got it. But they're simple. Famous last words. Yeah, exactly. Got it. Sweet. Yep. All right. Well, crush it. I'll talk to you next week. Sounds awesome. Take care, bud. Okay. Take care. Have a great day.