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Business of Machining - Episode 79
186 Plays7 years ago
Work/Life Balance: how kids can make you sleep better
Sound like an oxymoron? Sometimes we need an escape from work; you can get stressed because you’re working too much.
Call it what it is! A BUSINESS.
When payroll gets involved, that’s when it gets serious (and when something starts to run like a mini corporation). The Johns discuss the difference between planning and dreaming when it comes to growing your business.
“If there’s a decision you can solve for under 100 dollars, solve it yourself.” - Tim Ferriss, Four Hour Work Week
The Johns get inspiring (and a little cheesy):
“Believe in yourself!” - Saunders
“‘It’s fun to dream’ is the wrong phrase. The phrase should be ‘it’s fun to plan’” because it’s all part of the true picture of the business. - Grimsmo
“The future will be kind to me, as I intend to invent it” - Saunders
QOTD: How do you dream about things?
What if I got…? Is a form of planning.
Goals to grow the business! For what? Growth!
Sometimes you’re not working for a sports car, you work so you can grow your business and invest in it. The Johns talk about what they're working towards.
IMTS is one month away!
Grimsmo and Saunders will be there a day before IMTS starts (Sunday, Sept 9) for the Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship Summit, which is a version of the NYC CNC open house, and there will be plenty to learn! Grimsmo will also be doing a workshop on knife making, and talking about the business.
The event will be held in a pretty great space called mHUB in downtown Chicago.
TO-DO or WILL-DO? that is the question.
Putting something on a piece of paper as a to-do list doesn’t mean it’ll get done, and everyone has a different kind of to-do list that works for them. Saunders and Grimsmo talk about the differences between theirs.
“Its surprisingly hard to find a system that works for you” - Grimsmo
The final part of this episode is all about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems
Grimsmo is in the midst of setting his company up with ProShop but, similarly to to-do lists, everyone uses ERP systems differently.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Balancing Life
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 79. My name is John Saunders. Good morning. My name is John Grimsmile. Good morning. How's it going, buddy?
00:00:10
Speaker
Good. Good. How are you? Good. A little tired, but generally great. Worn out tired or just good tired? Both. It's good. Thanks for good. I've been sleeping a lot better and I never slept poorly per se, but you know what it's like with kids. I think I probably underestimate stress, which probably is common amongst entrepreneurs.
Stress Management for Entrepreneurial Parents
00:00:36
Speaker
What do you want to call stress? I'm not stressed.
00:00:40
Speaker
like, uh, horrendously or anything, but you just need a lot on your mind, right? Well, it's funny because I think you and I, you know, we both have two young kids and it's, it's an interesting like balance because we get the time off with them. You know, we get to remove ourselves from work and like spend time with family and, you know, shut off for a couple hours. And like yesterday we went swimming in the lake and it was just amazing.
00:01:06
Speaker
And they have live music at the park and it was just such a wonderful night. But then there's also the added stress of having kids in a family and running to school and all that back and forth. So it's like compared to someone who's in our position but doesn't have kids, where it's pretty much all work all the time. We do have that removal, even though it's more, but it's more life, right?
00:01:28
Speaker
Yeah, I was less, I was stressed less. Like even in the strike mark days when we were kind of grinding and I was balancing a day job and married, but no kids. Right. There was, it's hard to actually recollect it actually. I don't know. Do you remember being stressed when you were in the garage? Well, Claire is...
00:01:48
Speaker
eight and a half now so like the majority of you know my entrepreneurial career has been with her but but yeah for sure especially in the beginnings of a business.
Scaling Beyond Solopreneurship
00:02:00
Speaker
Right but they every what everybody has said for better or worse is generally true which is that as a business grows and it sort of has to grow I don't know very many businesses
00:02:13
Speaker
that I would call a proper business that aren't at least three people or four people. And look, don't get me wrong, I love small businesses and I love, hugely love businesses that actually specifically reject growth for the sake of
00:02:28
Speaker
Focusing on what they are and recognizing growth is not everything to everyone at every time I love that but you you really I think I don't know how to I tend to be a positive person an inclusive person But like if it's a business that's just relying on you that changes the nature of what it is For a lot of reasons but uh as it grows and it gets into all of the other things that are involved with a
00:02:56
Speaker
a business that has standing power on its own without you. So that's employees and it's partnerships and it's contracts or vendors or services or leases or HR, all that. Everyone has said, you'll spend a significant amount of time managing that. I think we do a pretty good job of keeping that stuff very, very efficient, but it nevertheless is stuff.
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, and I totally agree with you now, but I feel like three or four years ago, I would have been offended and not agreed with you with the terms of what a business is and all that. I'm like, all right, business with me and my brother. But you know, like now I totally understand and totally agree with what you mean. Like once you get to three or four employees and you want to
00:03:39
Speaker
think about removing yourself as the bottleneck from operating the business and payroll becomes a real thing and all this stuff really adds up to be a business, then that does become a real business that's run like a mini corporation.
Empowering Employees for Efficiency
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I agree with what you said. I don't mean to be derogatory or putting down a solopreneurship or whether that's getting started or long term, you know, there's some, especially in your world, there's probably some knife makers out there that are basically, you know, one guy, maybe an assistant where it's very different dynamic. That is legit. And some of those people are crushing it. I just mean, you know, there's a difference between somebody who's kind of running a consulting company where it's just him, it's one to one, his time is equals output versus like,
00:04:25
Speaker
what you're doing now, which is freaking awesome.
00:04:28
Speaker
or it starts to become scalable. And like you said about growth and not everybody is chasing for growth, but I am. Taking the solo out of solopreneur. Yeah, you're just a preneur. Right. No, but it's a good thing. I had lunch with kind of a new mentor would be an exaggeration, but one of those guys that can sort of serve a bouncing board or that kind of like informal advisor role.
00:04:58
Speaker
I think it was really good. One of the anecdotes that he mentioned was when he started getting involved, he was getting peppered with all these questions and it became almost a thing of like, his name is John, let's go ask John, let's go ask John, let's go ask John. The initial pass is like, oh, that's good. He's integrated himself. He's able to make decisions that he's viewed as a resource and a person who can make decisions. But the reality is that's a terrible thing. You want to empower your direct,
00:05:29
Speaker
I hate the word subordinate, but your direct reports, and then you want the people below that to sort of, yeah, either have the systems in place, the processes in place, or go to their report and to stop that stuff. Yeah, yeah, I get that.
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, at first, as you grow and as you have people, it kind of feels like you're the center of the universe in a weird way. Like everybody has to ask you for help, permission, advice, things like that. But that gets old very quick. Yeah. It's one of the, I think, good takeaways. There are some bad ones. One of the good takeaways from
00:06:06
Speaker
the Tim Ferriss four hour work week, which is build, build the processes, empower your employees. And I think in his anecdotal situation, it was, if there's a decision that you can resolve for under a hundred dollars, solve it yourself. Yeah. And there probably needs to be some like, let's huddle up every month and make sure we aren't making a bunch of a bunch of hundred dollar mistake decisions, but that's okay. So, you know, so I would say in the end, you made 63 decisions that you thought were terrible, but,
00:06:33
Speaker
you made more that were right and you made the framework in place going forward. And it sounds like in the company he was running. So you spent six grand to train your employees on the job. And they learn quickly, very quickly that way, right? Yeah. And I was just thinking that's, I've been thinking about this for a week or two now.
00:06:53
Speaker
exactly that phrase, you know, if the decision has a downside of, you know, less than $100, then just go ahead and do it. It's something I want to start doing more here, giving Erin more power on the email system to answer questions and send out like, oh, I lost a screw. Can you send me another one? And then she can handle that herself. You know what I mean? Little things like that that, you know, empower her to like make those decisions.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah. How does that work if I lose a screw in it or I didn't yet, but I almost did. No, but I'm, I'm happy to send out replacements at no cost to anything. But one, but so part of me see something like that. And so to make it scalable, you almost, you should almost just create a spare parts. I'm taking, talking out loud. What have you made like a spare parts?
00:07:51
Speaker
Link that went out going forward. Maybe it goes out when you buy a knife so that maybe it's an invisible URL so It doesn't go out to like the everyone that maybe you have to put in your serial number and maybe that doesn't even match the
00:08:05
Speaker
the buyer's name, but it gives you some way of making sure people and then you should charge for the screw. I mean, you know, even if it's $5 or $10, which I assume is not much, um, I don't, I don't think you have an obligation to replace lost screws, but also you just need a system and framework in place in 10 years. Crimson knives can't be doing individual email responses, um, for screws. And this creates the whole ship station record of this period. And you know, um,
Streamlining Customer Service Systems
00:08:35
Speaker
There's also hate to say, there's probably some element of bad guys out there who will actually start doing things. It lets you track who's getting spare parts. Sure. If a screw fell out, it's kind of our fault typically, because it wasn't tight enough. You know what I mean? Not at all. Like we don't lock, we don't lock tight the screws or anything like that. And I'm happy to support with the customers. So I mean, for five bucks, I'm not going to charge for five bucks. I'm happy to just send it out. Okay.
00:09:04
Speaker
The problem becomes when people want, oh, but my knife came with silver screws. Can I get a full set of blue hardware? And I'm like that, we just don't make enough parts to do that. Once we get a Swiss, then that will become a no brainer, no problem. And then we can have a thing on the website that's like, yeah, hardware kit, 80 bucks or whatever for everything. I think maybe you and I talked about this once. There's that whole other kind of scary world of like, do you just open it up to
00:09:30
Speaker
having some significant number of inventory and options and sizes so that I can, you know, what does it pit my, pit my Norseman? Yeah. For like aftermarket parts, I mean. Yep. Yep. Yeah. We need the, the systems in place to be able to do that, which would include a Swiss. Sorry. Any, any progress on that?
00:09:55
Speaker
Not specifically, but I was thinking about something this morning over breakfast and I was like I was thinking about five axes and palletized machines and all that and thinking about you and Then I had to go so I'm like okay. It's time What was the phrase? It's fun to dream
00:10:12
Speaker
And I'm like, no, no, this is not, like when you say it's fun to dream, that's kind of admitting to yourself it's never going to happen. So that's like the wrong phrase. I'm like, it's fun to plan. Like I'm making, you know, progress in my head here, thinking about this and learning about various machines and, you know, which one I'd get and all that. This is not just pie in the sky dreaming.
00:10:32
Speaker
You know the future will be kind to me for I intend to invent it. Yes, John This is the corniest saying about what I'm about to say one of the corniest things Out there, but it's actually darn true, which is you gotta believe in yourself, right? John John there is a ninety nine point nine nine nine percent chance that you are going to own a Swiss late, right?
00:10:56
Speaker
And that, that shred of 0.001% when you don't is because you either get hit by a bus this afternoon, for some reason choose to buy a different style machine. Like, like it's just not, you know, and the reality is there's probably a 70% chance you're going to own one.
00:11:11
Speaker
in a matter of months, not years.
Dreaming vs. Planning in Business Growth
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah, so it was just funny saying, you know, kind of the default phrase, like, as I'm getting up off the table, like, oh, it's fun to dream. And I'm like, no, no, I have to totally correct myself and be like, that's just, you know, false advertising kind of like false phrases. But they're so ingrained in my, you know, head just from ever to say things like that. And I'm like, no, no, no.
00:11:36
Speaker
But it comes back to, I think, what it is to build a business from nothing, from scratch, John. Everything you look around right now in your shop, just literally turn your head around. Every single thing you're looking at was acquired and purchased, probably by you personally, with these specific intent. Like, it did not exist. In 2009, everything here was raw materials in the earth or not existent, or like, it just, no. Yes.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. So how do you how do you dream about things? You know what I mean? Like, okay, you want to hear a full full loop circle? Sure. This iterates too fast to even be fun or practical to kind of share on the weekly bomb schedule. But
00:12:24
Speaker
About a month ago or three weeks ago this confluence of IMTS of the section 179 tax code of increased product demand Focusing on process a whole bunch of other smaller things and it led me to think about should we get a
00:12:41
Speaker
a new spindle in our shop. I'll keep this short. The thought too is we're trying to sell our trending on our Haas, which is kind of sort of always part of the plan to now graduate up to the big boy machine. And so it quickly turned into this crazy mind game thing dreaming, like you said.
00:13:00
Speaker
I could get another vertical machine and you could put a fourth axis, which could actually be a really good fit for some of the production work. You get a horizontal, you get a five axis, five axis with automation. Or if none of those make sense right now, but you saved up some money and or section 179, you could actually finally buy the lathe.
00:13:20
Speaker
And then IMTS is a good time to research for that. And the truth is we're still absolutely thinking about it.
Equipment Acquisition Decisions
00:13:26
Speaker
But I've kind of gone through every one of those scenarios I've met with a couple of dealers and done some pricing and research and all that. And I've sort of realized.
00:13:35
Speaker
No, let's just sit tight. We might still look at a lathe because that's much more of a task machine. It's just a support machine and it's a little easier. Some of this ties into the new project we're working on that we haven't started sharing yet. And so I did that dreaming and I don't know. So let's keep doing what we're doing and we'll revisit. Exactly. But it's planning is what it is. It's not dreaming.
00:14:05
Speaker
you can daydream about, oh, what if I got this? What if I got this? What if I got this? But that's actual planning, you know, it's like, it's legitimate. Like you could, in the next year you could buy any one of those machines if you so choose. Sure. Sure. Sure. Exactly. So it's not like dreaming, like one day I'm going to own a $10 million house and you know, 12 Ferraris and all this stuff. It's like legitimate, probably going to happen decisions.
00:14:32
Speaker
That was one of those weird moments with that lunch I had with this individual, John, last week was we were talking about entrepreneurship and business and what you want. And sometimes, you know, the thing I never understood about leadership, and it's strange because I don't think of myself as a leader, even though I am leading this company. It just doesn't, I don't, it doesn't feel like that. I don't think you wake up in the morning. Right. You're not the president of United States.
00:15:00
Speaker
Exactly, although I'm the org, you know, I want to actively work on my leadership skills, but go ahead. And leadership and all that and I don't know how it came up, but somehow we were talking about all this. I was kind of like, you know, I was like, I'm, I'm 35 and I've done all this. And I was like, you know, part of me wants to be at a point where I could actually just go buy a little sports car. And then I was like, but then I don't even want the sports car. Like I want it for like a month. And then I want to just sell it and go back, put it back into the business. Like I don't, it's not even like,
00:15:29
Speaker
I would be, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that it's not a little bit intriguing and romantic and part of, you know, you don't want to end, end all this and be like, what the heck do I do it all for? But the truth is I just want to come back here and make parts. I just want to buy more machines. I just want to have fun making parts. Like I don't, I don't, that is who I am. You know, done, right? Exactly. Well, the cool thing is you can drive your sports car to work every day. Yeah. Um, it's somebody, somewhat a literal example, somewhat, I think a figurative example, but it's just not,
00:16:00
Speaker
It's not what drives you, it's not your core. Yeah, well played. Exactly. It drives, got it. It's early.
00:16:10
Speaker
Anyway, so what do you, I felt like you had something you were going to say, was it Swiss buying or dreaming or purchasing or planning? I was dreaming about five axis machines, you know, should I get this? I was looking back at some texts I sent to Rob Lockwood just asking about, he's got that micron of five axis with palletized and he said it's very similar to the Matsura LX 160.
00:16:33
Speaker
Oh, really? Is it a linear machine? Oh, it is. I don't know. I think it is. I know Robert does have a linear machine. Yeah. But it's like, you know, small and fast and little pallets and things like that. And I was just, you know, kind of daydreaming what each scenario would entail, whether, you know, Hermely or MX330 or LX160 or so many options out there.
00:16:57
Speaker
or some other machine that doesn't have integrated pallets, like a grove, and you get the Iroa pallet system, things like that, and there's just so many options.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's been sobering in a sad way to talk to more people in the industry that are involved in buying machine tools, whatever, whatever title or position that is.
Informed Purchases of Machine Tools
00:17:21
Speaker
And this is just, I don't mean this as a statement, it's just an observation. But, you know, unfortunately, you are going to find I think you're probably more well informed than
00:17:34
Speaker
a significant number, not all sales folks. And I'm not in any way disparaging them. If there's one comment I would make, it's that I think with the sort of explosive growth of the industry lately, you've got some folks that are just very green and they can still make ends meet because there's so much machine to activity going on. But it's frustrating because you would think when you're graduating into the quote unquote big leagues, you would think you would get a seat at the table with some people that are really, really, really in the know.
00:18:03
Speaker
And the reality is, John, you're a smart guy. You probably research these machines more. You're more familiar with the competitors, the feature sets, production, manufacturing. So it's just a little bit of a let down when you all of a sudden. Yeah, I agree. You've seen this? Oh, yeah, for sure. Like when you talk to sales guys in your head, you want to talk to the guy that ran this machine for five years. Right. And then now he's a salesman, but that probably doesn't exist. You know? Yeah. Yeah. What's why maybe I'm
00:18:31
Speaker
Maybe I already knew this because I think I've said before use it usually trade shows It's much more enjoyable go to find the apps guys or the service guys or the temperature not the sales guys But sometimes sometimes that's why they bring them, you know, right? That's fair. Yeah Yeah IMTS is one month away. Whoa, that's getting soon. So would you buy a Swiss before a five axis? Oh
00:18:58
Speaker
It's a lot more logical to do that. It's also half the price. Oh, that's true. I always think of Swiss as so expensive, but I guess it's still cheap. 200, 250. Yeah. Decked out. Yeah. Okay. But yeah, it's a lot more logical to us because it would help with the knife production. It would bang out pens all day long. And then I can use the Nakamura for flashlights and bigger things. Right.
00:19:23
Speaker
And then... Smaller machine, for sure. Yeah, I could fit it here. I don't think I'm fitting a 5-axis in these two shops even.
00:19:33
Speaker
Although the interesting advantage with a third-party aftermarket automation system is you can split up the capital and you can add the real estate part of the automation you can do later in the new shop. And with these parts as small as yours, John, like the Matsura I know comes with a
00:19:57
Speaker
the table that you would get if you're going to add on automation later, it's a quick change zero point system already. So you can actually load up the tombstones offline. And you could have a sneaker net pallet system, right? Which is manually like loading them in? Yes, manually switch out pallets. Yep.
00:20:19
Speaker
doesn't do much for overnight production, but still, you could spend a lot on time for 10 hours, maybe even 12 hours a day could be pretty darn good. That's a good point. So much to think about. Yeah. I will say this, I'm very, very glad that I bought the TR200Y for the Haas. I was lukewarm on it at one point and I wasn't sure, but my confidence that I've gained of actually having time running it
00:20:46
Speaker
is was, we're actually editing a bunch of the videos that we filmed on it was absolutely priceless. Like, yeah, to look at a, uh, you know, to look at my, uh, you know, if I had a boss or somebody to look at them and say, I have run all of these five axis parts. I know what it's like. It was totally different than, Oh, I think I understand it. I've camped them up. I think, you know what I mean? Right. Right.
00:21:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I haven't done any five axis work. I've done some four axis simultaneous on the lathe. And even that was a stretch for me at the time. A couple months ago when I got into the pens, I was like, this is really cool stuff. Right, right. But you're much more confident, I'm sure, tackling because you've been through that. Sure, yep, yep. And you step your way up, right? You progress. Right. Speaking of IMTS, we should mention that John and I will be in Chicago on Sunday.
Manufacturing Entrepreneurship Summit Preview
00:21:42
Speaker
September 9th, which is the day before IMTS starts. This is sort of kind of the version of our NYC CNC open house, but we're calling it the Manufacturing Entrepreneurship Summit. It's a pretty amazing incubator slash maker space slash innovation hub called M Hub, right downtown Chicago, 22,000 square feet, one of the most amazing facilities I've ever been in.
00:22:08
Speaker
And we're doing a afternoon and early evening, you know, manufacturing entrepreneurship event. So John's going to be running a workshop on sort of his world of knife making and everything associated with small product. I'm not even sure what on your have you thought more about what you're going to go into bits and pieces here and there. Pretty much exactly what you said. Just, yeah, my world of manufacturing and how I do things and, you know, how we make the products and how we come up with new stuff.
00:22:35
Speaker
Awesome. So we'll throw a link in the podcast description. We are capping registration. We just crossed 300. Lots of cool people are going to be there. Jay Pearson is doing a clinic as well on lean and shop production. The founder, I believe the founder of Inventables, Zach Kaplan is talking about bringing turning your hobby into a business.
00:22:57
Speaker
Folks from Autodesk, they're going to be talking about work holding, fixturing the Autodesk HSM and Fusion 360 product demos, lessons, lots of good stuff. Yes, that's going to be so awesome. I'm trying to get, Tormach is going to be there as well. I'm trying to get them to, I don't think they're going to be able to bring the MX machine because I think it's going to be at IMTS, but I'm actually really excited. They knock on wood, will have that new MX machine actually in the wild now.
00:23:27
Speaker
excellent. And that does have, it has actual clear path motors on it, right? I 90 hours has clear path motors. I can't, um, I don't know if they've like finally checked the box on those as the long-term servo solution. Um, but it's, it is servos. It's fast. It's got a spindle encoder, rigid tapping BT 30 spindle, um, lots of little more wide travel on the 1100. So lots of, um,
00:23:54
Speaker
both legit upgrades, but also kind of quality of life. Nice improvement. That's awesome. Yeah. I can't wait to see it at IMTS. Yeah. They're actually doing the, they're sharing a booth with AB tools. Okay. Excellent. Yeah. Last, last two years ago we had a fun little impromptu meetup at a AB tools booth.
Task Management and Prioritization Methods
00:24:16
Speaker
Remember that? Yeah. That was cool.
00:24:20
Speaker
Man, I can't believe it's only a month away. Yeah. Okay. I know. So you said you had something to talk about? That was it. Was the dreaming versus planning? Yep. Yep.
00:24:33
Speaker
It's not irresponsible whatsoever. No. Not at all. It's just kind of a little slap in the face, like, no, it's not dreaming. Like, this is possible. This is totally going to happen. If this was me, you know, eight years ago, yeah, I'd probably be dreaming, even though it, you know, eventually did materialize. Right. Because I made it happen because I intend to be so, you know, like you said.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah. The powers of, so if you want to get there, I just, I can't emphasize this enough. There's so many different ways of looking at the power of doing things in small doses over time, but like, yes, my wife and I are really trying to think about, um,
00:25:11
Speaker
you know, saving up for that machine. So it's kind of like, hey, every day, every week trying to take out, and I'm a big fan of just like actually those ASPs, automatic savings plans, like get the money out of here so you don't even see it. And then that daily focus thing, John, I keep wondering like, is this something that's going to kind of fade away? Because I've gone through
00:25:32
Speaker
You know, so many different little things over the time of Excel files and notepads and to do this and they all kind of ebb and flow. But this thing, this thing's got legs. I really like it. Excellent. And I've also been on a lot of different task planning routes and most of them end up just just becoming a list of like a place to write stuff down and then forget about it.
00:25:55
Speaker
Like releasing it out of my brain and onto a piece of paper or onto an online system is almost good enough and that it feels almost done, you know, because it's like I don't have to think about it anymore. But the problem is I don't think about it anymore and it never gets done. But I've realized lately, especially, I've got so many things on the go at one time, so many things I need to do, so many things that I forget to do that are important. Like, you know, we've got a bunch of material coming from our processor company and
00:26:24
Speaker
I have to get back to her about how they're going to ship it, things like that. I forget to do it. But anyway, so I started a new little section of my Trello account. Trello is like a list making app basically, which I use and love all the time.
00:26:43
Speaker
need to do now, want to do now, and need to do later and want to do later. So I've got four little sections. And it's really nice to be able to move things around, okay, that's actually a want. I actually want to 3D print this thing, but it's not that critically important. But the things on my need to do now list, it just focuses me. Like you said, it's got that little nudge that says this actually has to get done and you really should be doing this first in the day. And then if you have time for anything else afterwards, go ahead.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah. When did, is that what you have been doing? I started about a week ago and it's been really nice because I look back on the list every now and then as I want to add something else to my want list and I go, oh crap, I got, there's still stuff on my need list. I really, I'm going to do that now.
00:27:30
Speaker
So I couldn't make that work. And I hope you do. I did it in my Google Sheets Excel file that I kind of always keep open. It has the podcast topics I want to talk to you about and stuff like that. And I have the long term, medium term, focus on, must do today columns, very similar to yours. And I just find that I don't keep track with it and I wouldn't move stuff back and forth. And you get tired.
00:27:58
Speaker
something in the medium list that I don't even care about or happen and it just becomes stale and just... So, I'm not... I just... I don't know. Don't know what to say.
00:28:15
Speaker
it's surprisingly hard to find a system that works for you, for each person. You know what I mean? Because you hear about these things and you've got a brain dump file and everything in your head should go onto it and then it should be sorted into all these categories and stuff. But it doesn't work for me because once it's out of my head, I don't care about it as much, even if it is important. So I almost need a thing to tell me like, you have to do this right now because you said so.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah. Right. You, you need that kind of level of importance or, or like you said, I mean, to some extent, this is just going to be a form of, of, of, uh, supporting the people around you to get involved in being able to delegate this stuff to them. Yeah. Period. Like I think that idea of Aaron getting involved with some of that stuff or somebody would could be great.
ERP Systems: Challenges and Benefits
00:29:05
Speaker
Yepers. So, so can we talk about ERP again?
00:29:10
Speaker
Sure. We had a really good debate over text with some like that group of WhatsApp chat about, you know, what you want to ERP to do and when do you get involved in it? Do you so you you are now way more intimately experienced? Do you wish you had done it sooner? Are you glad that you guys were as lean as you are going into it? Has that helped you? Hmm.
00:29:40
Speaker
It's a lot to learn and it's a lot to input. And I'm glad that I'm at the point in my business now where I am slightly more removed from day to day, so I could take the many, many hours it took, dozens of hours to really work on this.
00:29:56
Speaker
Had I attempted this two years ago, I would not have kept it up. I wouldn't have. Oh, really? Yeah, I just didn't have the time. I didn't have the focus. The cost would have been an issue. And even the perceived need and desire wasn't there. But now, as we're trying to grow in e-myth this business, it becomes painfully clear. I just put a bunch of stuff into it yesterday. I'm just giddy and glad that I can
00:30:24
Speaker
you know, take pictures of my coolant filters and link them to McMaster car and have a place to put it so that everybody in the shop now has access to where those filters are, how many we have in the shop, where to get them, how much they are and where you can get backups locally.
00:30:41
Speaker
because I had to run, like, you know the O-ring at the top of these filters? Sky did a filter change over the weekend and he put it back together and he's like, okay, let's test it out. And it leaks like crazy because the O-ring expanded so much that it like kinked itself upon re-installation. And so I couldn't find any at the hardware store. And then I had to go to like an O-ring specialty store.
00:31:09
Speaker
that totally had them. But, you know, it was a bit of running around, not knowing exactly what size to get and all that, but now I've got all that system into Pro Shop. It's just nice. So, yeah, I was gonna ask, did you focus, like, say, we're going to do this ERP for the Norseman and only the Norseman for now, or have you done it from a much more broad-based Grimsman knives standpoint?
00:31:33
Speaker
Good question. The way it's set up, it makes perfect sense for lathe parts, so I've put a lot of lathe parts into it. When it comes to the way that we run multi-part palettes and fixtures, it gets a lot more confusing as to how
00:31:50
Speaker
how you organize families of parts and families that get machined on the machine at the same time. The default method is for like one piece flow production, like you're making a bunch of these in a row or something like that. But you start to get a bunch of parts on the table and it just gets a little bit more confusing. But that's something I'm working on right now is how to utilize ProShop to integrate to that kind of workflow.
00:32:16
Speaker
So it works for lathe, not because it's a lathe, but just because a lathe only makes one at a time? Yes. On the lathe, I'm making a screw right now, so let's track that job. Okay. You know, one part per cycle, things like that. So I can have a part file on Pro Shop that's got my screw, it's got all the dimensions, all the specs, all the setup notes and everything like that, the cycle times, the tools required, and I can time track that job.
00:32:43
Speaker
if I choose to. But with, you know, a pallet of Norseman parts, there's, I don't even know, 12 parts more on the fixture and they're all different. So they're all different parts, but they're run at the same time. So do you make a part assembly and do you track that? But we're getting there. That's just a little challenge I'm working on right now. It's so funny. I think my idea of an ERP is so different than yours.
00:33:10
Speaker
It's just different. Do you repost out of Fusion every time you run, or do you actually save gcode?
00:33:23
Speaker
I saved G-code on the machines, for sure. You do? OK. Yeah. So you could put the G-code in the ERP, the set of sheets, the tooling notes, and then nobody even needs Fusion. They could literally run jobs out of the ERP. Yes. Exactly. Although we tend to keep the codes on the machine at all times anyway. OK. Given memory constraints of FANUC sometimes. Right. OK.
00:33:52
Speaker
So and so did you pay them to set up anything initially or did they literally like did you send you a setup at exe file and it was a way John Grimso goes it's online login So it's oh, it's cloud. It's cloud-based. They can also make it locally based if you're you know scared of cloud So you have it on your own internal server? We've got a cloud-based and it's it's awesome so then yes, they give you a basic login information for you and all your employees and then you start training and
00:34:23
Speaker
Okay, so you're doing it with them. So about starting, like what was the first thing you did? Literally the first thing you... First thing I did after, you know, massive amounts of research and watching all their stuff, once they gave me access to their demo account, which is nice because it's like, it's decked out. It's, you know, it's from their old shops. You see setup sheets, you see time tracking information, you see vendors and clients and all this stuff, and you kind of see how they set it up. So I just went digging deep into that.
00:34:49
Speaker
And then they also set up their training document, which you can look ahead on, which I did. And it's like a setup sheet basically, but it's 90 steps or whatever and I just started digging through that. And it starts out with simple stuff like how to clock in for the day and how to time track against the job and how to create a work order and all this stuff.
00:35:12
Speaker
Okay, so it's almost like you started with an existing machine shop template. Yeah, which is nice, right? Sure, sure. Although it kind of automatically frames you to their way of thinking. You know what I mean? Like there's different ways to run a business and set up Pro Shop and things like that, but it's good. Cool. Interesting. But yeah, I think your way of thinking of it is much like I want to track operations and that's kind of all I want to track. Whereas I think you're thinking it needs to be, describe what you want it for.
00:35:43
Speaker
Well, for sure. I would emphasize I've got it. I'm keeping an open mind, but my thought with an ERP is it becomes, you know, the backbone of the business. So it's going to handle things like probably accounting. Um, it's going to handle HR.
00:36:02
Speaker
potentially payroll or employee type tracking stuff. Procurement is a huge thing, no question about it. Inventory, time, but see the thing is I think when it's well done, and the word elegant is a word that I like, then everything talks to each other. You inevitably will have to have sort of third party integration and things talking to each other, but
00:36:27
Speaker
The idea of having to do daily or weekly or monthly reconciliations between accounts. So for example, if your web store or your web presence is not hooked up to your ERP, then you basically don't, you have broken inventory. And it depends if you're a low volume business, it may not be a big deal to reconcile. But I have a friend with an ERP who's really, I think, struggling because the ERP does talk to
00:36:53
Speaker
web store but they're growing their distributor business and that's very disruptive to how they track inventory and kind of log orders and there's no elegant way to solve that right now and it was unanticipated. So for me I want something that's as potentially comprehensive as need be which is what has led me to think about the more robust broad-based business ERP solutions.
00:37:15
Speaker
I'm not focused on a job shop ERP system that focuses on things that are super specific to machining because most ERPs are in fact I think all ERPs are going to have some form of the ability to run manufacturing or production or assembly type stuff. That stuff is actually relatively easy to do and I want something that's going to tie in with
00:37:39
Speaker
I want our marketing plug-in or our marketing aspect of our ERP to help us do AB testing or our mail list that ties into tracking sales, which ties into the AdWords and Google Analytics and keyword campaigns, all that rich stuff. I get that. That makes sense from your point. Although all that is honestly stuff I'm not interested in.
00:38:06
Speaker
No, it's hilariously perfect, right? It's awesome. I will say, I'm surprised at how complex and integral the manufacturing side of ProShop is. There's a lot more to it than I ever would have expected could be put into the data of running parts. As you're going through it all, you're like, yeah, I do do that. And yeah, I know that.
00:38:31
Speaker
As the guy who designs programs and sets up and machines every job, there's so much you take for granted. But once you put it into a system like this, where I could just literally give it to Sky and he could figure it out just by reading the setup sheet, then it becomes clear that this is an excellent way to run a business.
00:38:54
Speaker
I can vividly remember thinking that it is crazy to think about a world in which you program a part. I know. But you never meet the person that may run it. You never see the machine. You may not be in the same zip code. That to me was just mind blowing.
00:39:15
Speaker
only since integrating ProShop in the past few months have I finally started to get over that hurdle. But even four months ago, you know, I visited Angelo's old work, you know, 100 employee aerospace shop. And he's like, yeah, this is a programming department.
00:39:30
Speaker
And these guys program all the jobs and then the machinists make it. And usually the programmer was good enough to go and like run the first job and set it up. So that was, you know, that's aerospace. That's a cool way to do it. But just the concept of having guys on their computers that push code forward to the machines and the machinist just pushes go is like mind boggling crazy nuts.
Remote Machinery Operation Challenges
00:39:51
Speaker
I still have trouble with that. But now that I see how defined you can make it in Pro Shop, it's possible. Like, I could actually do that here. I could design and program something and give it to Angelo to run and be like, yeah, it should work. Just, you know, ease your way into it and it should be fine.
00:40:07
Speaker
But we're almost failing our own e-myth, you know, uh, prophecies, which is we should be treating things as if we're kind of in an org chart. And the, the John Grimsmo that is a freaking cam expert is kind of different than the John Grimsmo that can set up the machine, which is different than the John Grimsmo that can just push cycle start on the second part. Right. Um, yeah, it just is, but it's fun. It's fun. I love this business.
00:40:35
Speaker
All right. Worst thing that happened this week for me, two bad things. One is we crashed the Haas. Um, it was, this was on Instagram. Um, and it's so funny. I did like a month worth of five axis work. Yeah. Really, really risky to me, risky parts, gauge links and complex linking moves and so forth. Got along fine.
00:40:58
Speaker
set up that injection mold to ream a hole and put the reamer in, check the runout, it was good to go, and hit cycle start, checked my distance to go, which is kind of the sanity check for your Z heights, looked okay, and
00:41:18
Speaker
We bought a Harvey reamer and it was, you only have so much, you know, so much tool length and I was really cutting it close, but close is okay. Anyway, it ends up that the former tool number six was apparently within about a quarter inch of the reamer gauge length because distance to go looked okay. I probably should have been paying closer attention is the honest answer, but it didn't look an inch or two off.
00:41:42
Speaker
And so I rubbed a Maritool ER16M nut into the injection mold. Very much, I would call it a light crash. I was not happy, but I honestly don't think it's that much different. The machine was rotating. I hit feed hold within one second. Probably not that much different than running a big one or two inch, huge reel, really hard machine.
00:42:11
Speaker
Yeah. You mean you forgot to touch it off? Correct. Yeah. Is that the first kind of Z-crash you've done? Yep.
00:42:20
Speaker
Oh, you're not trying hard enough. I've probably done a dozen. Really? Yeah. Oh, man. I'm not proud of that, but it's true. We screwed up a Z height on a part once. We touched off on the bottom of the part and didn't override or adjust the Z value. And so we ended up pushing a face mill into the side of the part. But that's not a big deal because it just throws the part out of the place. Yeah.
00:42:46
Speaker
So you've actually pushed your spindle nose or your tool face into parts before? Oh yeah. A lot of times it's because the stick out is not long enough. And I don't always model up.
00:43:02
Speaker
you know, the tool stick out in the shank and all that. I should, but it doesn't happen for production because I've got it all dialed, but it happens when I'm making a fixture and I have to machine a pocket one inch deep and there's a clamp on the side of it. And then the tool has to stick out an inch and a half, but I didn't think about that. So a lot of times it's like that. Sometimes drills. What was it?
00:43:27
Speaker
I guess I've had drills slipping so they get shorter and shorter and then it keeps trying to drill deeper. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Things like that. Yeah. Well, anyways, we checked, we did a quick check and then we did a little bit more of an extensive check. Everything seems fine. Tolerance is a good, like it's not a big deal. It was more just a wake up call. That could have been a bad crash. Of course. Yeah. The second thing I think a Z crash is much more favorable than an XY crash.
Machine Crash Safety Comparisons
00:43:52
Speaker
Really? That's what I've heard.
00:43:55
Speaker
Well, I guess that makes sense because you can twist the head much more stable in Z. But Z is usually the problem with the Z crashes is it could have been a rapid move. Sure. Let's just not crash. How about that? Yeah. I know my mori has a overload detection. So a lot of times it just stops, spindle stops, everything like, you know, alarms out basically.
00:44:18
Speaker
And I don't know, honestly, what would happen there. I should probably ask my HFO or somebody in the know on the Haas control, because you'd like to think that there's some intelligence that's not going to keep RAM. I think there probably would, but I don't know.
00:44:33
Speaker
But that's actually a good segue to our second crash problem, which is we had a high feed mill. It's been running great for six months. We rotate the inserts and we become very, very specific on how we rotate inserts in the shop now for a different reason.
00:44:51
Speaker
So we actually right now are always having a second person check the inserts just because two is one, one is none. It's not something we'll do forever, but for now I want to isolate the risk of not having them seated correctly or the screws in tight. So we're just having a second set of eyes, not a big deal.
00:45:10
Speaker
But that case, in this case, has the byproduct of giving me conviction that the inserts weren't inserted incorrectly. They weren't brand new, but they were well within their operating time. And all of a sudden, the tool failed. So high-feed mills were learning as awesome as they are. When you're going 350 inches a minute in an insert, I assume the insert just cracks or explodes and thus is no longer there.
00:45:38
Speaker
you don't have time to hit feed hole to stop the machine. And we have since now finally really implemented the tool management stuff, which I'm sure will work when we're at slower feed rates. I don't know if it's going to catch at 350 inches a minute and still save that tool because the feed forward moves are just too fast. So you destroyed the tool? Yeah, destroyed a $200 soft body. Yeah.
00:46:08
Speaker
Like destroyed. Bummer. Right. So fun things. It's like, well, the advantages are real. I like the tool, but I don't want to keep blowing up bodies. Right. And it bothers me. I don't know why that's what I can't. Sure. That's what I like. So that's what we're working on now. Yeah.
00:46:30
Speaker
Interesting.
Handling Coolant Leaks and System Automation
00:46:31
Speaker
We had a pretty fun coolant leak last week. Oh, really? Yeah, just we have this like tub that we fill with pre-mixed coolant. Yeah, yeah. Like the, you know, several low percentage. And then we have a pump in their aquarium pump to add to the machines. And, you know, Angelo put the hose on and locked it and walked away and got busy with something else and forgot about it. And it started overfilling and he's like, John, help. Oh, no.
00:46:56
Speaker
And, you know, it's no big deal, but just a lot of kind of vacuuming up of coolant on the ground. Coincidentally, just a few weeks before, we actually bought an autofill that we just haven't installed it yet. So I'm super looking forward to getting the autofill hooked up. Just like a float valve that'll pull in and shut off?
00:47:17
Speaker
Yep. And it mixes the coolant for you too. Oh, sweet. It's got a proportioner on it too. Oh, that's awesome. Hook it up to a five gallon bucket. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. And we'll do a video on it once we get it up. Awesome. Yeah, it's about a thousand bucks made in Canada too, which was cool.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I would not buy, we bought the Haas Auto Coolant Refill option on our VM3. We did not buy it on the VF2, and I would not buy it going forward just because it's smarter to buy one of those proportional valves that you can hook up, wheel around. I mean, I don't think, I'm not sure we will ever have centralized coolant. So I'd much rather just be able to mix coolant where you need to and not have it be in the machine control and all that stuff.
00:48:02
Speaker
You learn. Cool. Yep. What's going on today?
Production Updates and Future Plans
00:48:08
Speaker
Today? Oh, so much stuff. A lot of just regular normal
00:48:14
Speaker
Busting out production kind of things. You're still working on Norseman parts Definitely not always and forever No, no, I had one I had one customer say they heard a rumor that they thought we were gonna stop making Norseman and I'm like Is that a joke hilarious? That even comes from I don't know that's some rumors are funny that way Do you think you'll get back to pens before IMTS? Well, that's a good question. I would like to think so I
00:48:44
Speaker
But no. Yeah, I'd like, well, it's possible. I mean, every week it's like next week. No, I write. And that's been like that for a long time, right? Right. But yeah, big hurdles. I just need to order material, which I'm going to work on today. And then we're almost ahead on all the knife parts for the lathe. And then we get the lathe back for pen stuff. Did you end up machining Norseman Palace? I took your advice. Oh, you had Amish makeup?
00:49:19
Speaker
Yeah, so we struck up an awesome, I'm super psyched to have and make them for us. It's awesome. Happy to pay them too, right? Right. I feel like that is fun. I think we may have said this, but that's a part I would not enjoy making on three axis and on five axis. It's like, bring it on. This is just positional, fun, cake, or yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I'm super looking forward to that. That's one of the things on my need to do list is I got to finalize and tweak the CAD file for them.
00:49:37
Speaker
Amish is working on it. That's awesome.
00:49:50
Speaker
Sweet. And then he should be good to go. Cool. We are finishing up some holes on this injection mold. The weird thing is I have no idea if it's going to work. We have to ship it to Utah, where the guy is. Give a big shout out to, I don't know if he wants to be named, his name's also John though. But what an awesome guy. He helped us design the injection mold. We found this die set. We'll do a whole video on it. But it's been really fun, if not a little frustrating on a couple of different things.
00:50:20
Speaker
And we've got a five axis part I'm gonna film today as well. And then I've got to get the trunnion off there because we've got some fixture plates orders we've got to kind of get back to focus on. And then for me on my, this here's a little cliffhanger teaser on my daily focus list, it's the sort of thing right now is can I kind of stop doing everything else for the next two months to focus on the new project?
00:50:50
Speaker
Like, and it's not, my wife is like, that's not a reasonable way to phrase it, but like, can you spend three days a week? Like shut it off, shut everything else off. All these distractions, all this little, like stuff you get yourself, you go down these rabbit holes and you know. Sure, of course. So. Once you get the five axis trunnion off, then you'll have a bit more freedom. That's exactly right. So that's, I am excited. I'm very excited. Nice. Excellent. Cool.
00:51:18
Speaker
See you next week. See you next week. All right. Take care, bud. Take care. Have a great day. You too. Bye.