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Business of Machining - Episode 114
246 Plays7 years ago
The Joint Open House - 8 Years Strong Grimsmo remembers how he felt when he first went to a trade show: out of place.
Tip from a veteran attendee: "Form relationships, ask questions, be direct, and make it happen." Not only was this event an internal pat on the back, you could say that Skye's big wish has been granted or rather, GRANITED.
After visiting Kern, Grimsmo's wheels are turning. It's just a matter of time before he figures out how to dress the lapping plate full Grimsmo style.
GOT INK? You know you're a machininst when the only tattoo you would ever consider is an inch to micron conversion table.
Mountains to Ski and Mountains of Footage The guys brought home TONS of footage from their Euro trip, so stay tuned for all of the awesome tours to come from Tornos, Hermle, Kern, and more!
TACrafted Tour - A bright young man with a bright future Click the image below to watch!
Sometimes what you're looking for might be right under your nose, or in Grimsmo's case, a block away. After a quick meeting with his realtor, he might have zeroed in on a potential new shop! When considering a larger space, it's important to allow for growth without over committing.
Saunders is a guest on the Welding Tips and Tricks Podcast While covering the subject of ROI, the importance of CASH FLOW BUDGETS or live budgeting becomes clear. Sure, numbers matter BUT there are many non-monetary ways in which a capital purchase can be justified.
CLICK HERE FOR THE WELDING TIPS AND TRICKS PODCAST
Spring Tease a.k.a Pending Summer The season change is welcome BUT that means rising temperatures are soon to follow. A/C is an expensive purchase but it's important for SMW to have a comfortable working environment for employees and trainees as well. It's up to Saunders to figure out how to minimize the operating costs while maximizing its benefit.
"Make it once, make it right, and then make it the best.
- Grimsmo
The SAGA pocket clips are the last component needed to make 100+ SWEET PENS!
SMW Workflow Woes Having all fixture plate models in a master file isn't ideal BUT neither is having an individual file for each. The possible solution might introduce more error.
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Transcript
Seasonal Changes and Networking
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 114. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders. Good morning, buddy. How are you? I'm good. Very good. How are you doing? Good. It's actually, I like the four seasons. I like winter, but it is nice now to have spring breaking. There's just kind of a, it just feels good to be out in the spring weather now.
00:00:26
Speaker
Yep. Oh, it absolutely does. We had a super warm day on the weekend and then a super cold Sunday and it's like, come on. It's like a tease. Right. When you go backward like that, I think it's always Chicago head snow. Yeah, exactly. Um, I do like the, the pending summer. How was, um, how was, what do you not see MTS, uh, your, Oh, the, the joint open house. Thank you.
00:00:56
Speaker
How's that? Yep, it was fantastic. We brought Aaron, Sky, Angelo, and a local friend of ours, Paul, from a company called Modus, and it was awesome. We all went and we went to all four locations, I think it was. It's silly how many people I know at an event like this.
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's good. It's amazing. Not only have I gone to this event for probably eight years now, but just other people in the industry. I know probably seven people from Renishaw, Canada.
00:01:39
Speaker
And it's just, it's sweet walking around the show. Cause I remember being at this show on the first second, third time and feeling like an absolute nobody, a loser don't belong. Um, don't know anybody don't belong here. You know, I've just got the mini mill in my garage and et cetera. And then, you know, it's nice. It's like a little pat on the back internally to, to feel recognized.
00:02:03
Speaker
I think it is another way of saying things take time in business.
Financial Insights on Podcast Appearance
00:02:12
Speaker
That's actually something I want to come back to because I did a guest podcast on the welding tips and tricks guys this past week. They were talking about some financial stuff like ROI, but the idea that in business, it takes time to get to know people. It takes time to build out a product. It takes time to earn money.
00:02:33
Speaker
It's not just that it takes time and it's not just the passage of time but when you first start your sort of staring into this of this like when you show up at a trade show as the newcomer or new to the industry or new to the show or new to the area. You don't have any at least i don't have that confidence or that path of certainty of like all all come back here numerous times and i'll get to know people i have conversations that will result in this not feeling alien.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's impossible to see that far in the future, even though it could only be a few years. But yeah, it's hard to imagine what that future
Vendor Visits and Trade Show Dynamics
00:03:12
Speaker
could look like. It's easy to look back and be like, oh, it makes sense. I just kept at it, kept doing it, but to look forward. And then here's a good point. I mean, I was going to say, what are we going to look at now if we look forward 5, 10 years?
00:03:27
Speaker
But I think the first five years of a business or first eight years or whatever are a lot different than the second eight years, you know, with the growth and the, yeah. Yeah. Agree. So who are the big or who are the four vendors? Who'd you swing by?
00:03:46
Speaker
Elliot Matsura, they sell Matsura, Fanak, not Dusan, Herco, and some other things. And then we went to DMG Mori, and then Pharo Technique, which sells Dusan, and Hartford, and some other stuff, Brother now. And then the last one was SST, and they sell Makino machines, both EDM, three axes, four axes, five axes. Got it. And each place has its own little vibe and kind of
00:04:17
Speaker
culture, if you will, gain different pieces of information from each piece, each place. So we spent, I mean, solid, probably 10 hour day just kind of walking around to each of the four places driving between them and absorbing as much as we could. And Sky had never been to a trade show like that before, a manufacturing trade show. So he was just on cloud nine the whole time. That's awesome.
Trade Show Size: Intimate vs. Large
00:04:43
Speaker
And I kept pushing them like, don't ask me that question. Go ask the apps guy. He's right there. Just go talk to him. Yeah, so it was really cool. Is it easier to learn or ask? Is that a better show than CMTS or IMTS because it's intimate or is it not as good because people don't bring out as much stuff and resources? Probably both answers. It is small and intimate.
00:05:12
Speaker
You form a tighter connection, but at the bigger shows too, I remember talking to a guy for an hour at least. As big as they are, it's not like the booth has 100 people in it at any one time. You know what I mean? Almost every booth at IMTS was not packed unless there was some event going on. So it's more up to you, up to the person to make the most of it and actually form those connections. But fun story.
00:05:41
Speaker
I was talking with, so at Elliott Metsura, they sell CMM machines as well. And I was talking with one of the, one of the visiting CMM experts. He doesn't work there, but I forget exactly who or what he does. But he said, sometimes Elliott Metsura will trade in machines and you know, somebody will buy a new machine and you'd be like, but you got to take away my old crappy CMM that doesn't work anymore and dispose of it for me. So I heard a rumor that there was a disposed of CMM in the back of the shop.
00:06:10
Speaker
where they threw away all the electronics but kept the granite surface plate. And I'm like, I need that granite surface plate. So I started asking around. Yeah, so I asked around. I asked Ricardo, Tim, a bunch of other people. And eventually, we're like, OK, I've seen it.
00:06:27
Speaker
They're like, I know it's here somewhere, but it's the middle of a show. And yet Tim still took, you know, probably 20, 30 minutes to run around the show in the back rooms. I was going with him behind the curtain and stuff to, to find the surface plate. And then eventually we found it and I was like, okay, I need this. Let's, let's work out some arrangement where this gets to my shop. Um,
00:06:48
Speaker
And we did and it just got delivered yesterday and it's glorious. It's like, I don't know what it's two feet by three feet, two feet by three feet by five inches tall, four inch maybe. Sizable. Yeah. Yep. Really happy. We have a tiny little Shars one. Okay. But we needed a bigger one to zero the gauge on the lapping machine.
00:07:16
Speaker
Oh, of course. Well, that gauge is huge. Yeah, it's 24 inches. Yeah, exactly. Got it. Yeah. So, I mean, Sky's been asking for that with passion for a few months now because he needs it for the machine.
00:07:32
Speaker
But yeah, this was like perfect timing, perfect serendipity, and really glad we could make that work. And it just kind of shows to go you like form relationships, ask questions, be direct, make it happen, you know? Yeah, that's awesome. That's funny.
Learning and Knowledge Gaps in Manufacturing
00:07:47
Speaker
When we were at Kern, you were talking to them about how they dress their lapping
00:07:57
Speaker
plate, and they seem to have a much more casually dialed in answer than you had. Was there a takeaway from that? They did. I haven't deduced the takeaway. I think our plate composition is similar, but they use aluminum oxide grit, whereas we use diamond grit, and they work differently. I think that might be part of the difference.
00:08:26
Speaker
They were saying they hold much tighter tolerance and it lasts for like a month. It just seemed like one of those like, oh my God, pretty much, I'm totally wrong. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And they're holding plate flatness to microns, he said, like a few five microns or something. That's two tenths or four tenths. No, two tenths. Just check your tattoo. Ours is much more than that. Yeah. I swear, if I ever get a tattoo.
00:08:55
Speaker
I'm getting a tattoo. It's a micron conversion. Yes, exactly. I'm tired of forgetting this. Yeah, exactly. So there is a takeaway there. I feel like there was a bit of a language barrier between us and that guy, but he certainly knew what he was talking about. Yeah, that was cool. It's good to see stuff like that sometimes because ultimately I think you always
00:09:22
Speaker
We tend to limit ourselves to what we think is possible. That sounds like a super cliched answer, but even in business or in our own goals or life, you just tend to think, well, most people can only do this, so that's just what I should do. You need to keep that sense of naivety when you're young. I think it actually can be helpful, but then also now, it's like get outside of your comfort zone and realize, wait a minute here.
00:09:48
Speaker
There's a way to do this tenfold better than most people think. I found the guy who's doing it, but now I got to figure out how you get there. Yeah. Yeah. And it's sort of easy, you know, once you become an, air quote, expert at your field, it's sort of easy to be a little arrogant in your own head and go, okay, I've tried everything, I've figured it out. And then you go to somewhere like that, that it's like, I know nothing.
00:10:12
Speaker
That's good though. That's what is fun about the chance to try to get better. Exactly.
Video Content Creation and Community Feedback
00:10:21
Speaker
We've been going through all that footage. We've got, let's see here, we've already released the video on that fellow Theo shop, the younger fellow who had the basement shop, which was just so cool. And the response to that was really, really awesome as well. So I
00:10:39
Speaker
that he has a bright future ahead of him. I think he wasn't sure where he was going to take it. And that's, I don't want to, I don't want what we did like a touring with him to make him feel like he has more pressure on him. I don't think it directly would, but I think there's a balance to pursuing what you like, but also recognizing that you've got to have a good balance to keep that passion alive. That makes sense.
00:11:05
Speaker
And let's see, we've got Lauren's video and Stefan's video in the works. Those are both shop tours. And we just got a draft of the Hermele video going. And then I think we've still got the Kern and a bunch of other footage to get through. So it's been fun. It feels like it was a while back, right? It does, right? Two weeks or so? Yeah. Yeah, it does. Yeah, we've got
Exploring New Shop Spaces and Equipment
00:11:29
Speaker
I broke up the footage into basically one travel vlog, uh, one tornos video and maybe two or three current videos coming up. So I think we're at the point where tornos video is done. We're sending it to them probably today for review. Um, travel vlog is done. So we got to send the little short factory tours, the trailers, um, within that to the respective companies for review. And then, uh, and then all the current footage still has to be gone through. Sweet.
00:12:00
Speaker
Any update on the Tornos? You're just waiting for the- Tornos still looking like three weeks. Oh yeah, that's not that bad though. No, it's not. It's not that bad. Yeah, I'm just finalizing by the tooling that I want for it. Transformer is going to be coming soon. Bar feeder is going to come soon. And then machine comes. And honestly, three, four weeks is going to fly by in no time.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, for some reason, again, when I was thinking May, I wasn't really thinking about how quickly that's going to be here. Yeah. That thing is going to be... You posted that photo on Instagram. It's going to be a tighter fit than we thought? Yeah. Well, yeah. I laid it out on the floor and it'll fit, but coincidentally, I was looking at new shops yesterday. Okay.
00:12:53
Speaker
What did you learn? I spent two hours driving around every single industrial corner of the area just to kind of get a feel for what's out there. And there were some corners that I didn't know existed, kind of looking for those for lease by owner signs just that don't get listed on the commercial websites. And I learned that I
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, I wrote out a perfect wish list of everything I would want in the shop. And I learned that I'm definitely going to have to be flexible on that thing, on that list. You know, just various things.
00:13:27
Speaker
But then I went and saw my realtor who found us this place, talked to him for 20 minutes. And he was like, actually, we've got a unit in this building that we own next door. Can I show you? Really? I can show you. 8,000 square feet, offices up front. And it's solidly OK. It's not like, yes, I'll sign a right now dream kind of everything. But I'm considering it.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah. I think a lot of times shops aren't like machine tools. You got to make them what you want them to be. Yeah. There's things you can't change.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yeah, like there's lots you can't change. But when we moved into this place, it was it was a dump like it was gross and grimy and dark and nasty. But we we were young and, you know, had a vision and all that really took means a lot of work. But paint the walls white, paint the floors gray, put some brighter lights in and all of a sudden it's a brand new place. So I have to keep that in mind, obviously, with with another place. The good thing is it was
00:14:41
Speaker
I mean, it was dusty, but it was clean. Like it had never seen industry before. It's basically just, I think it was a packaging house for a big company at one point. So it, it's all action, but, but not like oil gross machines, heavy cracked concrete kind of stuff. Yeah. It's actually kind of nice. Give it a little spit and polish and some paint. Um, might be pretty darn nice. It's literally in the same like industrial, it's like you get to walk there.
00:15:08
Speaker
It's one block away, like one industrial block away. Could you drive a machine over, just keep the machine on the forklift? Is it that close? Probably not. No. Okay. But same commute.
00:15:23
Speaker
And it's for rent or it's available? Yes. Yeah, for lease. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's occupied right now, but he basically said they're just parking until we have somebody else. Oh, interesting. They're just using it for storage. Got it. Yeah, nobody's actively using it, so.
00:15:42
Speaker
Okay. Be careful with that. Just not to be the Debbie Downer, but one of our friends in Southern California was chomping at the bit to move into a space and there was a, I think it was like an old printing press. And this was a more, this was a more
00:16:01
Speaker
people were at odds, like the landlord wanted to get the space, the old tenant was being difficult, I think there were some lawyers involved, and this old printing press held up the space for months to get it out of there. You're just thinking to yourself, this is a massive inefficiency and injustice to the world, because everybody wants this to happen, and just the stubbornness of friction is causing it to not happen, and you're just...
00:16:28
Speaker
Unbelievable. Anyway, is that not your best option? Assuming you need to – is it too much space? Yeah. It might be too much space. I'll have to actually think about it. Like it was full of
00:16:44
Speaker
racks and racks of stuff. Um, but I'll have to think about it, like maybe draw it up in fusion and put some machines in it and just see what it might be a lot of space, but give us room to do activities and stuff. Yeah. It's funny. We, we have, um,
00:17:05
Speaker
I've been, I've stalled on my purge. I have a bunch of stuff like in a bay ready to either sell or get rid of or give away or that kind of thing. But I haven't, I've been putting it off. I felt I just want to keep doing other stuff, which is not good. I want to, I want to get that done. But we are, so our shop bay is 4,000 square feet. The first bay is 3,000 square feet. And then we have the office area.
00:17:28
Speaker
Julie is the only person that's now using the office area. We use it for our training classes as well, but Julie's the only one up there. Then basically the whole back half of the 4,000 square foot bay is empty. In the 3,000 square foot bay, you have our forklift and raw material and our laser and plasma. We have stuff in there, but it's not
00:17:52
Speaker
It's not high dollar space. It's not, we're not pushing ourselves to be efficient with it. And it's not, it's not mission critical in terms of how it's laid out and used. So it's funny because really we're in like, I don't know what you want to think of it, but somewhere between three and four, 5,000, maybe three, four, maybe 5,000 square feet is all we're using right now. Yeah. Out of the seven. Seven ish. Yeah. Of warehouse space. Yeah. Right.
00:18:21
Speaker
Yeah, things I would like to do is I would like to build a tumbling room and also a grinding room. So all the loud stuff goes in one room, all the dirty stuff goes in another room and then just basically put up walls within the warehouse. I don't think that would be too difficult. And that way the machine shop can stay clean and not just dusty and grinding dust all the time because, you know, we do a lot of that.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense.
Cash Flow Management and Equipment ROI
00:18:52
Speaker
Other than adding some sort of a five-axis slash automation, is there anything else that's on your sort of like realistic business plan reach list for equipment or desire?
00:19:08
Speaker
Within whatever time period, a second Swiss lathe might not be a bad idea, depending on how this works out. So that's in our sights. I definitely need some sort of 3-axis mill. I was thinking hard about building a really nice router, like with the Toolchanger BT30, had that all planned out. And then just this weekend, actually, a mutual friend of ours
00:19:37
Speaker
offered two kind of old, probably like early 2000s, Yumak machines, which is a Taiwanese maker that there's not a lot of information out there, but two older three axis mills, 30,000 RPM HSK spindles. You said they're actually really nice tool changer and everything for a absolute steal. These are not radical. It's like a VF2.
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, assuming that you didn't work, holy cow. Yeah, so that's very, very tempting. If I had place to put them, I would take them. Yeah, for sure. What's the timing? It seems like this is all kind of just going to unfold quickly. I mean, I feel like there's a decent chance that- I agree. By June 1st, you could have keys to a new place or something like that.
00:20:30
Speaker
Right. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So that's the other consideration is, go ahead. Oh, a second Swiss, those nest together quite well. Right. So that doesn't have much space and adding a small call it a robo drill for the sake of the argument, adding that's not a lot of space and then adding the whatever you're going to call it the ma'am or that type of machine five axis plus some a row or automation is not also it's big, but it's not gargantuan. I mean, I don't think
00:21:01
Speaker
So instead of talking about real estate, you want to allow for the growth but not over commit. I guess the question is, would they subdivide or what's the rent? No. Well, not in this place. I don't know what the rent is yet. I only spent about 10 minutes with the guy and then he had to go. Got him.
00:21:20
Speaker
But yeah, definitely needs further thinking. And if I was pressured to make a decision today, it would totally work. It's a totally workable space. Landlords don't always like this. It's got to be written into the lease. But you could also subdivide it yourself and sublet part of it. Not saying it's a good idea, you effectively become a mini landlord.
00:21:47
Speaker
And there's practical issues about safety, security, sharing a bathroom, sharing an entrance. But I'll tell you, that was the first thing I thought when I found our shop was, it was simply, how do I make this work? Because it did make sense. It was more than a space than I thought we needed. And so you start thinking about, hey, let's put this plan together.
00:22:12
Speaker
which is a good segue to what we were talking about with the welding guys. They wanted to talk about ROI. I don't think the podcast, their podcast will be out by the time this episode of bomb airs, but if folks are interested in listening, I'm guessing sometime in the next few weeks, it's the Welding Tips and Tricks podcast with the Roy Cromer and Jonathan Lewis and Jody Collier, I think is his last name. And it was a really good conversation just talking about if you are thinking about making
00:22:42
Speaker
a capital purchase, meaning a substantial purchase, like a machine tool or for their case, like a welder, but something that's usually tens of thousands of dollars and up, maybe five or 10 grand, but not so much as relevant to the small tools. Although that was also their question, was how do you think about the return on investment of buying a $300 hand tool or a small type of tool or measuring tool, whatever that example may be.
00:23:13
Speaker
I like looking at that analysis. I like looking at that math. We have a couple of videos on ROI and budgeting. I don't tend to worry as much about it on the small stuff because I think of that stuff as more just cost of doing business and we do account for it.
00:23:29
Speaker
But what I think about in terms of the ROI has to do with how can I bring in an income producing piece of equipment, something that actually makes us money, like your Swiss lathe or your lapping machine, right? And how do you look at what's the payback? What's the cost of ownership? What problems is this solving for me? Some of them are financial. Some of them are as silly as, hey, by buying this machine and bringing it in-house, I don't have to go through the substantial cost of the
00:23:57
Speaker
packaging up, shipping, and then waiting, and then receiving back, and then unpacking, and then QC. That's like five steps. It's a pain in the butt. Yeah. And managing a supplier and quality control and stuff. Yeah. Sure. Right. So it's not just a numbers game, because at the end of the day, if you have a product or you have a profitable job shop, you know what you're doing. You've got the ability to bring work in.
00:24:26
Speaker
is above market for what I've seen. In other words, again, you've got to have the work or the product, but the ability to say buy a machine and pay it off in a couple of years, that ends up being a way higher ROI than you would get with other quote unquote investments out there. There's a lot of risk to it too. For sure. And work of course, but yes, I agree. So I think the bigger takeaway for me is
00:24:54
Speaker
The bigger takeaway to talk about is how important cash flow budgets are or cash flow forecasts. Don't freak out about that. It's not something that's any harder than I started ours maybe six months ago.
00:25:11
Speaker
I started doing it again because I was really trying to look at what the next year was going to look like. And it's really simple. Just start with a couple of rows in Excel or Google Sheets and start looking at what do you sell or what do you make and how lumpy or consistent is that and go out six months, not really any further than that. And then go down below and just say, okay, well, I know I'm going to owe payroll. I know I'm going to owe insurance. I know I'm going to owe taxes or this sort of that and do it correctly. So if you owe taxes in March,
00:25:40
Speaker
don't spread it out evenly over the six months. Just say, hey, this is when I owe the $3,000 in taxes. Right. This much. Yep. And literally, it is simple to do, but it takes time. It's only as good as the effort you put into it. And it's been really, really helpful because if you want to think about how risky is it for you to consume another machine or to buy something else, what do the payments look like? Or if you want to get to a down payment or even a cash payment for a machine, how are you going to get there? This is the answer to that.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yep. And then you can also forecast what the potential extra revenue of that machine is. Be realistic, be conservative. But then you can see, well, you know, if we get the Swiss lady, then we start pumping out pens. We can pump out X many pens a week, a month, et cetera. And you conservatively dump that in and you go, oh yeah, this makes perfect sense.
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah. And I updated. The big difference is we sort of do actual operating budgets in terms of revenue and expenses for the business that are more accounting-style budgets. But I check those like three times, four times a year. Whereas the cash flow budget, every month, the one column gets deleted, you update the cash balance or the loan balance or whatever, and it gets rolled forward. So it's actually very much a live budget.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah, we do something like that similar with Barry handling that now and it's amazing how much control you feel you have now on everything like years ago. I didn't have that. It's just kind of like, okay, I got the Maury payment coming out, I got rent coming up, I got some credit card payments, pay myself a little bit. I think that's it, right? Yeah, okay. It's not good. Right.
00:27:24
Speaker
Well, it's key from a risk standpoint because my answer, what I try to do is make sure that even if you buy that Swiss lathe, let's say you don't, let's say pens flop and they're not going to flop, but let's say they flop or let's say it takes you way longer to get them to market. Well, what's the cushion? Can I make those payments with other machine tool work? That's the situation you really want to be in, is have that safety net.
00:27:54
Speaker
Yep, exactly. Or if like us, we're looking at a new shop, you need not only probably first and last payment, but any renovations we need to do or convince the landlord to do them. That's cash, moving expenses, cash that's going to have to be spent, plunk that into, you know,
00:28:11
Speaker
June 30th or whatever date you want and say, okay, we need enough cushion and float just so that this isn't a worry. If we can't do it, then we have to postpone or figure out some way to bring in that much more cash between now and then. Right. It's good for making goals too. Yeah, totally is. It's like a sanity check. Is this realistic?
00:28:36
Speaker
goal right now is, and I'm going to do it because I'm going to do it, but is to put an air conditioning unit in our 4,000 square
Shop Efficiency: Environment and Operations
00:28:47
Speaker
foot bay. Nice. You have a cost estimate for something like that? I do. And I got to give a shout out to, I think it's, I forget, I don't want to mispronounce it, it was Omid.
00:28:58
Speaker
It's been a while since we talked. Hold on, let me look it up. Omid, yes, thank you. It was Omid. He's a fan of the channel. He's actually Canadian, knows you as well. It used to be an HVAC engineer, I believe.
00:29:15
Speaker
I am humbled by how much knowledge and intelligence and sophistication there is in the world of mechanical cooling. It is mind-blowing when you start looking at some of the science behind it. It is far more than just what I think of, which is a freon and some pumps, and we just cool it off.
00:29:35
Speaker
I was really looking for the magic answer, and it just doesn't seem to exist. I was looking for, well, what if we do exchange in the air more, or fans, or swamp coolers, or portable units, or lots of different ways to either reduce the investment in the device or the operating costs. And the reality is, at one point, you just got to realize, no, you just need regular old mechanical cooling.
00:30:02
Speaker
We're going to do a unit that I think will also replace our corner gas heater, so it'll be one thing that does both gas and heating and cooling. We don't need to cool it that much.
00:30:18
Speaker
It gets to be about 83 degrees in the summer on the hottest days. I think bringing that down to high 70s, 77 even, with lower humidity, with some airflow from the big ass fan, I think that'll be a world of improvement.
00:30:35
Speaker
There's just no question. It's what I want. It's important to me. It's important to the comfort of working in the shop. It's important for the folks that are here for training classes. It's important for the condition of the machine tools, the quality of the parts, the consistency within the shop. Every single thing checks a yes, but it's expensive. It's going to be 15 to 20 grand.
00:30:56
Speaker
by the time you buy it and then I don't know what the operating costs are going to be yet. Those are so dependent on the outside temperature and how long you run it, but I'm hoping this is crazy. I'm hoping it's going to be 20 to 30 bucks a day. Um, so, you know, 600, a thousand bucks on the, on the, you know, hottest August, uh, you know, months or the day, the year.
00:31:24
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So it's only three or four months a year that it'll, it'll actually turn on maybe. Yeah.
00:31:31
Speaker
Yeah. We'll see. There's some interesting things like you can even just run it as an air exchanger fan and trying to do cooling it at night. So you actually buy yourself quite a few hours in the day before it gets really hot. So maybe you run it. It's cheaper sometimes to run stuff at night and it's cooler out. So you could cool the shop off from say 3 AM to 6 AM.
00:31:57
Speaker
and then let it just be the fan, say from 6 a.m. until 11 a.m. and then from 11 to 3, you got to run it again or something. We got to learn. It's not that I'm overthinking it. I'm trying to bootstrap it and say, okay, if I buy the system, is there a way to have it still make us happy if it's just too expensive to run all the time?
00:32:26
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, or like when I was in Pearson's shop, his old shop, I guess, he does not have air conditioning, but they basically work from like seven to three because it just gets so hot after three. And then he's like, after that, we just go home. That's an interesting point. I hadn't thought about that. See, that's what I struggle with because again,
00:32:47
Speaker
I don't think we'll do a formal second shift, but when I think about the spindles and real estate, the easiest way to grow that is not adding more of them, it's using them more. For sure. Having somebody start at six and then leave in the afternoon and then having somebody have started at noon, but leaving at 7 or 8 p.m. seems pretty compelling with some overlap.
00:33:16
Speaker
Like a little overlap swing shift kind of thing. We kind of do that. Like some of us come in at seven, some of us stay till seven, eight at night. So there's a bit of overlap, but they're different roles, different things in the company. I fully intend to run certain machines 24 seven. Yet I have no interest in a night shift or second or third shift or a weekend shift or anything like that. I want the machines to run 24 seven.
00:33:46
Speaker
Yeah, your parts lend themselves to that. You will do that, I guarantee you. Ours do not. Absolutely. Or at least the fixture plates don't. My advice is we could run those on an Aroa on a five axis for sure. We don't have the volume to support it right now though. What are you up to today?
Production Challenges and Solutions
00:34:10
Speaker
Making saga pocket clips. Oh, awesome. How are they going?
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah, they're going really good. I think I'm dialed. One little issue we're having, one of the dimensions is always like five thou too small, and it shouldn't be. And I'm like, what is happening? So I'm not sure exactly what the solution is there other than hacking it, but I don't like the sound of hacking it because something's wrong. So I just got to dial that in.
00:34:38
Speaker
But other than that, um, the clip is the last thing we have we need in order to make a hundred plus pens. We have everything else already made. So, uh, yeah, very excited to be at this point. Did you, any luck improving the cycle time? Not yet. Okay. I slowed it down.
00:34:59
Speaker
I was able to do that successfully. That's hilarious. That's okay. Better. Again, it's so hard. I say this because it's so hard. It's so much better.
00:35:11
Speaker
to make something right, even if it's slower, even if it costs a little bit more, because it's still done right. And you can then fix it later, you can then improve it later. And I, I say that out loud, because I am guilty of that. And we want it to be different than you want it to be done and ended perfect. And it takes effort to get there. Yep.
00:35:37
Speaker
Yep. It's like the first goal whenever I make something is just to make it. And then to make it right, no matter what it takes, how long, how long it takes, whatever. And then from there, you can shave time, you can shave cost, you can figure out the best way to do it. Yeah, so it's like make it once, make it right, and then make it the best. Yeah.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah, we're struggling with that. I don't know what the answer is. But because our fixture plates, each model has its own fusion file. And I don't see an easy way around that. You could have one fusion file that had every single different CAD model in it. That seems not
00:36:22
Speaker
That doesn't seem like it would work, but when we want to find an improvement or a change, let's say we want to change one of the profiles from machine comp to cutter comp. The best thing that we have right now is we have a master file
00:36:41
Speaker
that is never actually used to make a plate, but it's kind of where we, if we make a change, we make a change in the current, let's say we're making a Haas VF2 plate today. And we're like, you know what? If we run that end mill slower, faster, it's better. Well, we'll make it in the VF2 file and then we'll go back and we'll change it in the master file. But then
00:36:59
Speaker
That's good because it at least sort of creates at least a reference file. But whether that gets pushed out when you open up the next file, how do you check them? It's a workflow that is full of right for errors or misses and all that. And I don't know what the answer is. Yeah, like if you want to change the process, one end mill or one speeds and feeds, you have to open up every individual file and make sure to change it on all of those.
00:37:29
Speaker
But that's not even realistic. I mean, we probably have 45 files right now or models. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. It's one thing to change speeds and feeds because you can do that in your tool library, but to change strategy, tool path, function. Yeah. You can't even do that in the tool library. A bit deeper. Because remember the tool library is separate from the file. The way the fusion library works is when you
00:37:56
Speaker
pull a tool into your CAM operation, it kind of separates it from the library. So if you update in the library, you could repush it, but that would mean we do use different feeds and speeds with the same tools. And I think there's allegedly some changes coming in the tool library for that, but I'm not banking on that at the moment.
00:38:20
Speaker
We'll figure it out. Well, I don't know if we will or not. Keep pushing through. It's been bothering me though. It's bothering me because I want to be better and I don't know, but I want to use, I want to use technology and processes to make us better, not just brute force. And the quote work we're doing it now with having kind of the master reference file is kind of a brute force way, but we're not, there's no way of enforcing it. There's no way of checking it.
00:38:49
Speaker
Yeah. But even if you change one button click on the master reference file, how do you, you know, you go back to a fixture, you haven't made in four months.
Managing CAD and Tool Life in CAM Operations
00:39:00
Speaker
And what are you comparing line by line, the master reference file? There's no real way unless you kept, unless we had a word file or like a running list of changes that we made and the dates and then you compared it against the next time. Yeah. But like, this is just not, not realistic.
00:39:18
Speaker
And none of it's crazy critical. I mean, if it is crazy critical, well, we don't really have those kind of changes. But like this morning, I was thinking, hey, I actually would like to add a real quick Renishaw probing check. It's a relatively loose tolerance, but it's an easy thing to check. I just want to make sure a dimension is OK on one of the holes. Well, I don't have a way of doing that and pushing that across all those plates right now.
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah. The way to do it, I guess, would be to have one file with all of the plates in it. But even then, you would really need what I've asked for for a long time, which is CAM variables. So that instead of programming a feed rate as a nominal value, you program it as a variable that lets you share that feed rate across multiple. So I would literally call it, the variable would be called like
00:40:12
Speaker
seven flute half inch finisher feed per tooth. And then you can set that variable and call it anywhere you want. Yeah, that would be amazing. Doesn't necessarily solve cutter comp, not cutter comp, or lead in lead out or position or even the position of your probing hole. That's true. Would change based on the model. Yeah, that's true.
00:40:35
Speaker
But the way I might do it is kind of what you're suggesting. Cause I kind of like to throw everything in one file just so that it's all there, like all the similar components. Um, so like when we make a saga pen, there's, I don't know, eight machine components, everything is in one file. So that if I say I destroy one of my turning tools and I moved to a totally different style holder geometry, whatever, um,
00:41:02
Speaker
it just gets updated there. But that doesn't fully solve the problem. I mean, honestly, the other way to do this is to actually just reprogram each play each time you do them off of the master, which sounds crazy, but it wouldn't be that hard. True. There's a risk of
00:41:21
Speaker
There's a risk of operator mistake of just clicking the wrong hole or a wrong dimension or something, but it's probably a better workflow because then you just always have the master and you're always pushing from the master to the plate. True. I kind of like that idea. It's got its downsides for sure, but you'd basically duplicate the master and say, okay, now I'm making a Haas via four plate or whatever.
00:41:48
Speaker
And here's all the updated toolpaths. All I have to do is click the holes in the profile and the stock and run through a checklist. And then it should be good, but it is prone to error because just it is. It's untested. You don't have a lockdown code.
00:42:05
Speaker
We could run simulation that would check it. It could work for these because we don't have a lot of 2D features, so we don't have to click a lot of lines. You couldn't do this if you had to do a bunch of surface selections in containment zones because that would be, you'd spend all your time programming. Okay.
00:42:25
Speaker
Does it auto select all of your holes? It's pretty close. I mean, we have sketches to contain areas because what we do is we don't like on a VF2 fixture plate, there's over 900 holes. And the way the Haas Tool Life Management works, I think it's actually similar on many of the controllers is that
00:42:44
Speaker
it doesn't, it won't stop in the middle of a cam operation if you violate the tool life condition. So if there were only, if the, if pursuant to the controller, you said there's only, you can only tap 10 more holes and then that tool is expired. Well, if there's 900 holes, it'll start it and it'll do all 900. Then after 900, it'll say, Oh, by the way, during that you violated it. Yeah. So we break them up into batches. Um, that also lets us do QC as we progress through the plate and we can just
00:43:13
Speaker
just confirm things and check things. So that we could push through relatively easy. Well, yeah, you could parametrically do these sketch elections. You know, the whole boundaries. Say you have three quadrants. Every plate has three quadrants or whatever. Exactly. And that's just automatically updated. Yeah, that would work. Okay.
Conclusion and Next Steps
00:43:37
Speaker
Well, I got to run. I got my accountant showing up to go over some fun tax stuff. So I got to run.
00:43:44
Speaker
Yay. Have a good day, bud. I'll see you next week. You too. Take care. Bye.