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#369 Creativity vs Productivity
970 Plays7 months ago
TOPICS:
- Creativity vs productivity
- Saunders' Willemin is gone
- Project management
- Johnny 5 robot update
- BlackFox Machining box cutter clip
- Awkward DOITS phase
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Business of Machining'
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 369. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. And this is your weekly dose of manufacturing, I want to say intellect, but experience. Yeah.
Weekly Manufacturing Insights
00:00:15
Speaker
That, you know, we chat every week about our manufacturing businesses and the ups and downs and struggles and questions and challenges and joys and successes of running our budding businesses.
00:00:27
Speaker
Yes. What's going on in your head?
Creativity vs. Productivity
00:00:31
Speaker
What's good? What's bad? Oh, that's a fantastically phrased question. Um, I'm constantly jumping back and forth between wanting to be super creative and come up with new ideas and learn new things. And also like the guy that puts his head down and gets stuff done. And that process has been running through my head. Um,
00:00:55
Speaker
and like learning to be okay with it and learning to know which phase I'm in, which phase my brain is in, and like being okay with it and not lingering too long in like, I just want to be creative and learn all of the things and you know, research till 2 a.m. and you know, maybe apply it one day, maybe buy a bunch of stuff that I'll use or not, like be careful. But also the guy that you know, makes a plan, gets a plan, gets it done, prioritize and execute, and I can't be that guy all the time.
00:01:24
Speaker
and I can't be heading the clouds all the time. So I'm learning to observe which I am and how to maximize both because I think I need both to leverage my true potential. So I'm having fun kind of thinking through that kind of stuff. Yeah, I know I'm predisposed to passion things and probably not as much as you, like the chemistry stuff, the filtering
Prioritizing Tasks and Setting Goals
00:01:51
Speaker
stuff. Yeah, like I go deep.
00:01:52
Speaker
And part of it's the joy of life. But then I also look and realize like, I'd rather be good at
00:02:00
Speaker
one thing. I've kind of learned to do a better job at sitting on something for a couple of days and then just trying to decide, is that really, really, really, really, really what I want to be doing? And what am I, you know, being a little bit forceful, like, okay, so what am I not doing? And that was one of the reasons why it sort of said days off in the shop, which I come back to that. We're actually an awkward days off in the shop phase, but I'll talk about that. Definitely want to hear about that. Yeah.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, what's what's triggering this with you lately? Um, well part of the chemistry deep dive is do I really need like to know this much to like a part of it's the joy of life. Like you said, I truly enjoy the passion behind it, but I'm a very purpose driven
00:02:48
Speaker
researcher.
Purpose-Driven Research
00:02:49
Speaker
I don't know. I only want to know what I could possibly use in the future. I don't just want to know broad spectrum by everything. If I have an application, I want to know deep into that application so that I can hopefully apply it and make visible results. And yeah, so part of what's spurring it is I have deadlines and projects. I have a new knife that I'm developing that's slow going because it just is developing a new product, as you know.
00:03:18
Speaker
And when I find myself going too deep, I pull myself back on shouldn't you really be working on that more? Like, I can't work on 100%. My brain doesn't work that way. But like, a little bit more percent would probably be beneficial and like, you know, we have goals for the business and
00:03:35
Speaker
I have to push myself but not beat myself up and that's where I'm at. It's just you. I know we had this talk and it's apparently it's become a podcast, but it's just you, John, which is good because you don't owe it to anybody else
Self-Regulation and Accountability
00:03:50
Speaker
on the flip side. I do think it's
00:03:52
Speaker
One of the unforeseen major weaknesses of both your and my businesses is that we don't have people to tell us what to do. We don't have advisors or board of directors or a true level of accountability. And that means,
00:04:13
Speaker
I'm not saying that anybody should have told you to stop doing the chemistry filtration stuff, but like you sort of said, I wouldn't have been better to get integral. Yeah. I think in my world, I know you probably have some accountability from other people, wife, et cetera. I think in my company, I've got Eric, Angelo, Spencer, we're all top level people that do kind of hold me to the fire when I need to be.
00:04:40
Speaker
Really? Yeah, which is which is good. It's annoying, but it's it's good. It's needed. It's healthy. It's healthy. Exactly. And I think that's good. And it's it's still, you know, I'm still pretty freewheeling as I need to be, as long as I make progress and get my stuff done.
00:05:00
Speaker
But it's not like I'm beholden to them. It's not like they're my boss that directs me. But they definitely keep me in line, which is good. But it's also just like thinking about the integral
00:05:12
Speaker
If you're okay talking about this, like I assume it's John Grimson as the person, not as the company designing the integral right now. It's like basically just you. And it's not like you're building out Microsoft Teams or whatever project, whatever they used to use or use these days for like, okay, these four different people are gonna work on these different things. In 10 days, we're gonna have a meeting to see who's there. And there's some kind of peer pressure or expectations around it.
00:05:38
Speaker
I, it's funny because Spencer wants that badly. He wants like a plan, a direction so that just he can know what the flow is, when to expect sales, things like that. Um, Angela would love that too. I don't, I thought so much about this. I literally don't know how to do that well, but that doesn't mean not do it fair.
Are Deadlines Effective?
00:05:58
Speaker
I'm trying to come up with deadlines for myself, projects, milestones, things like that. I know what's left and I know what to tackle next, but as far as putting deadlines and timelines, I'm in the camp of deadlines are made up time frames that people stick to.
00:06:20
Speaker
They can be helpful, absolutely. The person coming up with that deadline might have internal or external reasons, but for the most part, it's like, yes, it'll be done by Monday. Why? Really? Well, because- It's not my strong suit. No, it's not. It's like either get that off your plate or yield to it. I don't know enough about this particular situation and so forth.
Project Management Techniques
00:06:45
Speaker
way in directly, but like if people that you respect in your company are saying they'd like it, that's to me the kind of like...
00:06:55
Speaker
I've started to appreciate and learned that that's as much as you're going to get to, this needs to flip and happen. And maybe that's not here. I may be exactly. But I've learned I've got to be more nuanced to say, oh, that's actually far more important than I'm realizing. And then, you know, you and I are totally in the camp of like goals or, you know, what's that sort of frick? Goals are stupid, but it's about steps you take to get to the goals. Well, that's what this is. Exactly.
00:07:19
Speaker
If you need a pivot done, break it down into seven steps. You could do that five seconds, Sean, 10 seconds, and then start assigning yourself those responsibilities for other people. Then don't do another project when that's on your first ... Which is pretty much where I'm at.
00:07:36
Speaker
not as effective at everything you just said, but it is what I'm doing, which is good. So I have
Collaborative Design and Engineering
00:07:42
Speaker
all the steps for every component left listed out. I know how to do it. I kind of know the order already, order of operations. Some major steps have to happen before others, and some are kind of self-isolated. So I'm leaving them till the end because they don't affect anything else. So I'm really trying to figure out which
00:08:01
Speaker
Which tasks of this project have to happen first because they relate to every other task? Yes. Tolerances and tolerance stack and parts that if I change this, it's going to affect the blade and the handle. So like nail this down first. So that's where we're at right now. Actually been working with our machinist Jeff Jeff to
00:08:25
Speaker
He's now making the button on our Swiss, which he programmed himself, which was awesome.
Machining Processes and Challenges
00:08:32
Speaker
And he's been, he's set it up. He fine-tuned it. He ran off brass test parts. And then when I came back, there were stainless test parts and they're like getting good. And I bought these CBN turning inserts for the dome of the button. And he started off on a regular insert and then he threw in the CBN and he's like, yeah, the results are better.
00:08:53
Speaker
I was like, what's the RA on that? He's like, I don't know how to use the profilometer yet, which is fine. He just never has before. I'm like, well, okay, Angela is going to teach you how to do that because that's a skill you're going to need. On that note, past few days, him and I have been working together on this button to dial in the tolerances and literally to invent the tolerance range.
00:09:18
Speaker
Because as the designer, test and tune is the only way I know how to do it. I can do it in the computer, but until you get mechanical parts putting together that have slop and tolerances, then you build it from there. That's been interesting, actually, because he'll run off some test parts, and then we'll put them together, and we'll talk about it, and we'll discuss.
00:09:40
Speaker
I'm obviously intimately aware of the design of the knife and the way the lock works and the way the detent, everything how it goes together. He's treading water trying to understand how it all works because as he makes a change, he doesn't know what it affects yet.
00:09:58
Speaker
Literally, after we hang up the podcast, I'm going to go down to our little conference lunchroom area. I'm going to plug in my computer to the TV, and Angelo, Jeff, and myself are going to sit down and do a design engineering piece because they've been asking for it for a while.
3D Printing in Design Adjustments
00:10:12
Speaker
It was like, no problem. We'll bust open CAD, and I will explain how it works technically to you guys, and then you'll see things and we'll work together.
00:10:21
Speaker
So yeah, that's been really good. The big weird thing though, which we saw yesterday is I made prototype buttons on the Willyman and he's now making them on the Swiss. Same model. They're different. How different? I don't know yet, but it's a button you push your finger on, so it's got a slight dome to it, a two inch radius dome. Like shallow, but it's noticeable.
00:10:47
Speaker
quick measuring and I need to measure more to confirm. It's supposed to be a two inch radius, the Willeman's making a one and a half inch radius, and the Swiss is making a two inch radius. I need more measuring to confirm these numbers, but something's different. Two inch radius across a tiny surface is not easy to measure though, right? Yeah, we used our optical comparator and we got eight results. Need more testing.
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah. And they look different. And we're like, well, which is right? Which do we want? I don't know yet. Did you ever turn one of these pre
Selecting New Machine Tools
00:11:23
Speaker
-Williman crash? That's a good question. I don't know. Exactly.
00:11:30
Speaker
Or have you made a simple part on the Wilhelmin just to see, okay, are we turning diameters correctly and everything else seems fine? Everything seems fine. I figured if it was a weird post thing, because that's what I wanted, like arcs can be posted as radius or IJK or lots of different ways to do it, but it makes perfect parts as far as I'm aware. Nothing is visibly weird. I would offer to test one for you, but we no longer have one.
00:11:59
Speaker
You are Wilhelmin-less. It's actually in our facility right now at the bay door, wrapped up truck comes, uh, well tomorrow morning for you and me yesterday morning for the listeners, but, but, but what do I look at that here? I see a door frame in a shop. You see a door frame. I see a sticker. That is not a door frame, John. That is the frame of a new four Oh eight MT.
00:12:29
Speaker
And Jim from Noblesville is over there at the factory right now. And he, I love him. He ripped the sander sticker off of his coffee mug and put it on the casting of our machine. He's like, the assembly guys are probably gonna flip and tear it off, but I'll see if I can get it to stick. And there's the majority of the guts. Whoa, that is so cool to see. And tool changer, I mean, it's all the same. Yeah, three layer tool changer.
00:12:57
Speaker
70s usually, they only bring them in 72. I'm sorry, I wasn't gonna. Yeah, the older ones are 48, right? I don't know if they could have been 72, but now, it was a line item, so I suppose I would have had the authority to strike that. And frankly, it's funny, we really don't need more than like, it's insane what you can do with like 20 tools, so 48. But
00:13:21
Speaker
On that type of a machine, there's no way I'm going to cut myself off of the legs to save. It's not a small amount of money, but it's just not how you're going to shortcut that machine. That is the machine. It's kind of like her current. You just keep adding tools too. Yeah. Choose well, but eventually you have a library of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 tools that can do everything, which is cool.
00:13:45
Speaker
Well, and like, look, I'm a risky, risk adverse guy. So it's kind of like, okay, fire sale, I get hit by the bus, you know, needs to actually help at this point. I think the company could run without me, which is great. But, um, you know, you sell that machine on the open market. What was someone's like, well, who, who is the turd that decided to option this with 28 tools? Exactly. Or didn't get the high accuracy option when everybody needs it. You know, there's so many things for older machines that, um,
00:14:13
Speaker
one of our buddies with an older Willerman is like, wait, it doesn't have that option? Oh, yeah. I wonder if you figured that out. I don't know if this works for me anymore. Like, that's the danger of buying a used machine. Yeah.
00:14:26
Speaker
But that said, when you're the guy writing the check, you can't check every option. Because as we learned hard eight years ago with our first big machine, it's like, oh, base machine's 100 grand. Wait, it's 170 out the door? No, you said it was 100. I can afford 100 barely. Everything's an option, right? Yeah, agree. Can we come back to project management, though?
00:14:54
Speaker
Yes. Did I mention Johnny Five last week on the podcast?
Reviving Past Projects
00:14:59
Speaker
I think so. I have a note in the last week's notes, but go for it again because I was going to ask you anyway.
00:15:04
Speaker
So this is great. Well, I'm going to caveat by saying that there's a chance I don't follow through being just transparent, but that's not my intent. And I've got a plan. And to talk very briefly about the backstory and the history, we had the chance to start building Johnny Five. We spent a couple of years building majority of
00:15:27
Speaker
Well, not for many of his parts, like hundreds, if not thousands of parts. And then, frankly, we kind of ran out of steam and then the Internet and then some machines community stepped in and hundreds of people made parts to contribute to the build, which is awesome. To be totally blunt, I don't exactly remember the timing of what happened. This is all just a bunch of excuses. So let's be clear, these are nothing other than excuses.
00:15:51
Speaker
We lost interest. We had to focus elsewhere. COVID hit interns, changed over to school schedules, and he just got pushed to the back burner, which is so common for projects like this. And that's what I'm embarrassed about, is that I didn't want to be that person that just, we're so close. We're- It looks done from the outside. We're over 90% of the way there. Yeah, I've got to extract some broken parts out of it. I just found Amish's part. I got dusted off.
00:16:19
Speaker
But uh, so, okay, I was having that same like, this doesn't get any better. I'm 41. I've run this company, successful ish to extent, blah, blah, blah. And I'm still succumbing to the same like, project anxiety of like, Oh my gosh, I don't know where to start. It's like taking over somebody else's project. Yeah, the last
00:16:40
Speaker
person to work at is at college and then I don't know where he left off and then I just don't know the cat and then the cat has changed for which is also you know doesn't help because of what we have is different than what's out there now and then I just I sort of took that step back and just was what are you doing John stop
00:16:57
Speaker
all I have to do is take one bite size part. So work on the head or work on the neck or don't even work on the whole head. Work on his left eye. What do we have? What do we not have? And furthermore, now that printing is so relatively fast and cheap, I'm just going to start printing parts because I'm a physical, I love CAD, but like just start printing parts, comparing them and then realizing, oh, we actually already have that machine or this has changed. And then
00:17:24
Speaker
The majority of the parts that we need to do are up high anyways, which is actually better to have them lightweight 3D printed. They don't need to be structural like the base. So we've done the hard part that needs to be machined. So long winded way.
00:17:35
Speaker
Maybe I say this humbly. Maybe there's an analogy for the integral of not dialing in the button perfectly.
Iterative Project Completion
00:17:42
Speaker
Get the whole knife made and then go back and say, okay, the button sucks. We'll fix it. The blade stop pin needs fixed, but like, it's like build the Honda Accord and then say, I don't like the seats rather than Sarah. The cord has no engine, no seats in your stuff. Yes. That's wise words for sure. Yeah. I like it.
00:18:05
Speaker
Yeah. I'm literally just printing parts right now. It's great. Like I was wondering, are there any printed parts on the robot from before?
00:18:12
Speaker
or is everything machined? A lot is machined. I'm looking at them right now. I'll throw something up on Instagram today, which is Friday for the listeners. You'll see some finger joints are machined. Because I'm just thinking it's been, what, four years at least since a part has been made for it? And you were printing back then, but not like you are today. Correct.
00:18:39
Speaker
Um, and I, you know, we're a machine shop. I don't want to, um, I don't want to have, end up with a build that could have been awesome. And it's only mediocre because you got lazy on the flip side. Number one, I want him done and I'm okay. Print him.
00:18:55
Speaker
print what I need to do, get them done, and then look back and say, and we actually already had people reach out again to offer to help. I will take people up on that, but I'm going to hold myself a little bit more accountable before I just start outsourcing this because it's not fair to people that already contributed. We haven't done our job of getting it to this point. I'm going to put the first dollar in, if you will, of time and effort. I'm actually going to try to get my son a little bit involved because he's now more of that age and totally
00:19:24
Speaker
Actually, it's not totally unrelated. I'll keep this short. We did a big purge in our basement. The day after you left, we started it. Yeah. It's gone better than I thought. And I ended up turning the storage room into a small workbench, which I've never really wanted like a home shop because I have the shop here. But now, for all these other reasons, I'm actually loving having just a small workbench at home and some tools. And now we'll have a printer at home. And so what I'm realizing is that this is something
00:19:52
Speaker
Because I also feel hard. It's hard for me to work on J5 when I've got solder's priorities. So now I'm like, well, no, take the head home. And every night you can print a couple of parts. We can see how they fit together, see what they need done. And then it's like, okay, I don't really care how long it takes me. I care that every month or two we've got some real progress made. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. You're, you're eating the elephant one bite at a time, right? Like, yep. I like that. Yeah, it's fun. So I'm actually really happy. That's cool. Yeah.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yeah, that was my project. But it is hard. It is. I guess it was like my disappointment is I was no better off until it took me a while to realize you don't need to just stare at this thing and have the sense of I have no idea what to do. I'm paralyzed from where to start. Just pick a little part, see how it goes. And then pick the next part. Yep, progress is the key here. With with our integral knife launching, like we could certainly use the
00:20:49
Speaker
the new
New Knife Model Development
00:20:50
Speaker
product. It's been eight years since the Rask was first dropped in 2015. It's been eight years since we had a new product, although the saga was a little bit more recent than that. And like the Norseman is 12 years old.
00:21:07
Speaker
It's time for another knife. Absolutely. On one hand, I'm like, I'm amazed. We lasted so long on just the two models. A lot of other companies are innovating every year, which is impressive. But anyway, I'm super excited to get it out. Where's that going with that?
00:21:28
Speaker
So I do have deadlines like blade show is in five weeks and I want to bring integral knives to blade show to sell. Even if it's just one, we're kind of joking. We're like, we can't go unless we have one to like, we shouldn't go unless we have one to sell. So that is my kind of, you know, hard deadline. I don't think it's very doable. Do you have that?
00:21:55
Speaker
Like I'm putting everything else off unless you know, we have a machine that's broken or something that I can't fire. I have to put out. Do you have that? Do you want to have that focus? Is that what's going to get you there? I think that is what's going to be needed. I don't like that. I'm just trying to think naturally like
00:22:12
Speaker
On one hand, it's easy to say, yeah, just put everything on hold and only do this. This is all, you got family and you got this project, that's it. I really should be there and I'm not there yet to be honest, to be perfectly blunt. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I'm still doing, there's other critical things in the shop that have to get done. There's other less critical things that I'm working on and then there's the fun projects that are long-term builds like skill development.
00:22:39
Speaker
acid etching, things like that, that I'm working on, which take significant effort and time. And yeah, I need to start slowing those projects down and continue to ramp up this in order to reach that deadline. But there's so many little pieces that once they're done, everything's going to come together very well. And they're going to be relatively fast to produce once all the answers have been, questions have been answered.
00:23:05
Speaker
What are the tolerances? Oh, sweet. Now we can make buttons. They take less than a minute to machine, you know? So for us to make a handful. But what scares me about that, knowing both manufacturing, but worse off knowing you, is that, John, you're going to work on that button for the next year. That's the problem, is go look at the manufacturing skills, tolerances, knowledge that you put into the first 50 Norsemen that were shipped.
00:23:33
Speaker
You, I suspect, aren't even willing to ever think about that level of mediocrity for using that word. Do you know what I mean? It's like I know too much now, so I can't let things slide like I did before when I didn't know very much at all. No, that's a really good point. Good perspective.
00:23:54
Speaker
And I need to keep an eye on the, um, if I'm going to reach that deadline, I need to keep an eye on the whole list, not just like microscopes view of point number one. Um, so that we actually make progress and finish all of it, even if there is a, you know, an invisible layer of mediocrity in some of these parts. Um, yeah, I think that, that paralyzes you to a point that is a problem slows me down for sure. Yeah.
00:24:22
Speaker
And I think that goes back to the idea of having a team or I mean, we're not gonna have boards or bosses, but like, you know, you can't. I don't know if you'll get that knife done for blade show john. Oh, I will. Okay, like I'm on your team. Or on your side. I want to but I also think
Feedback and Product Iteration
00:24:42
Speaker
But as an outside advisor, if you didn't know me as well and just heard me say this right now, you'd be like, it's not going to happen. I'm just thinking more about people that have. Well, I just came from a community foundation here to have a board meeting. The CEO reports to the board, and he has to explain deadlines for things. And it's kind of like if Crimson Eyes was funded by a venture person, you had a venture quarterly update. And they're like, we're not funding your next round if you're not
00:25:11
Speaker
Right. Bringing the knife you have had X amount of time to perform to the show. Like that's just, you're, you're done. Like there's examples, but like sometimes I respond well to that discipline of self-imposed deadlines. I don't know if you do, but I do know you want, I know you would rather iterate faster than slow. That is a good way to put it. Maybe I'll just go with that. I would rather iterate faster than slower. And even though perfection is my nemesis, I would rather iterate faster.
00:25:41
Speaker
I'm not asking you to forgive on perfection, but make the whole night and then come back and tweak stuff. Yeah. Iterate faster. Maybe I can keep that line in my head. Look at what Al just posted on Instagram. I didn't watch the YouTube video that he linked to, right? I don't even know. It was like three minutes.
00:26:05
Speaker
I have always, well, first off, I've always kind of respected out period, but I've respected his willingness to put himself out there and say, we're going to share this with you when this code or feature set, these are back in the Autodesk and Cam days. Now he's at a new company.
00:26:22
Speaker
This isn't perfect. This isn't available yet necessarily. I don't speak for him here, but I'd rather get your feedback. I'd rather you see it. I'd rather you touch it. We are going to let some people at some point maybe use it or maybe buy it. It'll keep getting better.
00:26:37
Speaker
I think that's, and I remember debating him, you were at that meeting with a CAD meeting where somebody was like, you know, if you let us beta test this CAM feature with probing and it breaks a probe tip, that's really bad. And it's like, yeah, that is really bad. But one person broke their probe tip instead of a shipping
Software Updates: Features vs. Stability
00:26:53
Speaker
a whole software development to thousands or tens of thousands of users where we think is perfect. We didn't mean to put a bad probing code in there, but that's what happens in the world mistakes happen. Yeah, that's so we need you to test this so that yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Al has always been good and Autodesk for that matter.
00:27:13
Speaker
has been frustratingly good about that, because sometimes it's not fully baked, and you as a consumer want it to be fully baked. But you're like, oh, there's another Autodesk update. Sweet. OK, let's test it out. But you've got to test carefully. No, I agree. I'm not saying that there aren't some drawbacks. And I'm not saying I wish there weren't some things handled differently. That's it. I mean, look at the progress that Fusion has made in the past 10 years we've been watching it. It's insane. It's insane.
00:27:39
Speaker
And they finally allowed us to delay updates, which we appreciate a lot. Really? Yeah, you can delay them up to two weeks now pretty easily. Okay. Versus the force, like, oh, I lost power on my computer reset, and I'm now on the new version, even though I didn't want to be today. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Make the whole night, John, and then come back and fix it. Yeah. It's almost all made.
3D Printing for Knife Prototyping
00:28:02
Speaker
I mean, yeah, you're right. No, you're right. Right. Okay. I haven't done bevels yet. That's its own project. That's not gonna affect anything else. And I haven't done the clip yet. It's its own thing. So I don't affect anything else. Big deal on that. Other than that, it's fine tuning the details. Because like I said, fine tuning the button and the stop pins literally affects the handle and the blade. Yeah, I got to lock down one of them before I change the others. Yeah, that's where I'm at right now. But you're right. Don't iterate to the nines like
00:28:32
Speaker
finish it. I don't want to brag or anything, but I made my first knife handle. No way. I made my first pocket clip. I love the black fox slide. Did I talk about this already on the podcast or just to you?
00:28:48
Speaker
I forgot where it was private. But Black Fox Machine, he makes a protocol slide. I didn't understand it until I realized it is a one hand. It checks all the boxes for me. It's one hand open and closed box cutter. It is no tools to pull the blade out and replace it because I love replacing my box cutter blades all the time. I don't want to grab a screwdriver. The problem for me to the slide was it didn't have a clip. So I reached out and asked him if he'd ever thought about one. It would sell me one. And to his credit, he was like, no, but here I'll give you a sketch of the
00:29:16
Speaker
I'll give you a DXF of the keyring hole. And so about 20 minutes later, I had a... Actually, I honestly need to machine it because this one has broken a few times. I just keep reprinting it. And through you printed the clip. Yeah. And it looks really good too. Yeah. That's not bad. It just presses in. It's breaking because this springs up. This is PLA. I actually printed out of the bamboo
00:29:41
Speaker
the bamboo PC, which is much stronger, but also appears to be more brittle. So I'm wondering if there's a better filament, because I actually don't really want to machine one of these, but... What about the CF filaments or something? I don't own any of that. I don't think. I thought the PC was there. I'll look it up. But anyways, it was fine. It's not polycarbonate. What is the PC?
00:30:06
Speaker
I'm looking at it up right now. PC filament is engineering purposes. It doesn't say what it is. That's annoying. Exceptional thermal, mechanical, high impact engineering where it is being repeated. Anyway.
00:30:24
Speaker
I didn't even bring that up to solicit. Oh, it is polycarbonate. Yeah. If anybody wants to lob in a suggestion on bamboo compatible filament, that would be good for a long thin pocket clip. I'd love to know because, like I said, I don't really want to machine one, but I do want this clip. Honestly, especially in knife making, machining a decent clip is very challenging.
00:30:46
Speaker
Not just the design and the tolerances, but the way it's fixtured and the way it removes material and it can chew up tools if you don't do it well. If you lay that clip that you designed upside down on the table and say you had a water jet piece with two holes in it,
00:31:03
Speaker
And you have to hog out, you know, the flat part of the material without the clip bowing up and all that stuff. It's annoying and it takes a long time. So we actually mount them on the side and side mill that whole feature with like a longer 3.8 cent mill. And that made it a lot easier. But then you got to rotate it, you got to do some features, holes, whatever. So there's like, they're annoying to make.
00:31:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. And you don't want it to spring away because you actually want it to spring into the... Yeah. And I think I'm not sure current status of our company actually, but I'm pretty sure our guys bend every clip ever so slight to have their attention. They do a quick pocket check and then make it perfect.
00:31:41
Speaker
Honestly, now that you just said that, it occurred to me, maybe what I'll do is you can buy the Surefire aftermarket replacements.
Improving Tool Ergonomics
00:31:48
Speaker
I might buy one of those and then just somehow adhere it to a 3D printing. Screw it on or something. Because that's all I want is a good clip for it. Yeah. I'll send you a bad Norseman clip if you want. Oh, my God. You can adapt it on somehow. Yes, although it would be hilarious. I mean, if you're in. Yeah, I love that.
00:32:12
Speaker
the Frankenstein Norse slider. Yeah. It's funny. Yeah. Is that a Norseman in your pocket? Actually, no, it's not. Yeah, that's funny.
00:32:25
Speaker
The other thing we're playing with is I actually had a tool balancer laying around. Honestly, it should have gone into the sale and I forgot to take it, so I'm glad that this is a cheapo Amazon one. What? Tool balancer. All those words don't add up to me. What? Tool balancer, cheapo, Amazon. I'm thinking like a Heimer tool balancer that costs 10 grand or something.
00:32:50
Speaker
No, a retractor spring-loaded tool balancer that allows you to take a five-pound drill, hang it from the ceiling, and it's weightless. Wherever you move the drill to, it just stops right there. Oh, like for a hand drill. Yeah. I thought Cat40 balancer will hold their balancer. Sorry. I'm glad you brought that up. No. Tool retractors. I'm like, so you have one of those sitting around, and you don't click? Yeah. I get it. No, I get it. Yeah, this is like $20 or $30.
00:33:19
Speaker
Because I'm kind of sawing out. I've actually now learned that there are dozens of these nut runner, torque wrench, transducer, screwdriver companies out there. You could go to a trade show, and I'm sure there's aisles of these people that are making, to me, effectively seems like the same thing. Computer control, different ways of measuring the torque, but yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
The small screws are easy. The big screws are not from a cost standpoint. I think I mentioned that you could easily spend five figures now and that's not going to work. Part of the thing I'm picking about is making sure the solution works great. We don't have it and be like, I don't like this about it.
00:34:01
Speaker
you know, I didn't want to bootstrap this and certainly don't plan on DIY. And on the flip side, I have found with everything from tools and prototypes to Lex, sometimes if we build it ourselves, it really helps tell you what you want and need out of a system. And so I took a broom handle mounted it above the Kuma as a as a rod and hung that tool balancer from it with a DeWalt drill with the full size battery in it, set the balancer up and started fake
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah. Screwing and unscrewing. And I tell you, John, I learned a ton. I learned a ton. Right. About the angle, the angles and the resistance and is the drill going to be bouncing around in your face? How do you move it to the side if you want to move it to the side and have it still be there and not swing around? And part of me honestly is also wondering whether it's DeWalt or another sort of consumer prosumer drill, we don't need
00:34:49
Speaker
crazy high torque specs. Again, we're not an assembly house. So if I buy a new tool and it's only used for this purpose and we find out what the clutch setting on those equates to, honestly, that might be fine versus spending four to seven grand on the small tool option. So that's where I'm at. It's been fun to play with this bouncer stuff.
00:35:12
Speaker
The purpose of you torquing stuff is you're torquing parts on your horizontal or on machine tool fixtures to make parts, right? Correct. You're not torquing car lug nuts or things that are going out the door. It's torque and then it's unscrewed when the part's done. That's all it is. Exactly. On our machine, we do torque our M6 screws.
00:35:34
Speaker
so that they're all consistent, so we don't have bowing, whatever, whatever. But for the smaller screws, we use setting five on our dual drill. It's consistent and fine or whatever. Yeah, I'm kind of a fan of that. I like that. Yeah. The thing that would be nice about the
00:35:51
Speaker
First off, what we're doing right now is we're using too many hand tools, different hand tools to loosen, different hand tools to tighten, rough tighten, finish tighten, to torque, to waltz to loosen them. But the nice thing about the digital system is not only would it go to one tool for all that, but it would be nice on the retract to have the program only retract the screw, a preset number of rotations, like four turns, and then it stops. That means you can go zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, and the screws, like the Uniforce or the Pitbull screw, doesn't back out so far that there's
00:36:20
Speaker
You have problems with the falling out or the twist fixture or twisting. And I'll spend four grand tonight if I find the right solution. The problem is I don't know what the right solution is. And so part of me is like, well, we already own a tool balancer. If for another hundred bucks in scrap parts, I can put this system together and we use it for a few months, that'll tell us a lot more about what we want out of the real tool. Okay. This is not a good idea, but it's kind of interesting to think about for five seconds. Clear path servo motor.
00:36:49
Speaker
can rotate, rotate so many turns can do pretty high torque. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's probably not the right answer, but it's neat. Right. Like go take like an old super soaker and a Nerf gun or something and put the clear fat in there and the Torx bit on the end, have a little fun with it.
00:37:06
Speaker
reload your suit, reload the horizontal with a fake Nerf gun, torque driven thing? No. The tougher one will be the 30 to 35 foot pound for the modified screws, because we'll have to have that on a linear rail, like a stabilizer system so that you're not taking the torque on your body yourself. And that's more expensive.
00:37:30
Speaker
It's totally worth it. Is it like a four link kind of arm, like a flex arm, but stronger? Yeah, some of them look like flex arms. A lot of them also just look like vertical linear guides that have two extra joints to allow you to just pivot it around with a balancer that makes the tool weightless. Right, right. Whatever, yeah. And I assume you tune these balancers to the weight of your object so that it has different springs?
00:37:55
Speaker
Yeah, so that's one of the funny things. Even the DeWalt battery, we'd have to always use the same size battery because they're very sensitive to weight changes. Changing the bit on the drive tool wouldn't matter, like a different length Torx quarter inch bit, but the battery will. And if it's going to be on a balancer, that's already a cord. I would rather not have batteries. I'd just rather be a powered tool, but we'll figure it out.
00:38:23
Speaker
Let's see what do you guys for your internal, um, Fixturing day-to-day screw and unscrew, do you use hex or torques?
00:38:31
Speaker
We adamantly try to switch everything to Torx. Yeah, good. Like we'll buy Uniforces immediately throughout the hexes and put the, we have all the Torx's on hand for it. So we do Torx Plus for, I think everything, which is even better. Sorry, I think it's Torx Plus too, I forgive you. Okay. And they are stronger and they last significantly longer. We still replace the screws and even the driver bits every six months or whatever, like whenever they get a little chewed up, but. Yeah.
00:38:57
Speaker
Yeah, hexes are dead to me for that kind of use, you know, production. Absolutely. Yeah. Which is neat. And I didn't know that until I did, like 10 years ago. And we're using hex for everything like, man, let's just keep stripping it out. I have to drill it out and like,
00:39:11
Speaker
you know, garage DIY kind of days and then it finally occurred to me. It was like, oh, yeah. Actually, you've been proud. I should have DM'd you this photo. The guys are making these pop-up posts that we use for some of our fixture plate fixturing and one of them has a really small
00:39:29
Speaker
It's probably a quarter inch, well, not small in your world, but for us it's a quarter inch or smaller threaded shaft, and we needed to be able to rotate that from the small end of the shaft, like from the back end of the screw. And so they machined a T15 or T20 torques in the end of it. Nice. And it looked good. Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay. So May 1st, the blade shows in six weeks. What are you up to today?
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah. So speaking of May 1st, uh, it is 33% through the year, like today. Um, so I was thinking about that and it's like, okay, what have I accomplished so far? And what are my goals for the other two thirds of the year so that I can do it? Um, you know, what have I accomplished? Obviously I learned a lot about chemistry, which is really fun. Um,
00:40:21
Speaker
I've made significant progress on the integral life, which is amazing. And that will, you know, game changer kind of thing. Like it'll be done in the next two thirds, obviously. And it'll be in full production by the end of the year, which is awesome.
00:40:36
Speaker
So that's super good. So obviously by the end of the year, I want to be able to make as many as we want, as many as we can. And you have the team equipment machines. It's just, yeah, that's awesome. Yep. It's just organizing in time. And then very shortly, it will be out of my hands and the team will just make them. Yeah. And I will move on to something else. Yeah. Which is great. So that's the big picture goal there.
00:41:01
Speaker
as we continue making norms, we continue making rasks, but maybe for the short term, make as many integrals as we can, even at the deep expense of making less of the other two. Make the new hype, which is cool. So that's kind of the big picture thing. So I got five weeks to make several to bring to Blade Show. So I will iterate faster. I really like that.
00:41:29
Speaker
Yeah, so today is design meeting in 13 minutes with the two guys and we will finalize tolerances on the button because Jeff is like at the point, he's like, I can make the button. We just have to know that they're right.
00:41:45
Speaker
Maybe I'm getting the weeds here. Can you not just have him make 15 different buttons with one or two variations each and then just test them? Probably could. In today's meeting, we will discuss that possibility. What is the change? What are we tweaking? Some of it's visual, some of it's actual tolerance.
00:42:08
Speaker
We're still inventing and building it. When you open the knife and lock it, how high is the button coming up? How high is too high? You can see a gap under it that's too high. Or if it's too flashy, you can't find it with your thumb when you're not looking at it kind of thing. There's little things. Interesting. Yeah. Or it's not engaged in the locking surface enough so the lock fails. If you close it on your hand, you don't want to do that. So there's a balance to everything.
00:42:35
Speaker
So that's what I'm up to next. Sweet. It's exciting. That's great. That's awesome. It's funny. You're talking about this, you are further along, I guess, than I realize. Don't let the nice part take six months. Well, my wife would tease me on this. It's like I tend to get projects to 90% and then I move on to something else because I'm like, it's done. It's like, I've done all the hard stuff. Whatever.
00:43:01
Speaker
In this scenario, I can't move on to something else it has to have to close this you know Yeah, or if I could give it to somebody else and let them close it for me Because this is my fun part It's it's get to 90% and then the last ten is pulling teeth, but that's okay. I'm here for it Yeah, cool, what do you have to say? We are
00:43:26
Speaker
So that's kind of what I was saying with this awkward do-its phase is we are in a great place. So Willyman gets picked up tomorrow. Grant is now helping Alex and Garrett tool up the VF2YT for all of our aluminum stuff, which is going phenomenally well. Probably the first and best example for me is
00:43:52
Speaker
as a leader, taking a step back. Because we already have these, no new products are being made right now. This is just transitioning from the horizontal, new fixtures are being made. So we know more about what we like and don't like. Internal fixtures. Yes.
00:44:08
Speaker
And so I was doing very simple, literally either taking screenshots or photos of the fixture, hand-marking them up, turn that over to Alex. He designs all of them. Grant has already been machining them. Point of pride, we put all the puck chucks on the VF2 and we dropped on
00:44:25
Speaker
So, in OP, we made the OP-1s and mod vices directly because we didn't have the puck chucks on this machine yet. OP-1s included the pull studs in the outside profile, put the puck chucks on with the diamond pins and screwed them down. We dropped the fixtures on. Now, I don't know what indicator they're using. It was either a thou or a tenth. Across 30 inches, they were dead nuts.
00:44:49
Speaker
So like the puck chucks are just like continuing to prove out their value to us. Now the job is to show that to the customers, but that was awesome.
00:44:58
Speaker
And so I've been only involved in commentary around like, hey, these are the style helicals I want to use. Or hey, let's take the extra time to surface an angle into the side of the fixture that has to be there but is exposed. That way, when you hit it with a little bit of coolant, the chips have gravity assist to wash down. Just stuff like that that feels really good. Yeah, directional that other guys can execute on.
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. But I haven't even been enough. I'm not training this to... It's funny, because there was a comment on our YouTube tour video that was, I guess I am a little bit defensive about wanting to show that this is happening. Alex designed these, the guys are making them. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely awesome. That's the progress you need, absolutely. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, so it's fun. And good. Yeah, that's all.
00:45:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. Um, I've been thinking a lot about your pucker checks and fixture plates and mod vices and things like that. And how I'm not in that ecosystem yet. But I kind of want to be, now that I was at your shop and I saw how you use it and it's like a lot cheaper than chunk system, a lot smaller and more modular in the chunk system. Like attaching those is not easy. Um, and.
00:46:19
Speaker
Yeah, it makes me kind of look at that Maury again and go, oh, you don't want it. If that had like even whatever your cheapest aluminum fixture plate is, that's the base. And then a bunch of puck chucks. I did jog it down and put a tool holder in there and see how close to the table I get. And I'm going to need some space. Like I couldn't put the fixture plate and mod vices and material right on the fixture plate without using a very long tool to like touch it.
00:46:48
Speaker
Okay, I'll have Alice look up the Duravertical 51. Duravertical, yeah. And I want to say it's like a six inch gauge to the table.
00:46:59
Speaker
Yeah, but you'd be fine in that case. I mean, very rarely do you find tools under two inch gauge length and the tool has to protrude from it. Fixture plate plus mod vice plus part is usually going to be three inches right there. Does the part sit up on the mod vice, like up on a step ledge? The mod vice has a built-in parallel that is at one inch.
00:47:20
Speaker
Okay, so the part is not touching your table. It's up off the mod vice. You can also use the mod vice that way. We believe a less common use because it just is, but it absolutely works that way. So that gets you two inches, fixture plate plus mod vice.
00:47:37
Speaker
Because it's the bottom of your part. Yeah, right. And then like I've only bought stubby tool holders. I have like three long tool holders who define long cat 40 cat 40. I think they're two and a half whatever is mine all of them.
00:47:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's not short. So that's two and a half to the face of the tool. So if you had a three eighth inch tool sticking out, an inch and a half, which I will agree is a smidge long, but it's not like the 10 inch speedio issue. Yeah, it is better than that. Okay. Well, we would love to get you hooked up and obviously we'll figure out a way to make that friendly to you. Yeah, it's interesting. It's super interesting.
00:48:19
Speaker
I would like we use the Maury for dedicated Norseman handles and hard blades. That's all it's been used for for the past five plus years. Since we got the current basically. It doesn't run a lot. I just say don't change it if it works. But this case, but you also make it much more flexible, much more flexible because we have new products that we want to make that's like annoying because we don't have an easy way to like throw them on and fixture them. And I think that solves a lot of
00:48:47
Speaker
things. It's interesting. But yeah, I'm kind of loosely retail price thinking on top of my head. Fixture plate plus a bunch of mod vices plus a bunch of puk chucks. We're probably looking at five to 10 grand. The puk chucks are for sure more expensive. You'll spend more on the puk chucks. A fixture plate for your machine plus mod vices
00:49:07
Speaker
three, four grand. Okay, just so I have like a number in my head because yeah, it's got to be worth it, you know, so that it proved the concept. And it's interesting, super interesting. But like, that's where I want to scream at the top of the mountain how awesome it is. Like on this view of two, you change your whole fixture in five seconds. We pretty much have this video set up like that. Yeah, right. The four chunks and the aroas were like fully modular. It's great.
00:49:37
Speaker
which is them on the four chunks. Like they're two grand each. Yeah. So that's way, right? It's double our price. Yeah. So that's also super interesting to me. Yeah. I like it. Good. Awesome. All right, man. See you next week. See you next week. Take care. Have a good time. Bye.