Transcript
Speaker: Good morning and welcome to the Business and Machining episode 142. My name is John Grimsmo.
Speaker: My name is John Saunders. This is the podcast where two CNC machinists who run small businesses share a private intimate conversation about how the real world works, struggles, successes, the whole kit and caboodle. Is that better? Is that fair? That's good. I like that. That's absolutely all true. Yeah. On that note, I want to start off by breaking the third wall here and saying I've got an idea
Speaker: that I'd like to throw out there to you for our other viewers, which is more people I sort of met or talked to have mentioned that the bomb has helped them or been something that they enjoy. And there's an element of this podcast that I do wish was more interactive and social in that sense. So here's my idea. If you've listened to the bomb and it's helped you,
Speaker: record an audio snippet, so it has to have some threshold of decent audio. Normal lav mic or computer mic will work fine if you're in a room so long as there isn't a machine, preferably not a lathe, that's not around making loud noises.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Send in a short audio clip, let's call it under two or three minutes. We're pretty easy going about this. We'll see how it goes. But send in a short audio clip and just say who you are, what the business is that you run, gives you a chance to mention that, promote yourself a little, but then mention, hey, this is why I like the bomb, or even better, specifically, hey, I was struggling to think about
Speaker: this process hiring or machining or buying this or capital or inspirational or something and email that audio file or download link to businessofmachiningatgmail .com and we'll start throwing one of those in at the end of every podcast. Interesting. I like it. Yeah, I like that a lot. Yeah, I think that'll be fun. I think it's good because we had a conversation recently with somebody who just was like,
Speaker: You know that really awkward moment when you're like, wait a minute here, am I doing everything wrong? Why is this person earning 75 times more money than me per year? Some completely like, wait a minute here. I've had this conversation a few times for sure this year where somebody who I thought was comparable, they had one PO from a customer that was like,
Speaker: half of what we do per year and I was like, oh my God, am I just like not even up to par? And so I think it'll be fun to kind of see, I think hopefully, and I think it goes without saying that we want those audio files or that story to be genuine and real and maybe a little bit raw about, hey, we were really struggling or this is what really helped or that kind of thing. Love it. Yeah, that'll bring some interesting conversations out of the closet, so to speak.
Speaker: Yeah, this is your coming out, coming out of the closet chance. What's the real world story of? Absolutely. I mean, you and I find that even just throughout this conversation, both before it was public when we were just chatting with each other and we're like, I'm really struggling with this. Or how do you deal with that? Or yada yada. And I don't know if if somebody puts in an audio clip, you don't necessarily have to say your name. If you want to keep it more anonymous, that's fine. But
Speaker: No, I think you should have to say, I mean, obviously, the moral hazard of this is you get the chance to promote. We actually have a pretty decent following, so I don't want that to be like, I don't want people to make stuff up just to get their name out there. But on the flip side, yeah, I think it should be, I guess if you had a really juicy HR issue that was worth sharing and you want to share it, but keep it anonymous. Okay, fine.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Unless you have some super distinctive voice that it's like everybody's listening going, oh, that's of course him. But yeah, of course, if you want to open up with the anonymity of, you know, if you said people's names, or if you said your name, everybody would know who it is, and that's a problem, then be careful. But yeah, just whatever. It's going to be like the unsolved mysteries when the guy has his voice going through like the tape recorder box that changes the pitch. Exactly.
Speaker: Cool. So how are things going over in Saunders land? Saunders land is good. I was down in Blue Ash, Ohio yesterday morning, just north of Cincinnati, that spectra EDM, where it was the first time I got to tour a full blown EDM job shop. Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, seeing EDM machines at lots of shops, Fifth Access, Hakko Watch, Sterit Factory, the list goes on. But this is only an EDM shop. And that was really cool. They had a bunch of wires, some sinkers. And then they do have one, two vertical mills. That's kind of support equipment type stuff. But they know EDM pretty well. That's cool. It's like backwards, having the mill to support the EDM as opposed to the opposite.
Speaker: Yeah right.
Speaker: So it was cool to ask a bunch of questions, see that shop and then what we're gonna do on that video. It'll take us a month or so to get it edited and approved. But I talked to Matt there who was the son of the owner and works there and kind of my host is because there are so many questions I think about EDM and I think it's a much more niche world that's outside the normal household knowledge of general vertical machining or CNC machining.
Speaker: is we're going to do Q &A in the YouTube comments to help answer. We did a little bit on Instagram yesterday, but that was hard when I was touring. So I'm actually excited to try to get in front of lots of really good questions that already came up about what type of coolant and speeds and feeds and power consumption and differences between wire and sinker. So it's cool.
Speaker: Love it. Yeah. I saw your YouTube or your Instagram post like six hours after you posted it and I was like, Oh, I could come up with so many questions, but it's probably too late. Yeah. I like the YouTube comment idea. If, you know, if you make that known that you and the, the Matt was it, um, we'll kind of go back and forth with comments, then it could become a little resource for EDM. Yeah.
Speaker: They are cool machines. I definitely learned what you'll see in the video. It's not anything we do. It's frankly good to have a relationship with somebody that if we ever needed something to reach out to on and I like
Speaker: that when they approach work, I'm making this up, by the way, this was not what they said, but they approach work with adding at least an extra zero, if not more, on their approach to everything. Dialing in fixtures and looking at part sizes and tolerances and curves.
Speaker: I thought you meant dollar -wise, not precision number -wise. Excuse me, accuracy. So I like that element of them because it's just so – I can't imagine when they do work, they isn't kind of EDM, good EDM shops in general.
Speaker: would never cut corners, pun intended. You know what I mean? They're the last one in a probably expensive part, it could be medical or defense or whatever, where they may only have to do very minor amounts of work, but it's got to be incredibly accurate. They can't screw it up. I actually like that.
Speaker: Yeah, that's very cool. It creates a culture of discipline and carefulness and just be thoughtful about everything that you do, especially being at the end of the line. I like that. How's that been going for you guys? I remember it's been a long time since we talked details about Norseman's, but fixtures are working out well, processes, are you having less scrap than normal?
Speaker: Yes, but there is still broken tools. There are still the odd scrap piece that we're not happy about and we try to improve that process and then it kind of goes away.
Speaker: Yeah, we're still breaking. I mean, probably told you a couple months ago, I went from a cheap Lakeshore carbide end mill to a very expensive Harvey Tool end mill, a three 30 second five flute. And it was great, like, all of a sudden started lasting a little longer. And then now all of a sudden they're breaking. And now I'm breaking a $93 end mill, like, way before its life. And I'm trying to nail that or even it was originally working.
Speaker: The original life was 40 knives and now it's back to some erratic like five knives number? Yeah, exactly. Like it broke same day and it shouldn't have.
Speaker: titanium, um, three 32nd five flute, it's basically pocketing a little hole in titanium. There's some through holes and there's some blind holes. And I think it's broke. I saw it yesterday because it broke. And then I was like, okay, what's the hole that it broke on? And I broke on a through hold. And I was machining to zero to like just the bottom of the part. Um,
Speaker: And there's a slight hole underneath in the fixture. So I wonder if chips are getting in the hole and then just recutting cause they can't get out. So not exactly sure, but I, I dropped the tools. What did I say? 12 thou under the part now, instead of doing it at zero, I'm doing it under and we'll see if that helps. Um, it's a three 30 second tool.
Speaker: Okay, so that's not that small 93 thou or let's see here. What is that? And this is a stub on a quarter inch shank from Harvey. So it's like really good stuff. Yeah, 2 .4 millimeters.
Speaker: So two things that I'll throw out that aren't maybe the most commonly expected answers. Number one is test your coolant water. We're continuing on our coolant binge.
Speaker: It was perfect. Our quality chem rep called us and then I started asking questions. I don't think he expected what was coming. I've been actually having this lengthy back and forth. We filmed our first video on water and we're now re -filming it to get stuff even more accurate and scientific, which I like. I remember hearing a while back that
Speaker: I believe, and I'm talking off the cuff now, that it's the presence of certain minerals like chlorides that can cause a reaction with titanium, more specifically to tapping, but it has a direct and significant impact on tool life. So check on that and research that. The coolant in the mill is old. It's nearing two years old, and when we move, we'll replace it.
Speaker: It's getting there. Check that. What am I checking? pH? I don't know, John. I don't want to go on a Google binge while we're on the podcast. No, that's fine. I can look it up too, or we can talk about it on WhatsApp, but I want to say that it was... Oh, I think it was fluoride, because I remember now thinking... I always think fluoride... In Canada, they put fluoride in the water for kids' teeth. I think so. In some places they do. In some places they don't. I forget.
Speaker: Yeah. So I think it was the presence of fluoride. Forgive me. Anyway, look at that. And then the second thing is, I know we talked about this before, but John, get through Spindle Coolant. You push it through that ER column on that tool and you are going to massively improve processor reliability. Yeah. Well, I will get it. It's coming on my big red machine. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, interesting. Both coolant answers. That's good.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, in a different way. Because it's hard to think about how it would be breaking. It's not it's not colliding into anything fixture snow or no parts on the part rigid. Yeah, very. And the strategy the toolpath itself is beautiful. It's like morphed spiral 2d pocket like it's it plunges right down the center through a drilled hole there's clearance. That's really nice. But breaking
Speaker: Sometimes it'll lose four of the five flutes and then continue cutting. But yesterday it just broke right off. At the where the shank meets the collet face? Yeah. Well, where the it's a tapered tool, right? So where the it gets smallest. Oh, okay. Got it. Okay, forgot. Okay, got it. Yeah. See, it's interesting. And it's annoying at the same time. Yeah, it's like a small of a tool to recover the flutes. I'm guessing you can't find the flutes in the chip tray.
Speaker: Sometimes you just see a chunk of broken carbide on the top of the fixture, but I couldn't find them yesterday. Got it. But yeah, it's like I started an eight hour run. If you can find them, if you can find them, keep them for sure and microscope them. Yeah, we do always. You can see if they're loaded up or chipped or broken or whatever. But yeah, starting like an eight hour run and just about to go home and I see this red light come on the mill and I'm like, oh man, I guess I'm staying late.
Speaker: Um, cause I got to fix it. Like I got to replace the tool, dig out any carbide, which there wasn't any. And then I got to like, look at the strategy and see what the heck is wrong. Cause I don't want it to happen again. So yeah, that's, that's thanks. The, so that's actually fun to think about you, you still run the Maury almost every day, overnight, every single night, five nights a week. That's awesome. John, remember when that was like a big hurdle?
Speaker: Yeah, I guess. I don't even think about it. Oh, come on. Of course we run the mill. If we don't run the mill, we failed at life now. That's the state that we're in. You got to go back and think about, put yourself in that place when that was a big deal. That's true. Both with just the fear of running it and trusting it and knowing you're not going to make a whole pile of scrap in the morning. But yeah.
Speaker: So we're getting some red lights, which is frustrating. We're running out of air. So we bought a 200 gallon tank, I think. Nice. And to act as that kind of battery, $830 shipped on our tool, which is awesome. That's cheap. Yeah. Yeah. So is that like, what's 200 gallon? Hashtag lifestyle creep. Yeah. Is that like the size of like a stand up air compressor tank?
Speaker: Um, uh, it doesn't, it, it, most of your stand up air compressor tanks are probably like 80 or maybe a hundred gallons. This, this is 200, but it doesn't look that much bigger because it's basically taller and obviously it's just a tank. So it doesn't have the whole compressor piston head thing. Um, and that's 757 liters or 757 bags of milk.
Speaker: Ontario burn, nice. Okay, have you installed it?
Speaker: We installed it, didn't fix the problem. It's the, the hot, the UMC is giving it, yeah, it's giving us a alarm, a low air pressure when we, when we use through spindle air, which hashtag again, awesome to have through spindle capability. We, I don't care about the coolant. Well, actually I use, it's actually great on this part I'm using through spindle
Speaker: I'm using flood coolant. I'm using through spindle air. I'm using through spindle coolant and I'm using just nothing all depending on where I am in the part. And then in the last stop, I'm also using through spindle air on the chamfer because the chamfer doesn't really benefit from coolant. The part is plastic and it has the benefit of basically drying off the part for me before I pull it off the machine. Clever. But we're getting an alarm
Speaker: which I think means that our air pressure drops below 95 PSI, which it's not doesn't seem to be doing though. And I don't think there's a way I can lie to the Haas because the Haas shouldn't actually care about pressure being low unless it's trying to do a tool change and it's not there.
Speaker: So I don't, I can't figure out there's a parameter. There used to be, but I don't, I think it may be gone in the current, like in the next gen control, but I'd rather it either delay how long it takes to trip that alarm or let me recover. That's what's annoying. I can't clear that alarm, even if the PSI is recovered without restarting the program. Oh, well that sucks.
Speaker: Huh. Right. Like I wonder, it sounds dumb when I'm trying to think about it. But I wonder if your machine is eating more air than the sensor can read fast enough or something. Yeah, right. Like it's a microscope. Well, like you're just going below the threshold of that sensor. I don't know.
Speaker: But my mori will have that same alarm, but only if I'm out of air. If the compressor stops working.
Speaker: Right. Cause as soon as I go look at the diagnostic screen, it shows you the PSI and it's, it's basically already at like 96, 97, 98. And well, regardless, what made me think of this as the Robo drill has a constant air need. I think it's either the tool changer or the spindle face spindle air bearings of some sort. Um, I don't think it's air bearing, sorry, but something there. So that takes up a lot of air. The plan is for that machine to be set up to run a lot.
Speaker: That's not going to be our TM that we use it as we need to. The lathe should have shipped yesterday, maybe today. I don't know if it needs air in a disproportionately great heat. I'm just realizing when I have our current set up with the ... The compressor is a 7 .5 horsepower. It has a 50 -gallon tank. We have a 200 -gallon tank, and there's a fair amount of probably 500 or 600 feet of line. That itself is a form of storage.
Speaker: When the compressor is running and all the machines that we normally use are running and using air, the compressor is basically not able to gain, but it also doesn't lose. Does that make sense? It's keeping up, yeah. It's just on all the time.
Speaker: Yeah, well, so like what happened there is it was on, it couldn't gain pressure, but it maintained pressure, but then as soon as like the through spindle air turns off, it's able to then catch back up. Yeah, you're kind of maxed, especially if you're running things.
Speaker: Yeah, if you're running things for a long period of time, like if, if you just have a high need briefly, like somebody sandblasting or whatever, then a bigger tank helps for sure. But if, if these machines are constantly drawing X amount and the compressor won't turn off, then you just might be maxed.
Speaker: Well, the compressor would actually be fine. Our compressor could run 24 -7. They're meant to do that. But I don't know. I pulled the manual out. It doesn't look like ours has the ability to at least easily adjust. Because what I'd rather do is increase the low range that it causes it to... So right now, if it's not turning on until it hits 95, I'd rather it turn on when it hits 102. That should... Right.
Speaker: solve the problem, but I suspect the answer is really just we've outgrown it. Yeah. My Kaiser is easy to set that. Right. The low set point, it's in the control. Yeah, interesting. You're going to probably have to get a new one too, John. Yeah, I know. I've already got one in mind.
Speaker: Oh, really? Got a buddy with a used one, a 10 horsepower. Nice. That I don't know what he wants for it yet, but it's recently rebuilt Kaiser and could be perfect. Yeah. So, yeah. Does the swishes take a lot of air? The 60 ,000 RPM spindle is a hog for air because it's not an air bearing, it's an electric spindle, but it's got an air flush.
Speaker: So it's always blasting air, like a decent amount. And when that is on, I can hear the compressor turning on and off way more often. Oh, got it. Well, I think that's bad. Where's the swissish? It doesn't take very much air. It takes a little bit, like all the drawbars and stuff. Whereas the Nakamura takes zero air, unless I'm using an air blast for some special reason. Got it.
Speaker: Yeah, part of me thought, and this is where you hit that point as a business owner where you, the nerd in me is fascinated, the business owner in me just wants this fixed, which is, we probably would have been better off not getting the extra tank, starving our system of storage somehow and triggering the machine to always stay on. Even if it goes under. It won't go under because when it's on,
Speaker: The issue is that it's on off, and when it's off, it gets too low.
Speaker: I don't think I have the ability, maybe I'm wrong, but that was the one thing I was bummed about when we bought ours is I misunderstood the model we were buying. I thought we were buying the same model a friend had, which has the control like yours does, the digital interface. Ours is a dumb system with just like an on -off thing. There's obviously a trip valve somewhere in that system that trips it at 95 PSI, but I don't know if it's adjustable.
Speaker: Yeah, you might get lucky with a little set screw on it or need a different module or something, but yeah. We can stop talking about hot air.
Speaker: I like talking about air. Air is cool. Actually, we had to fix our air compressor yesterday because the guys were using it at one specific air gun and just water was coming out like crazy. Ooh. Ooh. So the dryer had stopped working. The fan had overloaded and it popped a little fuse. So we went digging, found a broken fuse, went around the corner to the electronics store or the electrical store. Got a new one. Good to go. Oh, that's nice.
Speaker: Yeah, that's one thing I value, and I'm going to do this right now on my list. Day to do maintenance list and processes.
Speaker: I'm not trying to do it. That's not a cleaning day of like, well, we should do that as well. We do do that. But what I need to do now is go use my brain and decide where we want to do and implement better trip sensors type things. So for example, on our water system, we found a $20 Amazon TDS, inline TDS sensor that can just show you current total dissolved solids coming out of your water.
Speaker: great. I don't have to get a test kit out. I don't have to get a dropper out. Now, you'd have to turn this on and it has no IoT ability, which frankly, I should be
Speaker: If the IoT version was $100 and that was $20, I absolutely would buy the IoT version. But nevertheless, I want that air dryer. That's a big problem. You get air in your spindle bearings. That's not good. So I want to spend money to put systems in place that tell us when something needs active, what is it, PM and RM or whatever. Absolutely. You get me excited for your water slash coolant video coming up. So please make it juicy.
Speaker: Oh, it'll be. You ready? You want to hear a sentence? Yeah. Hold on. Blah, blah, blah. Cations, ions react with emulsifiers found in oils and synthetics contributed to corrosion, providing a source for bacteria. I'm reading through my notes. This starts getting into nitty gritty chemistry, but larger particles work with positively charged creating my cells, which interact with the polarities versus changes in the drop size.
Speaker: It's cool. Yes, love it. I was trying to, you remember, especially as a kid when you just keep asking why?
Speaker: Like why, what does that, why does that happen? Why does that happen? I kept asking, once I found a resource that could give me answers, you know, why do I use tap water? Why do I use DI water? Why not use DI water? And we kind of, I think I kind of distilled it down, getting it out of, you know, the answers need to come from like effectively a chemist, but they need to be given in layman's terms. And I think, I think we've got that. Nice.
Speaker: How you doing? What's going on? Will this be out within a month? Oh yeah. It was supposed to be, we keep a schedule now. It was supposed to be like next week. I don't think, I'm going to refilm my correction stuff today. Shop Coolant is now scheduled for Wednesday, November 13th. Sweet. Perfect. Any questions or concerns from you on that?
Speaker: Are you just generally curious? Well, as we move, I'm replacing everything coolant -wise. So we're probably going to switch from quality come 251 to 291, I think. I need to confirm with them if that's the best choice for us. But since we have so much titanium stainless, it sounds like it's better -ish.
Speaker: 251 is definitely a general purpose, which I think this is part of the conversation I'm also trying to learn on. But I think when you say general purpose, a big thing that it needs to be able to handle are things like non -ferrous, brass, copper, which you're not doing, right? So I would say it's probably worth you guys getting a better coolant for more limited range of materials. Mm -hmm, yeah. And even though they can do the limitums and things like that, just fine. Okay, got it.
Speaker: Do you have hard water? I need to confirm. I didn't think so, but Skye, we were talking about these yesterday and he's like, I think we do. I'm like, okay, so I don't know. I'll email you my... We already have the NYC page up with the stuff we bought. Luckily, none of it's expensive. You can get a digital TDS meter as well as pool strips for under $10 or $20 each.
Speaker: But the answer is good. The answer is simple. If you have in any way hard water, it's actually not as big a deal for a semi -synthetic like the 251 or the 291, but nevertheless, you either need to use an RO system or you need to go get a collagen or a professional DI system that they come swat the tanks out. If you use an RO in your shop, my suggestion is you also need to buy a water softener.
Speaker: because a water softener will make your RO membrane last significantly longer. And those RO membranes are really expensive and it's frustrating because they don't always fail predictably and you don't necessarily want to replace it too soon. And if you make bad water, when you think you're making good water, it stinks.
Speaker: Yeah, of course. The thing with RO water, I just don't like the concept of waste of 90 % flowing past the membrane or whatever it is to create good water coming out. Yeah, I hear you. By a DI system, it's not that expensive. Yeah. That's why I'm curious about your video because you can just go nerd on me and explain it properly.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. With your growth and all that, I'm still frugal. You should be a hundred bucks a month or less, and they'll actually just come manage it for you. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Things are going excellent at Grimms Monives. In the past week today, we've hired two people. What?
Speaker: You tell so we had to replace Erin was on her way out. So we had to replace her she's doing tons of freelance and Traveling to Africa and having all kinds of fun So I found the replacement for her which is Fraser and he is epic Yeah, so we're having a lot of fun together. He's been there a week today
Speaker: Oh, awesome. We've got some big plans and things are working great. Sounds like he has really good video creativity and production skills that you were kind of alluding to in that video.
Speaker: everything I wanted myself to be but never, you know, I'm not a videographer. I'm like a wannabe. And he is. So it's excellent because now we can start doing the things that I have always wanted to do and have a ton of fun at it. So already it's going great. I mean, he filmed just some random
Speaker: shot. I was at my computer talking to Angelo, and he just kind of spy shot at me. We were up in the lunch room, his office, and he had it up on the screen. He was going through it, and I just glanced at it. I'm like, holy crap, that's a nice shot. Yeah. Like, oh, so good. That's awesome. I'm like, yeah, I'm so excited. And we're having a lot of fun. Can I ask one more question? On top of that, yeah. Is it his skill, like an experience, or is it his equipment, or both?
Speaker: both, for sure both. He brought his own equipment in, which I don't feel the most comfortable using his equipment for long term, but we'll keep padding our equipment arsenal as well as we go along. It's both for sure. I'll trade you a water video for
Speaker: taste of Fraser's video capabilities, because I'm excited to see. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And I was telling him yesterday, he was explaining how he does some stuff, how he syncs audio between a bunch of different devices. And he's got some tricks up his sleeve, which is epic. And I'm like, dude, we got to do videos about this. We have to explain, help our viewers learn some of your process. Because you, Pearson, lots of other people are doing videos. And any of these high level tips are super helpful.
Speaker: So, yeah, we're going to have some fun. My Swiss lathe parts catcher carousel magic 2000 device. The guy came by yesterday, Marcus came by and we started installing it. And someone went wrong with the Arduino, so he had to go home and get another one. And he'll be back today and we'll get it dialed in perfectly.
Speaker: It fits great. It looks great. It's going to be the coolest thing ever. And we're doing a video on that too. So it should be working today and I'm pumped. That's cool. That's awesome. You're going to love, we talked about metal quests, but they had their own DIY output trays for laser. You're going to love it.
Speaker: Ah, I can't wait. Sweet. And then the second guy we hired was, he's more going to be a shop floor kind of get all kinds of stuff done. This guy's teaching him to run the lapping machine, to do all kinds of deburring and straighten blades and he'll probably have his fingers in a lot of things until we find like the perfect fit, the perfect, you know, five or 10 tasks that he does every day.
Speaker: But he's been great. Started Monday. Awesome. And it's awesome. So we've got a solid team of eight now. And then. That's great.
Speaker: Yeah, things are good. Things are flowing. It's getting busier and cramped in there, but we're having a lot of fun. We're doing really good production. And last night as of, what, 8 p .m. or something? We have this Google script that pulls names for the Norseman list, our Maker's Choice list, and it broke last night.
Speaker: Oh, so I started getting lots and lots and lots of emails from people going, Oh, I got the email, but the link doesn't work. And then the script was like auto auto sending to everybody at 30 minute intervals. And I'm like, what just happened? Oh my gosh, something broke. Oh, that's so
Speaker: That's my, this morning is trying to figure out what on earth happened. Um, people are just getting, instead of the link to the URL, when they click on it, it just says undefined. And so something programmatically went wrong. I wonder if one of my programmers, like, I know he was changing some other stuff, so I wonder if he broke this as well. Um, was it at least easy to shut it down?
Speaker: Okay. Yeah, last night above midnight, I shut it down so that it wouldn't keep happening all night, which is fine. But yeah, some little unforeseen things. Yeah, sorry, that stinks. Yeah. That said, our buyer's choice system where we're basically emailing people a form, a private form,
Speaker: where they can choose, okay, I want honeycomb, I want it blue, I want bronze flex on it, I want purple screws, and a stonewash blade. That form is working so good.
Speaker: Great. So basically, we're making knives that we want, and they go into Maker's Choice. And then on top of that, we're adding Buyer's Choice a couple of day where customers get to make their choices. And guys are loving it. They're so excited to be able to be part of the process and actually pick what they want. And the system is flowing great for us. Order comes in, prints off the printer immediately.
Speaker: And then it flows through the shop. And then we email the person at the end and say, here's your knife. Time to pay. And it works great. The system works great. The printer works great. And yeah, it's awesome. Good. On that note, we had a pretty crummy experience with what we had thought would be our ERP solution.
Speaker: I'll keep it short, but yeah. Honestly, a lot of it goes down to the fact that our salesperson, I think they call it an account rep or some sort, was frankly
Speaker: Disinterested. Coming down to brass tacks, there were two issues with the software. Number one, some customization on the website using Odoo to host our e -commerce and be the front end, which makes it quite elegant as an integrated solution when it comes to inventory management, ordering products, SKUs, et cetera. That was an issue which we partially solved, but then the second issue was there's no option within Odoo to handle
Speaker: freight shipping or anything basically other than ground or parcel shipping. That would have been an issue for integrating with our freight companies, API for how we handle fixture plate sales. His answer for both of those was customization and they very much discourage customization. I understand their point, but I also think it's
Speaker: uh, doesn't just didn't rub. It came off very poorly to me and what they do to penalize you for customization is there's two options. Number one, you can have somebody write the code on your, their own, like an up worker, private person, but, um, oh, do upgrades their versions pretty often, like more than once a year sometimes. And there's no guarantees that, yeah.
Speaker: It'll work so you could be in a situation where it's totally unsupported and it could be a problem. So the better option is to use them to do it but then they charge you $5 per month per hour of customization time spent in perpetuity.
Speaker: So if they spent, and he estimated, and it's expensive to do period with them. So if like for the LTL freight integration, they thought maybe it would be somewhere between I think 20 and 40 hours or something, which is thousands of dollars. Then 20, if it was only 20 hours,
Speaker: hours on the low end, that would still be an extra $100 a month just to have them basically guaranteed to continue to support this going forward. And that just rubs me there. It's just kind of, yeah, so frustrating. I guess disappointing is the better word.
Speaker: It's a similar thing with Shopify because, um, so I'm having custom Google scripts written that read back and forth with shot of Shopify and can read information like tags or can change tags. Um, and I get the odd email every now and then from Shopify saying your API version is now becoming the legacy version. You need to upgrade to the newest one or else we're not sure if it's going to be cross compatible or whatever. And they're basically also saying, putting their hands up saying, I don't know if your script's going to work.
Speaker: with the new system, but the old system won't be supported anymore. Yeah, I do get a heads up, which is nice. So I just, a couple days ago, I updated to the new version. That might be the problem that I'm having right now. I'm not sure. So I got to dig into that a little bit.
Speaker: But it might be the case where Shopify changes the way they handle something, and then I have to go back into the script or get my programmers to update it so that it works properly again. So I'm always trying to put in little test systems into the script so that I can put my email in and make sure it works properly before I go hog wild on a bunch of customers. But yeah, programming, fun. Right. We'll see.
Speaker: I just think it was a lot more to do with when you have a sales guy, you know, keeping it honest and not, I guess maybe I'm, it's almost the opposite problem. You normally, the concern is they sell you the dream and you get in there and it doesn't really work like that. He was almost too honest the opposite way, but it was really just a, ah, arrogant's not the right word, but he was happy to see me leave Odoo, no longer pursue Odoo. I was kind of like, wow.
Speaker: Okay. Anyway, there's some other options out there, but when I think about my... So that kind of thing stresses me out if that's not clear. And so what I think I'll do now is you go back to your list of things that you think make your business better or makes you kind of happier and enjoying what you're doing and doing it better and so forth. And there's a lot of other things that we can be tackling right now and we'll come revisit ERP in the first quarter or something.
Speaker: Yeah, as long as you're able to manage what you're doing and you're not falling behind or losing track of stuff, then always try to find, even if they're just spreadsheet -based inventory systems or Kanban cards or something, just losing track of what's going on is the worst thing.
Speaker: You're like, oh man, I didn't realize we were totally out of paper towels or end mills or whatever. That sucks, because then it holds up production. And we still run into that more often than I'd like to admit. And trying to put systems in place to not do that. Yeah, I hear you. And we're doing fine on that is the answer. I think there's a scalable system that'll be much better, but we're fine for now.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. Which is the point. I like being able to say no because it doesn't make sense, not feel pressured that we've got to have a solution because we're so out of control. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: Even things like the air compressor, like, you know, we have to turn it off to do maintenance, you know, replace the fuses for like half an hour. But it kind of made us realize like a stark reality. If this thing blew up, we can't make parts for like a day or a week or something like that. That is a big problem. And like our size are bigger.
Speaker: would literally bleed money if you're down for a week. If that happened, we would have to buy another one today because we just can't be down. We were laughing about that ourselves. Luckily, our Home Depot is a mile away. We would literally go there by the biggest we have in the store for sale, which isn't going to be enough for all the machines, but it would be enough for at least two or three for sure. Bring it back here, hook it up right away, and it'd be fine.
Speaker: Yeah, it would be like $1 ,000 or whatever, and you'd be up and running same day. But it got us thinking, what's our future going to be? Are we going to need two screw compressors? One's a backup. Maybe you switch them back and forth every now and then just to keep them fresh and running. But I don't know. You don't need two, I don't think, at this point. Well, at Milterra, they had two because they needed their backup too. I mean, they've got 10 plus machines. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: So I don't know. Look at some point. I know that our archives are guys are like always in the area because they're always doing service as needed, quick and dirty, same day delivery kind of thing. So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: When I think about what our compressor will sell for used, I'm gonna guess, wild guess, that's gonna sell for between four and $5 ,000. That number makes you think, oh, I should just keep it for backup. But then it's like, okay, well, you do need to run it and maintain it and all that. I'd rather sell it and just know that if we ever have a compressor catastrophically fail, we'll just go buy a piston one for a couple of days while we get a screw one set here or something.
Speaker: Yeah. Run a hose to the shop next door. Yeah, exactly. Is your new shop have neighbors? Is it standalone? So nice. Yeah, totally standalone. Two buildings just to ourselves. No immediate neighbors and no direct neighbors either because there's like two trucking parking lots on either side. And there's like a house here and there as well.
Speaker: noise stays pretty much inside. So yeah, it's sweet. We're on our own. Cool. Sweet. Sweet. Anything else we have to do today? Today I got a bunch of running around to do kid stuff. Claire's going to be on TV. Oh, exciting. For school?
Speaker: No, Meg wrote and directed, and Clara starred in this ghost tour play at the historical manor that they volunteer at. Oh, cool. So she had like 15 people, including a bunch of kids. So they're just doing a quick TV spot about it and how great it was. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so that was great. So Clara gets to skip school for half a day and be on TV. It's exciting. But otherwise, I've got to fix the Maker's Choice list.
Speaker: I'm still battling with changes on switching to guide bushing on the Swiss. There's like parameter changes and stuff that have to be done that I didn't quite realize for bar changing and all that. So I'm on the last legs of that, and I should be able to have that nailed today. And then Marcus is coming back. We get the parts catcher 2000, um, working properly and a whole bunch of other stuff. Cool. Uh, I will see you next week.
Speaker: That sounds great. All right. Awesome. Take care, bud. Have a good week. OK, bye.
