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#216 - Renishaw Probe Replacements, Selling more SAGA pens, Swiss Lathes, Willemin, & Area 419 Shop Tour
224 Plays5 years ago
TOPICS:
- SMW and Grimsmo in limbo between the lone bootstrapper and leader of a team
- Plurality of Swisses. Saunders and Grimsmo discuss production volume, process reliability, and other decision making factors for buying new CNC lathes
- I'm Nak sure if I need a Willemin or Nak. Grimsmo and Saunders debate about whether or not the Nak should be let go in favor of a Willemin Mill Turn
- Sourcing centerless ground 17-4 Stainless
- Bar feeders & Automation
- Area 419 Tour of the new shop gets Saunders dreaming big. The tour is set to premiere on YouTube on Monday, April 19th!
- GK products like the SAGA, Norseman, and Rask increase in demand
- Superordinate Shop Goals - Giving the team a unified vision
- Renishaw Probe Replacements = Worth It!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Business and Machining Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business and Machining episode 216. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. And this is the podcast where we chat every week about business and life and everything we got going on and crazy growth and experiences and memories and all kinds of stuff. What's on your mind this week? Everything.
00:00:22
Speaker
Um, growth, I guess, you know, new machines, new, um, better processes, better, uh, I was thinking like my job here, I want to make everything better, faster and easier for everybody here. Um,
00:00:42
Speaker
And we do that. We pick away at that on a constant basis. And you forget how far you've come until you think, like, remember how we used to do that like five years ago? It was so painful. And now that process, we don't even think about it. What do you mean? I like the way we used to clamp things or mill things or polish things or heat treat things or at least to send out various processes. Now we control them ourselves.
Balancing Personal Growth and Business Perceptions
00:01:04
Speaker
And
00:01:05
Speaker
You forget how far we've come. The flaw in that logic is in five years from now, you'll look back.
00:01:15
Speaker
I know. Yep. That's what makes you realize you got to stop and smile. It is the journey. Yep. And I get those little benchmarks moments when I had a family member come by the shop yesterday and I showed him around. He's never been here. He never went to the old shop. I haven't seen him in years. I saw him briefly, but he doesn't know much about my business.
00:01:41
Speaker
I got to show him around and he was like, my head is spinning. I don't even know. You're nuts. Yeah. Do you still think of yourself though as John Grooms or the individual who's still trying to make it like
00:01:59
Speaker
I don't like, you know, like an extension of those days where it was just you and the tormach in the garage. There's a big part of me that's still stuck there. And then there's a growing part of me that is filling my shoes, you know, the role that we have here and trying to be that person that I need to be to take the company where I
Machinery Capabilities and Production Choices
00:02:20
Speaker
want to take it. So it's it's a cool balance. Yeah, I just think of it.
00:02:25
Speaker
I don't think of it as the answer, but when we have somebody come into the shop, it could be a vendor, an intern, an interviewee. I think of it as, hey, we're new, young, just getting started. And it's not that anymore. Right, right. You're established. It's wonderful. I don't know that our, at least one of our
00:02:52
Speaker
uh, machine distributors for the Swiss lays. I don't know that they really took us super seriously. Um, it's interesting because I kind of right out the bat was like, we are well aware that in no way do our volumes justify Swiss. Like that's not what this is about. It's about building what you just said. It's a process that could potentially allow us. We're now realizing put to put multiple parts on it and look, maybe, maybe we don't need it. I recognize that that's
00:03:19
Speaker
This is an interesting situation because we are able to make all of these parts acceptably right now with in-house equipment. But the idea is over time, this is the right machine tool with the right capabilities, processes, control options, tooling. Just this idea of this little micro machine that's super thermally consistent and higher finishes and tolerances versus what we've got now, which is this multi-purpose truck.
00:03:47
Speaker
I still think about that ST20Y every time it moves two feet back to rotate a multi-hundred pound turret when we're doing, I consider it small detail work, it's certainly nothing like what you do, but nevertheless. It's the same thing with our Nakamura. A truck is a really good analogy. It's a nice truck. It's like a fancy truck. I don't know many trucks, but yeah, it's not a little sports car riding on rails kind of thing.
00:04:12
Speaker
Are you still chewing on a plurality of Swishish? Swishish is. I think we definitely need a second Swiss. Timing is pull the trigger is the question. I'm pretty happy with the decision to get the bigger version. So we have the 13 mil, so we'd get the 26 mil.
00:04:36
Speaker
So we'd have two and we can do one with does up to half inch the other does up to an inch that'll cover tons of work for us. We've got three or four parts we'd put on it immediately and it would just it would help with everything. Our knife volumes are going up so screws and pivots and everything is going up our pen volumes like it makes total sense. What to do with the Nakamura is the current question. And it's like one of those weird things where you like
00:05:01
Speaker
You start tuning on an idea and then it comes up more and more. People bring it up to you. I start getting emails from machinery sales guys. Yesterday, this random guy I never talked to before, he emails me and he's like, yeah, do you have any machinery you're going to be selling? And I'm like, are you reading my mind? Like, stop. Leave me alone. Right, right. Tornos marketing guy emailed me. I just want to show you new products. And I'm like, dude.
00:05:27
Speaker
Right. So funny. Yeah. And then funniest thing, I was emailing with one of the guys, I think I met him either at your open house or at Tormach open house or something, Mariah Manufacturing. Eaton, I think is his name. He DM me out of the blue and he's like, so how do you like your Nakamura? You know, the sales guy came by, I was really thinking about getting one. And I joked, I was like, you want to buy mine? LOL. And he's like, yeah. Right.
00:05:57
Speaker
No, John, I mean. It's silly how, I don't know. It's like you gotta be careful what you wish for, because it can happen very quickly. So I don't know. I don't know what the plan is. Definitely Swiss whenever it's right. We need the Nakamura until we have another solution for our saga clip. Even if we got a second Swiss tomorrow, the Nakamura would be dedicated to pocket clips. It'd be great.
00:06:26
Speaker
we'd increase our output 25% easily just by taking the other work off that machine. What's wrong? I think the challenge,
Decision-Making Challenges in Equipment Investment
00:06:35
Speaker
which is a great challenge coming off of Friday's visit to area 419 to you, is why are you overthinking it? I don't know.
00:06:44
Speaker
I'm allowing myself to, I guess. Yes. Well, treat your own... I mean, John, you're a smart guy. You're very analytical, but that's not an endless resource. No, no. Look, it's capital constraint. It's real estate constraint in your shop, but does it look like a stable... You know whether you want to share it publicly or not. You know what it feels like to have that second Swiss and keep the knock or bring it online and then ditch the knock.
00:07:12
Speaker
If I ditch the knock, I need another solution. Either I put the clips on the current, or I get a Willeman. Oh my God. Right? I got to sit down. And clips on the current is a very tempting idea, but we might not actually be able to make more on the current than we make on the knock right now. Yeah. Round numbers, the knock new was half the price of a Willy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Don't do that, John.
00:07:41
Speaker
It's a good solution to make those clips, really good solution. If the NOC only made clips though, would it not allow you to go spend a year making money? Maybe, but it would top out at about 200. I don't even think we can make 300 clips a month. So sell 300 pens a month for a year. Yeah, but we want to do more.
00:08:06
Speaker
This is where my grandpa chimes in and just like, okay, this is me, you know, synthetically creating a conversation as between me and him when he's like, okay, kid, you know, you think you're doing fine, go do fine for six months and come back to me.
00:08:21
Speaker
Show me you sold 300 pens for, if you sell 300 pens for six months, John, you can buy a Wilhelmin, right? I mean- We did about 220 this month. Good for you. Struggling, like struggling to do that. It's like it was a push. Yeah. It's fantastic.
00:08:39
Speaker
But it's like, we are capped. We need more leads. Oh, my god. Well, then really? It's not a problem. Well, then the lower risk, higher certainty thing is to get the Swiss first, let the knock do its thing, and then? That's probably what's going to happen for now. Yeah, for sure. And then I think, what's after that? What's next? As the owner, visionary, you've got to plan ahead. You've got to think, what's six months down the line? Sometimes you turn your brain off and just work.
00:09:07
Speaker
We've had periods of that, but now I'm just thinking, what is the better solution for the clips? Either it's on the current, or we get a different layer that can do them better. I don't think I want to put them on the Swiss. Tell me, I'm asking, not challenging, why is the Wilhelmin a right machine for clips? Milling spindle is the big one.
00:09:33
Speaker
gets you, there's a ton of milling on the clips right now, and the Nakamura is struggling to do a good job. Right. Because just the way the live tool bearings are on a live tool laid, they're so small and close together. There's a lot of chatter. There's a lot of RPM limits, things like that. The clip is a combination of turning and lots of milling.
00:09:54
Speaker
I just think I can make them on a current, but I would have to cut the bars. I'd have to dovetail the bars. I'd have to load them once, machine up one, and then load them again and machine up two. That's four operations. Whereas on a Willimon, it would be one and done, and they'd spit out perfect. With a bar feeder. With a bar feeder.
00:10:11
Speaker
Okay, so take a piece of paper and write down current and then immediately cross it out. I know. Don't put them on the current. Don't spend any time. It's possible, but the current needs to make knives. I could run that thing. I will be running that thing 18, 20 hours a day making knives or more. No, this is great. It's good to process these ideas. But you want a Wilhelmin with a milling spindle even over a different mill because it's got the turning.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah, because it can do the turning and the milling really well. Super tight tolerance. And it's got really interesting pick-off methods. So it's got the vice where you can actually hold the part and do the milling and then transfer the part. And CJ has the UR robot that can come in and grab it. Or you can get the Willemond with an actual sub-spindle as well as the vice.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yes. And yeah, it's so cool. I know. It's amazing. He, he messaged me cause I'd made some sort of a joke about, man, what I really need is a five axis machine that has a temporary tail stock. We can come in and stabilize the part. And he's like, Oh, you mean like a Wilhelmin? Yeah.
00:11:23
Speaker
Really cool. Yeah. So it's an interesting place to be in, because we have a product that sells very well, and we're production limited. And what's one of the next steps? Another Swiss makes a lot of sense. It feels weird to spend north of half a million dollars on a lathe just to make a pen clip. On the Willman. On the Willman, yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. However, it's a cash cow. Yeah. The pens are great. Yeah. Good.
00:11:54
Speaker
One step at a time. Yeah, exactly.
Machine Features and Problem-Solving Discussions
00:11:56
Speaker
Here's the other funny thing. We've been talking about some growth, which, as usual, just had a whole pile of cash for breakfast this morning. Oh, yeah. And it's interesting, because one machine tool we're looking at is basically like, oh, they're in stock. Send a PO. The other one, they're like, ah, it's like six months lead time right now. So don't forget about that, John. Yeah. Are we talking big things on your plate, or big machines or small machines?
00:12:23
Speaker
maybe okay maybe we're just chewing
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like the lead time is weird, because when I ordered the Kern, they're like, yeah, it'll be like six to eight months. And I'm like, no, I want it now. I'm impatient. I don't have anywhere to put it, but I still want it now. And with the Kern, because of timing and moving the shop and renovating and stuff, the timing worked perfectly. But today, if I bought another machine, like if I bought a Wilhelmin, and they're like, yeah, it'll be there at eight months, I'll be like, sorry, I want it tomorrow.
00:12:54
Speaker
Those are very likely longer. I don't know the Wilhelmin product line at all, but I would suspect the majority of those machines have some amount of customization, tool changers. Yeah, maybe. I don't know if they keep inventory or not. I know I'm following this one medical manufacturer, Tom's Corp, and they have tons of Wilhelmin's, and they're like, yeah, we just ordered seven more.
00:13:20
Speaker
But that's a question. The tornos, however, I'm pretty sure they keep stock regularly. Got it. And customization is after the fact. Although I haven't asked. It's like I'm afraid to ask if there's stock of tornos, because then I'd just be like, OK. 100% hear you, but separate the personal John from the leader. Business John needs his information. He needs to know to make an educated decision. Yeah.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah. Rock and roll. Yeah. It's exciting to think about. Yeah, it is. Would you put it next to the... Because the Swiss shops that I've seen that have a plurality of Swiss machines usually have them back and forth to each other? Yeah. I've played with both layouts. I haven't decided on which. Because if you put them back face to face, you'd have a little cell where you have two machines and it's kind of beautiful. It's a nice setup.
00:14:18
Speaker
Logistically, with our tight layout, it might work better to mirror them or sequentialize them. They're side-by-side identical layouts. Yeah. Just one and then moved down to the next. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah, like copy, paste, shift over 12 inches or 12 feet. You have a 12-foot bar feeder? Six-foot. Oh. Yeah, which is fine. I'm totally fine with six-foot. Okay.
00:14:47
Speaker
Even though you have the space? We didn't have the space when I ordered that Swiss in the old shop. I always forget that you actually had that in the old shop, right? Yeah. Well, even in this shop, there's two feet between the end of the bar feeder and the wall. Got it. So 12 foot would have been weird. But that remnant cost is not nothing. I don't even think about it. You're right. It's not something. It's not nothing, but I don't think about it. I got a 9 inch remnant out of a 72 inch bar.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yeah, look, I hear you. Don't overanalyze it, but don't also be close-minded. I mean, if you're doing it again, it seems like what makes the most sense on ... If you can't fit a 12-foot bar feeder in your new shop, good grief. Not. It'd be weird. Our shop's narrow and long, and we've put everything narrow-wise. Okay. Fair enough.
00:15:40
Speaker
Remind me what you have to do to turn your bars down? On the 13 millimeter Swiss, if I want to run a half inch bar, I just have to turn a step on the end. Down to three-eighths. Only for the big bars. If that happened to move over to the 26 and that whole thing would go away. Exactly. That would not be a thing. Then all bars need to be chamfered and deburred on the ends, like a big halfway down chamfer.
00:16:04
Speaker
I've heard of that. I've seen guys with the belt sander just roll it on. Yeah. Sometimes you can buy bars that are turned already that are like nicely done. And like, those are the greatest ones because you just put them in the machine and go. Let's see, I know you source titanium. Do you source, otherwise you just tie in stainless for your Swiss? 17.4 stainless.
00:16:26
Speaker
And you buy that ground? Yep, by its centerless ground. Can I ask who? Perriman is a really good source for titanium. We just got an order from Boston Centerless. Yeah. They sell all kinds of stuff. Yeah, so I just got a quote from. Yeah. So you can spec the grind. Yeah, the tolerance, like 2 tenths total round is plus or minus 5 tenths is cheaper.
00:16:50
Speaker
and it depends on the tolerance. The tighter you want, it costs more, but your parts could be better. Got it. You can run a guide bushing tighter.
00:17:01
Speaker
That's what I was going to say because I've seen in researching it and we've had some awesome input from viewers saying, hey, look, don't kid yourself. It's a 20-minute process to fiddle with the guide bushing to get it right. Sometimes. We could probably do it in five in a normal day. What's your go-to spec or what's the widest spec you look for on centerless ground? Diameter.
00:17:25
Speaker
The titanium, I'm buying the plus or minus two-tenths, just standard. And the 17.4, we're buying plus or minus five. And I don't notice a difference. I don't think about it. Five-tenths. Five-tenths, yeah. Yeah. OK, which is pretty wide, I think. Yeah. You measure it with a mic across the whole thing, and you're still seeing two-tenths. Yeah, right. But the worry is if the bar gets fatter in the middle and you have your guide bushing adjusted for the smaller section, you'll stall.
00:17:52
Speaker
Pierre was here till about 6 last night and left the lay of the running and the Swiss. And he said, OK, everything's going good. I'm going to leave it now. And it alarmed out after about an hour, because something got stuck. Not a big deal, but something just said, I slipped. I don't know what happened. So I'm like, do I fix it or do I just go home? And he can see the alarm in the morning, learn from it. So I did that. Just let him do it. But yeah, so every now and then, something like,
00:18:21
Speaker
the call it slips or the guide bushing is too tight or blah, blah, blah. You learn. Seems like there could be, there's a tour we put off because of COVID called Arnold Gage down in Cincinnati, which I'm super excited to go down because they do these really cool in process high precision automation measurement systems. And it seems like from what I've just seen talking to their owner and watching their site or looking at their website, it seems like it would be
00:18:49
Speaker
easy. I don't know about the cost, but easy to put in a non-contact laser measuring system that could make sure the bar doesn't change before. I'm not sure what it's going to do other than the same. It's not like it can correct it. If the machine's already pausing, perhaps that's of no value, but
00:19:05
Speaker
I know what some guys do is they will mic every bar in two or three places and match them in the bar feeder so that this is 25000 and this is 24998 so that you have a consistent run.
00:19:21
Speaker
so you can rely on the guide bushing tightness. So if you're loading five bars, mic them all to make sure from your batch of inventory, you're using the same diameter five bars in the one setup. But if the first bar is 250 and the next one is a tenth or two under, there's nothing you can do about that, right? Under is fine, but over is different. Got it. So they make sure the fattest one's first. Yeah. Or if you're shooting like a micron of tolerance,
00:19:51
Speaker
you don't want that variation at all. You can't do any sort of machine control adjustment on the guide bushing. No. There are automatic guide bushings I've heard of, but I don't know much about them. Sounds fancy. I love it. It's like the Okamoto with the automatic wheel balancer. Yeah. It's like things that just make sense, but add 20% to the cost or something like that. Totally.
00:20:21
Speaker
So when we started looking at the Swiss, we realized again, that there's a couple really well suited parts for it beyond what we originally thought. One of the parts that I don't think makes sense, but I've been trying to kind of explore is the reversible
00:20:37
Speaker
insert for our mod vice. So it's a four inch long part, which is what, a hundred millimeters and half inch tall, or excuse me, half inch wide. So 13 millimeters and five sixteenths thick. So 10 millimeters or something. So it's square ish rectangular. Yeah. Okay. Um, 0.3 by 0.5 by four inches long. Okay.
00:20:59
Speaker
And it has work on all six sides. All the two ends are just based of some sort. So it could be done on just the four sides along the rectangle. So we make them like anybody I think would make these parts, which is two ops on a mill. And that's fine. But this idea of bar feeding it
00:21:22
Speaker
And, you know, I mean, I've just been like going all over the place. Can you pinch mill it? Can you do an op one on a Swiss that makes it higher volume and easier up to somewhere else? Can we get it all done? But the round bar is cheaper. So it's and it feeds well like automation wise. But I just don't think from what I've seen a four inch long part with even the larger cross section of point five inches is eight times the smaller cross section is even more.
00:21:50
Speaker
And if we inchworm it out or whatever they call that, I think that's going to introduce some other things I don't like. That's a lot of milling. I was complaining about the Nakamura Live tools. On the Swiss, they're even noodlier. Oh, really? They're tiny. And they're fine. I put eighth inch tools in there, and I get a good finish. But if I'm doing any roughing or wanted to look beautiful under a microscope, there's not so much run out, but it's a gear train.
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah. That's a good point. There's vibration. There's noise. And they're kind of powerful, but I don't know. Your part sounds like very long and a lot of milling, like milling on four sides. I'm not saying it's impossible, but two ops on a mill sounds pretty cakewalk. Or make a fixture.
00:22:42
Speaker
Fix your Fridays for it, you know? Yeah, I don't know. We have one for sure. And it's kind of that like, am I a genius? Or is this something I need to just to put the kibosh on?
Innovations and Insights from Area 419
00:22:52
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure it's just to put the kibosh on it because it's not the right, you know, if it were half that like two inches. In fact, we may change actually, we could change the product easily because there's merit to having to be a smaller one. And then all of a sudden, wait a minute here, this could make sense. It would make more sense on your ST in that method, wouldn't it?
00:23:11
Speaker
Well, we need potentially quite a few driven tools. That's the kind of catch. Yeah, OK. I'll chew on it. It's kind of one of those, wait a minute, here. Ultimately, you're solving a problem that doesn't really exist. It's fun to think about. It is fun. Yep. And I've seen some of the ways they make these crazy aspect ratios, Swiss parts, or whatever you call it, length. It either is super cool. Yeah, like pinch turning on both sides, or pinch milling, and the whole thing's like 20 inches long, the part coming out. It just keeps feeding and feeding.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I never thought about this. Airy409 has an NTX. That's the Maury B-axis mill turn. Such a cool machine when it's running. Hashtag Lockwood. But they can pinch turn on it.
00:24:00
Speaker
Because they have an upper and a lower turret. They have a upper spindle, like the B-axis, and then a lower turret, which is so cool. That's cool. Right? That's a big machine, right? Yes, it's a large-ish footprint, given the work envelope.
00:24:18
Speaker
They're making muzzle brakes on it, which are a little bit bigger than the size of your thumb. Everything about a muzzle brake for that machine is clicking. You've got OD threading, ID work, five-axis surfacing and contouring and chamfering, turning, real milling with a real milling, spindle through spindle drilling, sub-spindle work. It's just- It's just the massively big brother to a Willaman. Yeah, exactly. Right.
00:24:48
Speaker
So, that was really cool. Again, they're just crushing it on actually, they got that machine in, they've got it cammed up, they've got parts they don't approve out, run an aluminum, but that's what's so addicting is having a proper milling spindle. It's a Capto C4, I think.
00:25:07
Speaker
but with the ability to have, not infinite, but multiple hundreds or dozens of tool changes which can hold proper milling tools, proper turning tools, y-axis parting, and then did you see the Instagram photo with the Kapto spindle mounted tool probe? Oh, I didn't put that two together. Right?
00:25:33
Speaker
Okay, yeah, no, no, it's clicking. Mind blown. Yeah. So there's no good way to touch off the turret tooling because the turret doesn't move in a way that would get it close to wherever it
00:25:44
Speaker
Got it. It would be. So the tool changer, if anybody's trying to visualize this, just like on a Haas or your NOC, when the tool probe deploys, it's a little square that's rigidly mounted to the machine frame. Well, that doesn't work in the NTX. So they have the same version of that tool in a cap-do spindle that the tool, the B-axis grabs and comes down and does your tool, turret tool offsets. That's incredible.
00:26:10
Speaker
Yeah, I saw his post and he said, should I spin this? How fast should I spin it? And I was like, haha. And then I moved on and I didn't, it didn't understand. It didn't click what it was for. Yeah. Um, okay. That makes sense.
00:26:22
Speaker
Cool, right? Keep in mind on my Nakamura, the tool probe is manual. You have to take the flap off. You have to grab it out of the box and you have to put it in, click it, and then manually touch off your tool, which is fine, but not as cool. Yeah, it's not fine. I would be disappointed. Yeah. Okay. So any more juice you want to share on your tour last week?
00:26:45
Speaker
It was great. I have so much respect for what he's doing. He's soft spoken and generally quiet, which I like. He's not loud, he's not brash, he's not pounding his own chest. Darn it, it's pretty impressive. It's stuff that
00:27:04
Speaker
I think he's good at it. He thought they just bought a bunch of pallet racking and he did what I've never heard anybody else do. He's like, oh yeah, I don't want that ugly orange pallet racking. He's like, I had it all powder coated to match our black and gray. And it's just like, not only is it not being a bootstrapper, and look, they're making money. So it fits in the scope of what they're doing. It's like the perfect example of forethought and execution.
00:27:31
Speaker
Bingo. Right. Yeah. Right. Super cool. We're going to hustle and get that video edited, and the idea is we're going to release it for their April 19th virtual open house thing.
00:27:48
Speaker
So look for the tour then. It was the longest single, well, it wasn't quite a single tape. We actually had to stop, I think due to lactic acid buildup in the camera arm, but two hours and 20 minutes of straight recording. Yes. Just amazing. Just at all.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah. And God bless. One of the best things I think YouTube has done is timestamp so we can timestamp it by machine or topic. But I think what I think about is how is that impacting me and how can I help you or other people? And I start thinking about how it could apply to us and I immediately start
00:28:27
Speaker
reigning myself in or playing devil's advocate or saying no, and that's not what you should do. There's always time to say no later, but you can let yourself have fun in your own head planning. The honest answer is what I thought about was we should build a building.
00:28:45
Speaker
So Saunders Machine Works is at the point of almost outgrowing its space. I believe in what we're doing. We have a great product at a reasonable price that has a solid functionality and use, and we are going to grow and scale. We are going to need more equipment, better processes, ways to do it. It's not that we need abundantly more amount of space. It's that
00:29:08
Speaker
one of the hard things would be correcting all the things I'd like to correct about our space. Now, keep in mind, this is all the fun theoretical conversation. Things that jump out to me, the Area 419 did, they basically tool up in a shop immediately versus what most people do, which is buy machines over the course of months or years. All of the conduit, all the air, all the water lines are run correctly. The floor is nice and hasn't been machine moved around marks.
00:29:36
Speaker
They did an undercoating of black, which makes it look good. They've got acoustical treatments in the room. They've got the ventilation, the circulation, the airflow, the roll-up doors that are automatic. They've got the racking in place.
Shop Space Considerations and Growth Challenges
00:29:49
Speaker
They've got a concrete pad outside, which if you're having a lot of freight trucks come and go, concrete is significantly nicer than asphalt for longevity.
00:29:57
Speaker
And they've got things that again are just going to be impossible or difficult to retroactively do it would be frankly incredibly expensive to have all of our electrical Ethernet water all that rerun and kind of corrected and Yeah, all that stuff if you start playing devil's advocate for number one building a building would be expensive and number two is
00:30:23
Speaker
A lot of that stuff is good and valuable, but not necessarily directly correlated to your ability to do what you need to do. Right. How do you want to run your company and not just how do you want to make money? Yeah, exactly. It's funny because we're in a similar boat. We've been renting this shop for the past 15 months or so. We're investigating buying the building. It's been on our mind the whole time and financially it's a great
00:30:52
Speaker
decision, so we're not spending a lot of money on rent, just peeing down the drain. Are we going to outgrow this building? I'm partially afraid to buy it if we're going to outgrow it in a year or two and need something bigger. I have no appreciation for what your space really looks like or how full it is. It's getting full. Yeah.
00:31:16
Speaker
One of the big differences, Humbly said, is that we make big parts and you make small parts. So you could add a second current if you need that quite close. Don't do more just for the sake of more. You know what I mean? For sure. You're not using forklifts to unload and load parts. How big is your actual shop square feet? 9,000 square feet. The CNC floor? Three or four. Yeah.
00:31:43
Speaker
I could see you outgrowing that, John. You have that much office mix in there? Yeah. Got it. And there's no other half of the building that you don't have access to right now. Correct. Yeah, we have two buildings and we have access to all of it. Got it.
00:31:58
Speaker
It's fun problems to think about. I'm glad I have these challenges, not like how to make money. Yes, right. Well, that's a tough one though, John. Yeah, it's interesting. So yeah, we're looking into buying the place. I mean, it's a whole other conversation for another time, but is it financially worth it to buy it if you're only going to have it for two years kind of thing? I got to think about it. Or we keep it forever.
00:32:25
Speaker
you know, and lease it be landowners kind of thing and then build the next place. Keep this one. I don't know. Yeah.
00:32:33
Speaker
Yeah. I certainly advocate owning your shop, but not for the reasons you may think. It's more of a personal reason about the willingness to invest in it. But you and no machine shop is ultimately in the real estate business. So from a pure operating standpoint, go do what you need to do, which is make parts, make money that way, and keep that flexibility. But
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah. Anyway, it was an awesome tour. It was rejuvenating. It was nice to travel again with obviously the last year of world being different. It's all those little quirky things you see that you don't pick up until you see how the folks are doing out there. It's all the little things that nobody thinks to share or talk about their business.
00:33:17
Speaker
So you can walk into area 419 and be like, whoa, what is that? How did you do that? And he would never post a picture of that just because it's whatever. It's normal. It's the conduit for his electrical. And you're like, no, I want to know. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. Which is fun. It truly is. That's awesome.
00:33:33
Speaker
Yeah. A totally, totally random win is, and stop me if I mentioned it, but we bought a new pallet jack that has a built-in digital waste scale. You mentioned it last week. Yeah. OK. Do you love it? Yeah, I've actually never used it. But yes. Solves, it's another good pallet jack, which is nice. And it's so great. Cool. Just, yes. It's neat to buy things and never touch them, but see the other guys happy with them. Yeah.
00:34:02
Speaker
I've got some good news. March, today's the end of March, and it has been our biggest sales month and production month by far, which is fantastic. I'm trying to think of
00:34:16
Speaker
what exactly led to it and why everything's just clicking and why everything's great. Part of it is a lot of things are finally coming together. In the past three months, we've hired three new people and everybody's really jiving together now and so that's paying for itself now, like great decisions. But the other thing that I started doing two months ago is, I'll show you a picture, shop goals.
00:34:44
Speaker
I can't really see it. No. Yeah. Oh, we got newer. Okay. So anyway, a piece of printed paper with, I've got, I don't know, eight goals on here. So shop goals for March, 2021. And I post it on the door in the shop. Everybody sees it every day and it kind of gives you a benchmark for like this month. These are the extra things on top of normal production that we want to accomplish. And
00:35:09
Speaker
The first month, February, we did most of it. I was able to completely cross off about half of them and get huge progress on the other half.
Effective Goal Setting and Team Empowerment
00:35:17
Speaker
But this month, I mean, things like add a second pattern to the Rask, did it, work on our website scripts a lot, did it, work on these special 4000 knives, did it. Norseman parts on the Kern done, Norseman lock bar inserts on the Kern done.
00:35:33
Speaker
Fraser and John to post on Instagram every day, done. Five videos published, done. 200 pens finished and track them daily. We're at 220. 120 Norsemen, we're at 135. And 40 rasks, we're at 24 or something. That's amazing. Yeah.
00:35:53
Speaker
So it's like, it's like you said, it's goal setting, but it's it ties everybody together. And I could feel it throughout the month. Everybody use that as gospel. And they're like, if we're going to hit 200 pens this month, we will have to do this, this, this and this. And they did.
00:36:10
Speaker
And a lot of that work was me programming or kerning or something, fixing problems. So that focused me for the month as well. If I'm going to have this done by the end of the month, if we're going to post five videos, we got to do one a week and two one week. And it really helped streamline and straighten the month for us.
00:36:32
Speaker
And April starts tomorrow, and I have one or two ideas for what I need to put on, but I'll figure it out today or tomorrow. But I'll make April's goals, and it helps grow the company. It helps focus everybody. Is it sustainable?
00:36:49
Speaker
I think so. There's always new stuff. There's always weird things. We always want to do a new pattern or a new product or a new tweak or fix that thing that we haven't had time to fix in forever. Put it on the list.
00:37:04
Speaker
We love the sort of public side of what we do with YouTube because 12 years ago, we wanted to pay it forward with what we were learning. YouTube has massively changed at this point about the motives and reasons to why people post. But we had that discipline of posting regularly just because it just was a discipline I self-imposed. But at some point, it's kind of like, are you doing it? That's what strikes me as like, holy cow, John, you got a lot on your plate. Yeah.
00:37:35
Speaker
Fair enough. Those are only the big goals. All the micro goals I do every single day that I cross off my list. It just gets done. It feels like progress every single day. It feels amazing. Good. Good. Good. Well, I will keep pushing the idea though of your biggest to-do list is getting rid of your to-do list.
00:37:55
Speaker
Um, having the, all the little things I've handed off, even yesterday, I was like, I should have somebody else do this. I was like, ah, I only have to do it once a month. It's not that hard.
Addressing Equipment Reliability and Maintenance
00:38:04
Speaker
But there's always little quirks that are going to be hard to teach. And I started rationalizing and no, just get it off your plate, John.
00:38:14
Speaker
And even sometimes on my daily list is like, get this off my plate. It's a task that has to get done that teach this person how to do this so that they are powered to do it and get it done. But otherwise, I'm just going to keep doing it once a month. Yeah. Cool. Good for you. Yeah, it's fun. That's awesome. That's really good. What do you do today?
00:38:36
Speaker
I came into the shop this morning and the Kern crashed last night. Minor, just a little, I don't exactly know what happened because I came in for the podcast. But yeah, not a big deal. I think it did something weird. I looked at a couple numbers and I'm like, everything looks fine, right offset, right program. So I'm not sure what went wrong yet.
00:38:59
Speaker
But something just overloaded and alarmed out. Is the spindle in a fixture right now buried or anything? Not buried, but it touched it in the wrong way. And I'm not worried about anything mechanical, but more worried about what happened. And then I'll do a full diagnostic and figure out what.
00:39:19
Speaker
what went wrong. Whether I called the wrong program or the program I loaded was not good anymore or something. I'm pretty confident that everything should be fine.
00:39:31
Speaker
Got it. But yeah, it's just kind of weird. I've had bumps on various machines that it's like soul crushing. This one's like, what? What is happening? I was watching a Swiss demo video about using the, once you have a program loaded, you can jog through it by using the jog handle. Yeah, I think citizens have that. Mine does not have that. It seems cool. It looks pretty cool, yeah. Yeah, it seems cool. Not as relevant for current, I guess.
00:40:01
Speaker
This probably happened at our six and a half of a five pilot night run. Got it. All programs that have run before? Yeah. What the heck?
00:40:10
Speaker
Yeah. So it ran the other four pallets just fine. And I've ran this program before in this vice. Like, I'm curious to find the cause because I just want to know what it is. Like, what did I do wrong? I don't know. Is it the wrong tool? Did it not? I don't know. Um, yeah, cause it's a, it's not like I posted the program last night and just ran it with my eyes closed. Like it's in memory. It's been there for awhile.
00:40:34
Speaker
I've ran a couple of them. I'm curious to figure it out. I don't remember if we closed the loop on our Renishaw story, but we got the replacement table probe. I still don't understand it because that table probe wouldn't work, but it would boot up when it turned on. It showed the correct light sequence, which in theory shows that it's alive and well. But again, swap table probes, which worked, and then the new one works fine. It's kind of like, why does this old one
00:41:03
Speaker
not work when it shows that it should. You don't want to spend $1,200 for no reason, but it's also like, okay, I mean, six-year-old probe, the probability of me pursuing any outcome that absolves the need to spend the money is zero. The intellectual side of me has to get shut down and just say,
Oil vs. Coolant: Production Quality Debate
00:41:22
Speaker
move on.
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. On that note, because I'm pretty sure I mentioned on the podcast last week, I bumped the spindle probe on the Maury. So I contacted Renish.Canada. They're great. 1300 Canadian, gets you a full replacement.
00:41:38
Speaker
and even the advanced replacement that you were talking about. Yeah. So the new one should be here today or tomorrow. Awesome. And ours is still working fine, but I'm happy with the decision to get the new one. And then we send the old one back, and they'll rebuild it and give it to somebody else. Actually, great to know, because I think you have the OMP 60, which is a higher quality, more expensive version. Anyway, yeah. Sounds like it's effectively the same price. And your table probe was $1,200?
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah. So is that like their blanket fees? I think so, yeah. Which is great. I mean, what a great concept for their company. Like if you pancake your probe, your $5,000 to $10,000 probe, we'll give you a new one for $1,200 or rebuilt one. Right. And then give us your parts. And if we can use any of them for the next guy, we will.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, I actually would love to know if there's ... I think they're a very profitable company, good on them because that's execution at its finest, but I suspect they probably just sweep those things into a trash can. It's basically a subsidized insurance policy. Yeah, I guess. Ours is fine except for one end cap, and if they could inspect the whole thing and maybe replace the circuit board so it's brand new or whatever, but there's a lot of good parts in ours.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, I want to ask you, you run oil on your Swiss, but that's the only machine. Correct. You were unwilling to do it in the current because you don't like oil for just being yucky on parts? Very much. As a volume thing with big fixtures and big lots of tools and things like that, the oil would get everywhere.
00:43:13
Speaker
Got it. On the Swiss, it's fine. It's self-contained. The parts are coming off oily, but they're tiny little parts. It's fine. And the next Swiss will be oil. I was thinking this morning, if I did get a Wilhelmin, would I run oil or coolant? And that's still up for debate. I don't know. I don't know the answer yet. CJ's oil, right? CJ's oil. And he seems happy with it. He's had no leaks or whatever. But is a Wilhelmin like a Swiss where you have to have some amount of oil from the lubrication system? I don't think so.
00:43:38
Speaker
Okay, interesting. There are Swisses that run on coolant too. Like the DMG Morey Swiss turn, whatever they call it, can run oil or coolant. Got it. Like the factory allows it is what I'm saying.
00:43:54
Speaker
The benefits are real. I mean, the hassle and yuckiness is real, but tool life and finishes are like no joke. And so we've been chewing on that idea. If we got another vertical, would we be willing to run oil? And you dumb question, but you run through spindle coolant oil then in the... Yeah, it must be a different style.
00:44:16
Speaker
The way you build a through spindle coolant pump and system for oil has to be different than coolant because it's such a different style and viscosity
Concluding Remarks and Future Plans
00:44:24
Speaker
and weight, right? Yeah, we've got a Chip Blaster 2000 PSI coolant pump system. That's insane. Yes, insane. I mean, I'm only getting 1800 PSI out the nozzle. My God. Cut your hand off. You'd think so, but it's not that... It just looks like a stream of oil coming out. I don't know. That's crazy. It doesn't look like it's going to eat paint off or anything.
00:44:46
Speaker
Yeah, nuts. It's nuts. Got it. Sweet. Yeah. Cool. You got anything else? I don't think so. Have a good week. Yeah, you do. I'll see you next week. All right, man. Take care. Bye.