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#363 Loneliness in entrepreneurship
578 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- Loneliness in entrepreneurship
- banking relationships
- Kosterising heat treat
- New Willemin coming to Saunders
- Frustrated with IOT devices
- Selling tools at the open house
LINK IN DESCRIPTION WITH OPEN HOUSE DETAILS:
https://saundersmachineworks.com/collections/equipment-for-sale/products/yard-sale
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Business of Machining Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 363. My name is John Vrimsmo. My name is John Saunders. And this is a weekly podcast with John and John. I kind of catch up on what's going on in their businesses and try to figure out problems and problem solving, use each other's knowledge to help progress into the future because it's very hard to do this all by yourself.
00:00:25
Speaker
It's not even possible or fun. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's a good point.
The Loneliness of Entrepreneurship
00:00:32
Speaker
I remember that anecdote from 15 years ago of somebody, there was a book or a TED talk type thing where somebody was like, people don't realize how lonely entrepreneurship can be. And there's a sort of mental health aspect of that. But then there's also the aspect that like, when you're the leader, you are
00:00:51
Speaker
you're in the literal sense at the front of the line. And so whether you have peers or advisors or board directors or lenders to keep you honest or reporting to that sense of accountability and so forth. But it's also like you don't know what you don't know. And that's the aspect of loneliness that I've always been intrigued with. And it doesn't mean lonely in the sad way. It means like we have a new banking guy, relationship guy, and we don't even really actually use him.
00:01:20
Speaker
for her per se, but he came in, I'm like, what are other companies like ours doing this amount of revenue, six employees, like, what are they doing? What do you do for them that that helps them? Because like, I have no idea, like, as are, we actually can talk about that if you want. But yeah, please, it's that perspective.
Learning from Peers and Advisors
00:01:36
Speaker
And I do that too, with my accountant, with my my bankers, my, like,
00:01:40
Speaker
With you, what are other companies, our size and even bigger, where are we going that we're not doing yet? How do we leverage that? Because you and I come from the garage, the bootstrap days and me especially, I have very little business experience outside of this business. I'm learning as I go. You stretch and you get to a certain point and then you're like, what's next? Then you make friends, thankfully, with
00:02:07
Speaker
sometimes businesses that are bigger than yours that are further than yours, you know, five, 10 years down the road kind of thing. And I like to pick those guys brands too, because it's like, yes, what what roadblocks am I going to hit? You know, like, what how do I what is financial planning for the future kind of thing, right? Like, all that stuff. Yeah.
00:02:26
Speaker
But selfishly, too, it's one reason. Well, it's like, I'm excited to see you. But another reason I'm excited for you to come down is for you to just sit there and like walk the shop and ask me questions like, why are you doing it that way? Or like, we do that better than you and great, right? You know, I wouldn't take me to school, dude, like, literally, I had that thought yesterday, I think I was like, if you came by the shop, or if somebody else, Mike and military or whatever, came by the shop, and I was like, Okay,
The Value of Constructive Criticism
00:02:52
Speaker
playfully tear me apart. Like, you know, redo this whole shot. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. Let me explain it to you. Let me show what we're doing. And I need your perspective. And, you know, in a nice way, tell me I'm doing it wrong and why. And then I might be able to argue, if I can argue strong enough, then that's a good thing. If I don't have a good argument, then it's like, well, okay, put it on the to do list. Like,
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, I 100% just want to hear stuff in it this place. I suppose there's some things that could hit me in a raw or kind of like, ooh, hit the ego a little bit, but like, no, I just want to know. It's like, okay with that.
00:03:31
Speaker
When I toured Maritool, jeez, six years ago, and they had the same tape dispenser, gummy tape dispenser, and I didn't realize the metal bar was supposed to be flipped out. It just came, it shipped with the metal bar tucked in, and it's the weighted bar that applies weight to the tape so the glue gets the water. We had been holding it. I mean, it's so embarrassing.
00:03:52
Speaker
Little things like that to bigger things about financial planning if the conversation is allowed to get into that normally less discussed topic.
Banking Relationships and Financial Strategies
00:04:03
Speaker
There's a trust aspect and a familiarity, a willingness to go there kind of thing.
00:04:10
Speaker
Because you know whether it's on this podcast or with a friend or with a colleague or whatever like you hold stuff close to your chest sometimes you can't talk about everything whether it's emotional conversations or financial or practical or HR or something like that like there's always a line that you choose not to cross but when you have people that are close enough to you that you can actually cross that line and
00:04:35
Speaker
try to keep the ego in check a little bit. I don't think I have a big ego, but I definitely get triggered sometimes. Yeah. The banking guy
00:04:51
Speaker
The times I've used that relationship before was really when we had a minor hiccup with our account, like a credit card charge that I thought might be suspicious, but I didn't like the typical treatment where when you call them, they just shut your card down. Like, they're going to chill. I just wanted to figure out if you could help me out who this is from, not go nuclear, because it's a real pain in the butt when they shut the card down to update lots of saved account info stuff. This is like your primary bank.
00:05:22
Speaker
It's a small business relationship lender. This guy calls on maybe thousands of accounts. I think they told me the number was three to five times bigger than we are where you get somebody that actually is going to have a relationship with you.
00:05:43
Speaker
Meaning, this guy calls on six counties with just a bajillion businesses. It is what it is in terms of... And look, this is a big bank that we're dealing with. I get better probably, quote, unquote, customer service in that relationship since I have a small local bank. But I do bank with two local small banks for other little stuff and their technology is abhorrent. There's no online
00:06:09
Speaker
a real good bill pay capabilities like there is with the bank we use and the accounts constantly log you out, they constantly ask you for password updates and that's ironic because we just use Chase for Sonder stuff on the main and they're so much better with ease of use.
00:06:28
Speaker
The answer to the question was things like lines of credit. Obviously, they like to lend you money. So that's a big driver for them. But lines of credit as well. And then I asked about the sweep accounts. That's what you mentioned a couple weeks ago? Yeah. And I did like block. Could you remind me?
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, so look, I didn't bluff with him, but I kind of was like, hey, look, you know, we keep, you know, any business you have at our point, you got five or 10 employees, you should be having five figures in the bank account checking account period. So the interest on that now at current interest rates is thousands of dollars a year. That's free money.
00:07:08
Speaker
And so I just sort of said, hey, we want to know what it looks like for us to move into sweep accounts. So the bluff was kind of saying that rather than asking if that's even a thing. And he was like, oh, yeah, okay, great. There's a different guy that does that. It is a fee product. And so it's a simple math of like, well, if it's 100 bucks a month in fees, but you're making 300 bucks in interest, is that worth it to you? And so he's supposed to get back to me on that. But it at least kind of checked the box of like, oh, interesting. So
00:07:35
Speaker
Clearly, that is a real thing. I'm going to ask Mike on that because I'm curious if he's heard of it or knows much about it.
00:07:45
Speaker
And then we did some new fairly-ish common. I shouldn't say that because I didn't know about these a couple years ago. We did positive pay on checks where nowadays if we write an actual paper check, which I do maybe five times a year, that check is basically no good unless
00:08:07
Speaker
At the same time I write the check, I log in and upload the information of that check, who it was made out to, and what amount. It's positive pay. It stops the check fraud because... Okay. John, it's crazy. If you've ever written me a check, I actually don't know how it works in Canada, but if you guys have routing account numbers, I could go on a check website and order checks with your routing account number ratio and just like it's all that. It's that simple.
00:08:33
Speaker
Check fraud is crazy how easy it is. Illegal, but easy. So this stops that. And then we did a similar thing for ACHs because we do do a lot of ACH payment stuff. We also use their bill pay service, which is great because it makes it super easy for us to pay all of our bills. And my understanding is that those bill pays checks are sent out with bogus account numbers. Like you can't track it back. Yeah, you couldn't. It's not easy to at least to tap into our account with that information.
00:09:03
Speaker
ACH is basically the bank sending a check on your behalf to the customer or to the pay, whatever. ACH is electronic, but it's kind of like a step below a wire. It's not as secure and it's not as like documented. I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but it's kind of like if you just move, if you like use one of those online savings accounts, if you just move money from a checking account in a bank to an online savings account or something, that's an ACH. Okay. Online money transfer. Yeah.
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah, we do most of our banking in Canada, but we also have a US bank account because we pay a lot of vendors in the States and actually most of our revenue, I don't know how it works now, we changed it a little bit. Anyway, we do have a bank account in US dollars and we pay most of our US vendors through that and feature where we can have the bank send a check directly to vendor. Got it.
00:09:56
Speaker
automatically, which is great for us if they want that. Otherwise, we put on the credit card. Yeah, same here. It's actually on that note, first time ever
00:10:09
Speaker
We had the perfect storm of a hiccup, which was a customer agreed to pay with, they placed a very large order, and so they very much deserved a discount. It was a great order. And we agreed to the discount, and we gave them two different discount amounts. One if you do check net 30, the other if you do a credit card. And they were like, oh, we absolutely want the net 30.
00:10:32
Speaker
They accidentally paid with a credit card and then we were like… Which means you have to pay the 3% fee or whatever for credit card? Yeah. So we're like, hey, we really want to settle up with you on that fee. And the customer got upset. Some of that was a miscommunication thing. But where they were upset was that they were like, you should just be able to
00:10:51
Speaker
reverse refund the credit card charge. And I think 2020, so about four years ago, it's my understanding that almost all of those online, like Stripe and PayPal and Shopify, no longer refund the fee when you refund a credit card transaction. They used to before that. And this person, the conversation wasn't productive. They were sort of like, well, that's wrong. And I was like, okay, I'm not
00:11:18
Speaker
But I did a quick Google check and Shopify at our level doesn't, there's plenty of discussions where that's not negotiable with Shopify. Now, if you're Walmart negotiating directly with Visa or whomever, I think there's a lot more wiggle room. But if anybody's listening has any insight on this, part of me would love to learn more, part of me is like, look, this is not something that happens often. Interesting.
00:11:45
Speaker
The refunds aren't an issue. We don't have those often. What we used to have happen was we did have a order adjustment app installed in Shopify. So somebody could place a $5,000 order. And then they'd be like, oh, you know what? I want to add two more packs of $30 plugs. And they could go in. And the way they would adjust that order, it would refund the whole thing. And then it would replace the order. So there would be like $300, $400 in
00:12:13
Speaker
double paid fees by us. And so we stopped that because that's no bueno. I'm gonna make a note to ask my guy if that's the case, because sometimes customers will buy with a credit card and sometimes they refund, they cancel the order. And I'm curious if that fee does disappear, like you're saying, probably does, but I'm just, I don't know, it's new to me. Yeah.
00:12:42
Speaker
What else did the bankers say? I think that was about it. Safety, like account security stuff. Yeah, that's it.
00:12:51
Speaker
Do you guys have a lot of outstanding accounts payable, like people who owe you money for fixture plates and stuff in their 30s? We call that accounts receivable. Sorry, it's not to be my mistake. No, no, not to be a Karen, but please. Yes, we do. We do. We have zero.
00:13:15
Speaker
How do you have zero? Well, everybody pays up front. Oh, sorry. You mean your businesses are built around that. Got it. So we have a lot. In fact, it's never been in the past year. It's probably never been below mid five figures.
00:13:35
Speaker
with very rare exception, everybody's net 30. And we are, I would say pretty aggressive on tracking down stuff that's after net 30. Yeah. So it's not a problem. Yeah. Yeah. So no, you know, it is what it is. It's part of the business. What have you been up to?
00:14:06
Speaker
Ask more banking questions, because I don't want to keep talking. I've been talking too much. But if you want to hear more about us or in general, ask more otherwise. I think we're good for banking. But if anything comes up in the future, I'm happy to talk about it. Because I'm an open book. I want to learn as much about banking as finance as is applicable to me. I have no interest beyond what's applicable to me. Sure.
00:14:29
Speaker
Remember last week,
Exploring Colsterizing for Part Hardness
00:14:31
Speaker
past couple of weeks, we were talking about the material choice and hardness for the button on our integral knife, right? Yes. And so we're going back and forth, back and forth. We talked about hard turning it, talked about, I could turn them soft, we could heat treat them after, and then they need to be surface finished, like polished, something like that. Lots of different options. All of them require a lot of work.
00:14:54
Speaker
Even he treating a bar to his work and then hard turning. It needs special CBN inserts. It's work. There's heat and spark and flame and oil and then you're hard turning hoping to hold good tolerance. It's all possible but it's all more work. Turning it soft and having it be good like how we do the 17.4 right now. They're like 43 or 45 Rockwell.
00:15:17
Speaker
In a perfect world, that's the easiest process for us because just turn it once and they're done. But it's not quite hard enough. So then the last video that I put up all about the buttons, one guy mentioned the comment. They're like, look into the process, colsterizing. And I was like, what is this? I Google it real quick. And I'm like,
00:15:35
Speaker
OK, keep Googling. OK, I need to watch every video and read every article about this now. So it's a case hardening process for stainless steels. Only certain kind of stainless steels, like our blade steels, don't qualify, but 17.4 does qualify. So it's basically a case hardening process where they inject carbon into the exterior 30 micron depth of the material.
00:16:02
Speaker
and it hardens the outside to like 70 Rockwell. What's it called? Kholsterizing. Kholster, but Kholster? Exactly. It's by a company called Body Coat, which is apparently the biggest heat treat vendor in the world. They have like, I don't know, 100 locations or something like that.
00:16:24
Speaker
And even one of our guys, Larry, used to work in the aluminum foundry industry for a very long time. Even he's heard of body coat, and Angelo's heard of body coat. And they're like, wow, this is a big heat treating company. Anyway, it's this proprietary process that they came up with. So last Friday, I had a one hour web call with their sales guy. And I got the PowerPoint presentation. And I'm like, you know, this actually sounds really cool.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah, like really, really, really right up our alley exactly for this process because then we can turn it from 17 for to tolerance, um, colsterizing doesn't change the surface finish, the tolerance or the, um, appearance like at all. It just makes it harder on the outside. Yeah. Well, you say that again, doesn't change the tolerance. It has to add some apparently not apparently like a micron maybe, but.
00:17:18
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. I'm hesitant, but I'm absolutely sending a pile of samples to them to have the first batch done. He said minimum lot charge is about $315. So if you send one part or if you send a thousand parts, depending on how they fit in the thing, whatever.
00:17:38
Speaker
But even still, I could probably do 500 buttons for that lot fee, or I could send five testers. But even still, you break it down, you go, okay, versus us doing the heat treat, us doing post-processing, us buying CBN inserts, us doing the hard, like,
00:17:57
Speaker
It might just work out, so I'm going to experiment with that for sure. My next step after that great phone call was or is to decide how many I'm going to make, whether it's five or 50 or my two choices kind of thing, make them and then send them out for colsterizing. Interesting. It's a 10 to 14 day turnaround time and then we'll know.
00:18:19
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. That sounds awesome. I'm quite excited. And he said, even surface finish, if your part is polished to one RA surface finish, it might bring it back to two or three RA. So you might lose a tiny bit of surface finish. But basically, not growing at all. Basically, no change in color and slight, ever so slight change in surface finish. And I'm like, win, win, win, win.
00:18:44
Speaker
Was there a plethora of YouTube and discussion of this? Only from them, from Body Coat Company. So YouTube videos, them showing the process. But they did have a really cool demo. It's a trade show demo. But where they have two, I think it was 316 stainless steel parts, like a shaft and a tube, basically, with H7 tolerance, like slip fin or tolerance.
00:19:11
Speaker
They put one in the drill and one in a vise and they just spin it until it seizes up. And it's like 2.3 seconds raw parts. And then they colsterize one or both of the parts and then it can spin it for like minutes without any. No kidding. I'm like, that's a really cool demo. That's awesome. Yeah. So 17, 4, 8, 45, turn it, finish it, send it out and you're done.
00:19:35
Speaker
Yeah, and then it's like 70. I don't know if that's too hard for this application. I don't know, but I'm definitely definitely going to try. It's asking not saying but isn't it like you can't have it too hard. You just don't want it to be brittle. I don't want it right now. It's the blade is shaving the button.
00:19:55
Speaker
Is that what I saw? I watched your video. You were showing like little... A little shaving. Yeah, exactly. So there's a sharp edge on the blade. Maybe it doesn't have to be so sharp, but it is eating away at the button in the detent in the closed position of the handle. Yeah, right. That was 45. That was this piece of 17 for us, right? Yeah, right. With a 60 RC blade with a sharp edge. So like something's going to lose and yeah.
00:20:21
Speaker
That said, I put the same knife together with a soft blade and the same button and the soft blade is now deforming and there's no chips, no shavings, no nothing. So it's like, okay.
00:20:36
Speaker
data. Does all this also mean that you're now gaining confidence, if not already fully competent, that the button is good? Yeah, exactly. I'm pretty much there. I've had those thoughts, those epiphanies a couple of times, and I'm like, I was just telling my wife yesterday, I was like, I think I'm at the point where it's actually going to work.
00:20:58
Speaker
I think I've answered most of the questions. Now I just got to put them all together. I'm actually on the right track and this whole theory idea plan is like, I think it's going to work. That's awesome. Now I just got to put the pieces together, the button of the right hardness. I did buy some 440C so we might could make some out of that. The buttons? The buttons, yeah. Okay.
00:21:23
Speaker
easiest probably would just be to turn them soft and then heat treat them because that would test, that would answer the question if 58 Rockwell is better. So I could easily do that. But that's another heat treat process that our heat treat ovens are pretty booked these days. So yeah, it's like every other process is just extra work and extra time for us. And every part of this knife is extra work and extra time. So if I can reduce as much of that as possible,
00:21:53
Speaker
I don't love sending out to vendors if I can avoid it, but for this application, you know what? It might just work out.
00:22:02
Speaker
we've already sort of switching gears, but the same idea. We've already started to design a couple of new products for the new Wilhelmin and it's great because you can kind of design products that would otherwise be inefficient or quirky to make and they're better because this was like the whole sub thesis of the Wilhelmin was like, okay, you have these open up these capabilities that are not only awesome, but can be productive through the automated nature of the bar feeder and the tool changer and the unloading like it's just
New Machine Capabilities and Production Upgrades
00:22:30
Speaker
So, yes. And now we're starting to realize, okay, this can work. And so we've got a fight stop prototype that we've been sitting on for a long time that we're now able to like readdress it with under the eyes of a Willyman. We made prototypes. She don't even know if they made them on a Willyman or something else inefficiently, but like doesn't matter because this is what it will look like in one other product. And that same idea you were saying of like,
00:22:54
Speaker
I don't want to do lots of extra work, extra steps. I don't want to design parts that go through two, three, four setups, work in progress, automation, or like, you know, loading, unloading, nope, nope, nope. That Wilman is just going to go. Yeah, one and done parts. Is the new Wilman capable more so than your current one in any way, or is it pretty much the same thing, just new?
00:23:19
Speaker
It's the same thing as new, the major machine difference is that like I think yours, but not ours, it will have a 36 millimeter through bore. So that's just under inch or over inch and three eighths. Our current one is under one inch. Is it really like the actual through bore of the spindle? Correct. Ours is inch and three eighths.
00:23:38
Speaker
So, and we could have upgraded ours, but it was five figures and again, just didn't make sense. Do you need the bigger chuck, the F45 or whatever? We'll move to, I think it's called an F48. We could have the F35. Yeah, I have the F35, which I think goes up to one inch by itself, right? Yes, correct. Yeah. So we'll only have a 48, I believe. And then just use whatever call it to neck it down to... Yeah. That makes sense.
00:24:05
Speaker
And then, obviously, it'll be a brand new machine, so I'm not going to worry about surprise maintenance or like this machine will run so much like things do break. Yeah. Willoughman owners are like, okay, after six years, I've got to spend $45,000 or $73,000 to repair X. Great. That was part of the business plan. Yeah, exactly. That's not like so much.
00:24:28
Speaker
I mean, I guess I'm still signed up for that. But we're starting from zero instead of from a machine that's probably on the edge of needing lots of that. Yeah. And then we'll put firetrace on it so we can run it lights out, which we don't do right now. Yeah, exactly. And we have a, it'll have a UR robot to unload bigger parts. Sweet.
00:24:47
Speaker
I finally I was watching your video and you know how it's got the part tray basket like it drops apart into this basket you slide the basket out. I never installed that basket in my machine. It's just been sitting on the bench.
00:25:00
Speaker
on the shelf and then I saw your video and I'm like, what is that basket? Why did I get this basket? Next day I go back to the machine and I'm like, oh, it's on the shelf. This blue, blue metal tray that I never knew what it was for. It's just full of old fittings and stuff. I go, I like this thing is sick. Except when I remove the whole basket and it drips so much oil. I'm like, okay, don't remove the basket. Yeah, don't remove it or ours. If we pull it out, we move it right over to our, well, who makes it?
00:25:30
Speaker
this unit that like the suction thing down draft suction table. Well, so on that note, I'm hoping the Wilhelmin is still our old Wilhelmin is still here.
00:25:41
Speaker
for the April 13th sale, but it probably won't be. Really? You got somebody for it? No, it already sold. It sold back in December. But we worked it out with the buyer to keep it through technically today. I've asked them if they're willing to, obviously, some consideration to them, but keep it for another month, both because we frankly could use it. But also, it'd be really fun to have it here when people come. And the new one doesn't get here until June-ish. You're going to miss it.
00:26:10
Speaker
We've been cranking to make up as much as we can. Out of curiosity, and you don't have to answer, but is it going to like some medical customer that has other Willamans or is it going to like a first timer?
00:26:24
Speaker
It is going to a second timer. Okay. Interesting. Person that already owns a used Wilhelmin and is a person who's very, has a large volume of other FANUC based machines where they do a lot of their own reconditioning work repair, et cetera. So like. Is this who I think it is? I think so. I'm not going to share. Yeah, that's fine. Totally fine. Yeah. Cool. Cool. So yeah, that's awesome. That's good. That's good.
00:26:54
Speaker
Is it, is it the person who was going to buy mine, but then I bought it first? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently he was so mad that somebody else got it until he heard it was me. And then he's like, okay, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. I was like, I called him up. I'm like, Hey, this situation, um, yours, if you want it, this is price. He's like, yeah, done. I'm like, great. Like, like it was a conversation. So never one page contract. Um, yeah. Good. Good for you.
00:27:24
Speaker
Yeah. What else on your mind? Um, yeah, just a little minute button right now, but it's, it's interesting to, I'm trying to plan in my head and I really just need to turn the machine on and do it, but to make like 50 in a row and to hold tolerance and to watch it grow thermally and then tweak it. And I'm excited to do that. Actually. I'm excited to make that set of parts. Um,
00:27:50
Speaker
Because I'm basically ready to mail those parts yesterday if I had them in my hand. Yes. So it's like, OK, I need to block off some time, put the yellow vest on, and be like, I'm making 50 parts. And I'm going to dial them in. And I'm only going to send perfect parts because I also want to see any growth, right? So nominal is 1,350. I'm going to try and make as many 1,350 as I can so that when they come back, we can measure them and know if they grew or not.
00:28:16
Speaker
We just did this with pull studs. So we are actually, I don't even know if I have all the correct information on this backstory, but this is Alex's project. So take this at face value, pull studs for
00:28:33
Speaker
automatic puck chucks don't need to be heat treated. It's not to say they couldn't benefit from being heat treated, but they don't need to be heat treated the way the clamping action interfaces with the pull stud. The pull studs for the mechanical puck chuck do need to be heat treated or need to be hard. And we want them to be interchangeable. We don't want them to be different. So we're probably going to just move to everything being a hardened one that way. It's simple. And so we
00:28:57
Speaker
made some out of 4140, and then we realized heat treating 4140 stinks with oil, so much better to use tool steel. We tried A2, then we realized S7 to better material, kind of going back to like metallurgy learning. And so we've sent both A2 and S7 out to our professional heat treat vendor. And what we did was we quickly serialized all of them on the Willemin. So we sent 30 of them out and then- On the Willemin. Okay, not laser, you just engraved it.
00:29:26
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. And then they're internal. I mean, we could use it, but we'll probably just throw away in the end. And then we just miked them all, measured them all. And then I'm not sitting here worried because chasing tolerance on the Wilhelmin first off has been incredibly easy to do that machine has been incredibly consistent. But I just want to know what changes in the heat tree. So yeah, totally. We sent out. Yeah. Cool. They were pretty consistent. Cool.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, because you hear all these anecdotal stories like, oh, it'll grow by 3% after heat treat or whatever. Well, show me. And how does that affect my part?
Heat Treating and Hard Turning
00:30:02
Speaker
Right. Right. Well, and how, if it grows, because I think every part could be different. That's fine. Because different geometries is symmetrical. Are there thin webbing sections, blah, blah, blah? But the real question is, is my part going to be the same at the time I send them to this vendor? Yeah, exactly. And you got, did you get parts back yet or they're still out?
00:30:23
Speaker
A2s were back. I believe the result and answer was that the growth was kind of what we expected, but there was just a little bit too much variation across heat treat affected changes that we are realizing it would be a fool's errand to think that we can skip
00:30:49
Speaker
hard turning right now. So we will turn them oversized, heat treat them, and then we'll come back and we will hard turn them for now. But we will also spend time the rest of this year working on some processes on our side and with heat treaters to figure out if we can turn them into a tolerance that works to not have to do that. Interesting. Yeah, the Schalke pulse studs, they're hard turned on the critical taper feature. Yeah.
00:31:16
Speaker
but everything else is softer and looks really good. And part of me is wondering too, long-term if we can't skip a post heat treat process.
00:31:29
Speaker
First off, we actually were talking with Wilhelmin about whether we can use the UR robot on our new machine and actually thread the pull stud back on to an adapter. Heart training, it's easy, but it's like, okay, well, if I'm hearted, I need to establish a critical datum and blah, blah, blah. But I also think there's probably an outcome here that I don't know exactly what it looks like yet.
00:31:50
Speaker
you know, buying a quote unquote old cylindrical grinder, but putting it with it with a robot and just all it does because grinding is, cylindrical writing is not, I'm not, I've never done it to be fair, but like not even difficult or complicated. So figure it out. And it's a straight grind. It's not a taper or something like that.
00:32:10
Speaker
It is a taper, but you could potentially dress the wheel to the taper. Yeah. Something. Hmm. Yeah. I like it. Yeah, we'll see. My banker just called.
00:32:34
Speaker
I'm frustrated with these IoT devices. Alexa is phenomenal, but all those devices I bought are easy to use.
Efficiency with IoT and Specialized Tools
00:32:45
Speaker
Like Apple, everything Apple makes great. We own, we need a door sensor and I'll explain why, like to detect whether the door is open or closed.
00:32:52
Speaker
And that has to be through the smart things, which I don't think it is Samsung. Maybe it's like a part of Samsung or a partnership, but it's smart things like a separate IoT device thing. We already use them for our flood sensors. So we had the hub. And so the door sensor was cheap 20 bucks or 30 bucks. And you know, it's like it just doesn't work. Like to get it set up on the app is not working. So I'm frustrated about that. But the reason I want it is I need to stop
00:33:19
Speaker
being a doofus with our air compressors shutting off. I'm trying to be smart and eco and save wasted costs by like say leaving a compressor to run and cycle all weekend and you can shut the auto drains off with the timers. We do that and then we can shut the valves off.
00:33:37
Speaker
so that the compressor isn't feeding any potential leaks in the system. I do that. They bit me this weekend because the compressor shut off at 8 a.m. Saturday because the night run Friday night will be done by 8 a.m. I got bit because I came in at 7 a.m. on Saturday and loaded up some aluminum parts. I was all proud of myself. And then left, went home and I got an email, an alarm that the Akuma air pressure dropped.
00:34:03
Speaker
And I'm like, Oh my God, had I gone later, that would have already been off and I would have realized. Yeah, I got to turn it. So I realized this is a simple answer. When our Akuma's automatically shut off, the auto shut off feature actually trips the disconnect on the machine. Okay, like giant three inch like industrial electrical knob. So I'm just going to put an IoT door sensor on that knob. And when the horizontal gets tripped off, then you can shut the compressor off.
00:34:33
Speaker
How does that interface with the Willimand when it starts running late? That's a great question, John. I mean, at some point, it might just be, like we don't even, actually, we don't shut them off during the week anymore because it's not worth ever ruining a run. And for the first time ever, Garrett came in, he comes in at 6 a.m., he came in the other morning and the horizontal is still running.
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah. We've never had that, John. It's a delicious experience. I've heard you talk about it. For you, this is every day that ends in Y. But I've never had that. And let me tell you, that is absolutely insane to walk out the door at 4 o'clock. And somebody comes in at 6 AM. Is that 14 hours later or something? And no. Still making parts. Yes. Oh my god. It's kind of life changing.
00:35:27
Speaker
You know, it's like, I want more of this. Yeah. So we can do it once. You can do it again. Replicate it, right? That's good. Good for you. Yeah, it is good. The aluminum mixing thing is, I proved it out that we can do it with scheduling changes, but long-term or even short-term, I don't want to do it. It's like,
00:35:49
Speaker
I actually, there's part of me that loves coming on the weekend, swapping in and grinding and like, so if it's a fixed out, it's not that big a deal. But the party was like, I'm over this. Like, John, you're, this is not the way to do this. So, yeah. We'll fix it with the solution. Still up in the air. You got a couple options, but.
00:36:06
Speaker
There are a lot of solutions, and by a lot of solutions, I mean a Brother R650. It's just the 40 tools make sense, the dual pallet makes sense, puck chucks to swap any fixture we want out. I can't wait to see this puck chuck system. Yeah, we're going to have a display set up on. Yeah, good, good. Cartail. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. What did I say about that?
00:36:39
Speaker
Yeah, so I finished I finished walking through the shop. I've talked about this way too much. But I've been through every room in every area. And of course, it's never any process. But by and large, all of the stuff that we've accumulated over the past 1015 years, the stuff that we need is now better organized in its place. And everything else is laid out on tables. I'll put a link in the description will be Yvonne has started putting up pictures of stuff of tables laid out.
00:37:03
Speaker
We're kindly asking for people to not email us. We're not going to do online deals ahead of time. Like it's come here in person cash. I don't know if we want to do credit cards, but probably have to. Um, but you know, one of the things I was debating on WhatsApp was, um, the co the goal is to sell stuff. And I want to be, I'm happy to let things go at a great deal. I also, and I want to think simple, but like tooling, we've got a lot of used end mills and some of them are maybe over half are new in the box. Um,
00:37:33
Speaker
Take your typical three-eighth inch end mill. That's probably $20 to $40. What's a price that's a win? $5? Yeah, $5. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. But then I don't want to put different prices on every end mill. That's not happening. There's probably 500 end mills to get rid of. Yeah, yeah.
00:37:51
Speaker
I'm trying to think of it like I totally, totally want it to be a win for whoever's buying this up on the flip side. I like to keep a few bucks out of this. Well, it's like when you go to the thrift store, and they're like, you know, CDs, $1, VHS tapes, 50 cents each. It's like category price, you know, quarter inch end mills, $4, $3, $5. Yeah, that's probably true. Even if, you know, the reality is, well, that quarter inch end mill is actually $70 new, and this quarter inch end mill is $20 new.
00:38:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. The thing with enmils too is some of them are generic and the odd hobbyists can make use of whatever.
00:38:30
Speaker
some weird sized thread mill that, you know, cost you $70. It doesn't mean somebody's going to need it. Like, Oh, yeah, there's two matched pairs of heart helical extended length relief net three th inch stubby. Ruppers are great for five axes. They're probably $120 and like, you know, five bucks is what there's going to be. I'm just not going to worry about it. Basically, because you don't need them anymore. And they need to leave. They do. Yeah. Yeah. That's all good stuff too.
00:38:56
Speaker
belt or not belt grinders, bench grinders, storage cabinets. I'm trying to get people excited and incentivize them to come. A chance to hang out with me and Grimso and whoever else comes just to kind of shop talk all that. Yeah. That's cool. So do you have all the tables set up in the other building?
00:39:15
Speaker
They're all set up in the training building. What we now need to do is go over and kind of reorganize them because we just basically put stuff in. Yeah, dump. We had to start somewhere and now it's like, okay, let's move. I've got Heimers, Tormach tooling, end mills, metrology equipment. You kind of get it reasonably laid out. Lots of raw material. That's going to go cheap because I don't think it'll sell if it's priced expensive. You know what I mean? I want it gone.
00:39:44
Speaker
Cool. Speaking of measuring equipment, I had a great email from one of our listeners the other day because a couple weeks ago, I think we talked about my optical comparator and how the mirror in the back is kind of dusty and dirty. Our steric guy told us, probably just don't clean it because you could ruin it very easily kind of thing. So this listener makes his own lasers for laser light shows.
00:40:10
Speaker
So like big concert, imagine, biggest band ever has the laser light shows, right? Like he makes those lasers. So he knows a lot about optics and mirrors and things like that. And he says the product to use is from Edmund optics. And it's this like,
00:40:23
Speaker
like liquid that's this red liquid that kind of looks like rubber cement or like nail polish kind of consistency. You pour it on, spread it out and then in 10 minutes it hardens into a soft rubber that you just peel right off. So all the gunk just comes right off the object. Like clean your car.
00:40:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. But it's like a liquid that just peels right off. You don't have to like scrape around. Yeah, it's a no rubbing, no scraping, whatever. It just peels off. So it takes all the dust, all the dirt and all that stuff off. And that is what is for optics. The only concern with our 30 year old mirror is will the silver peel off with it?
00:40:58
Speaker
And that's where Starrett guy was concerned about. And this liquid stuff is not cheap, probably like $100 or $200 for the kit. But still, versus having somebody come in and do it for us, I don't know. What's a new mirror? Wait, wait, wait. I don't even know if you can get them. Probably could, but I didn't think about that.
00:41:23
Speaker
Our comparator, I think we're asking what we pay for it use of like $1,100 bucks. You're talking about $100 just for supplies and then labor and risk and hassle. I don't know. Yeah, I know. But the comparator does work great. And the only benefit of this is it makes the image crisper.
00:41:41
Speaker
It's a little fuzzy and blurry right now. I'll consider. I mean, if you found a new one, sell yours and buy that new one too. New ones are like. Not new to you.
00:41:53
Speaker
Right. Well, we were talking about that on WhatsApp this morning. Somebody was asking about, can I just run my bamboo as a production machine?
Precision Drilling and Component Redesign
00:42:01
Speaker
What would it cost? I'm like, if you run your bamboo for two years, eight hours a day, don't try to repair the thing. Sell it for 500 bucks or whatever it's going to be and buy a new one. Good grief. Yeah. And then you're back in the business. Yeah. Recycle. What are you up to today?
00:42:22
Speaker
So today I'm going to work on some more integral knife progress stuff. Had some really great conversations lately about the differences between interpolating holes, reaming holes, drilling holes like we did. I think that sparked some good debate amongst people.
00:42:41
Speaker
which is good. And they all have their plus and minuses. And then somebody forwarded me a kind of a chat conversation from Nicholas Hakko. Sure. Talking about how the, you know, the different kinds of ways to make precision holes for watch main plates and where Ruby's pressed in and stuff. And his basically takeaway is a three flute drill bit is the most accurate way to drill a hole because it makes a concentric hole. A two flute makes a trilobe hole.
00:43:07
Speaker
Three flute makes a really round hole unless you spot at the wrong angle and then it can make a four lobular hole. Oh, sure. Okay. Something like that. Why are you spotting? Don't spot? No. I still spot everything. Don't judge me. No. This is what I am. Yeah? Yeah, you stop. Carbide drills don't want spots. I deal with smaller drills than you do. Touche. But 59 thou drilled it through coolant.
00:43:39
Speaker
Like, how are you? That spotting makes me happy. I don't know. Yeah. Seems right. It's like one of those things maybe you can get away without doing it.
00:43:48
Speaker
But other than the five seconds it takes to spot the hole, is there any downside to doing it? So that's a fair point. Is there an actual downside? And I'll argue against myself, the upside is if you can spot that leaves you with the chamfer you're going to want, then that's your win. Yeah, we do that sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think there's probably a lot of harm done by folks that spot with the wrong, the spot drill and the drill drill are the wrong angle, complementary angles, especially if you end up making the hole worse, arguably, whatever.
00:44:19
Speaker
What did you learn though on, is there a takeaway? So Mike suggested that I should just drill the hole with a precision drill to whatever size leaves the hole the right size.
00:44:34
Speaker
and then leave the taper in the bottom of the hole, which got me to realize I can redesign this pin, the stop pin that I'm making with a taper matching on the bottom because I want this pin to bottom out and to thread in and then bottom out on the bottom of the hole. And I was putting all this effort into interpolating the bottom flat, like drill it, interpolate the bottom, remit chips back in the bottom. And he's like, just drill it and use that taper. And I was like, okay, this simplifies things. So I have a drill on order from him.
00:45:02
Speaker
And then I tried with one of my drills on the machine. It's an OSG 8-inch drill. His is going to be 0.126, not 8-inch. But I was like, let's try it with an 8-inch. And they made the hole 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 3, something like that. So it made it like a couple thou undersized, then the 8-inch. It's supposed to be. And I'm like, oh, I don't like that. I had to remit by hand to get it to work.
00:45:30
Speaker
It's like, well, maybe the fancy drill that he's trying to sell me will do it right. Give me the exact hole that I want. How do you measure the one, two, two? Engage pins. Okay. Yep. Interesting. Seems surprising, but... Yeah. And maybe the drill's older worn out. Maybe, I don't know, but it's just the one that's in the kern that has drilled however many holes so far. Let's try it. Yeah, try it.
00:45:58
Speaker
But I think that'll be a good workflow. Just drill the hole, leave the tape in the bottom, and then simple, simple.
00:46:07
Speaker
The point that Robert mentioned when we were discussing this stuff on chat was a great point that I certainly forgot to mention, which is like remeaning really shines when you've got longer death ratios relative to the diameter and diameter of the feature, which you don't. I mean, you have a small feature, but it's not particularly bad-ass ratio. I think it was three times D or three and a half times D or something. It's like not much.
00:46:31
Speaker
I don't need like excellent surface finish. I don't need amazing hole tolerance, but I do want half thou hole tolerance kind of thing. I do need to be fairly tight. This could work. Give me a positive. We're curious. I'm curious. Sweet. Cool. What are you up to today? Wrapping up. Oh, we started doing
00:46:53
Speaker
We started doing sister face mills on our two steel vertical, the vertical machining centers that make our steel plates. Because those inserts, the roughing and finishing inserts, they wear out more. When we switch them and rotate them, we like to take more time and care and like cleaning the pocket, checking the condition, labeling them or whatever. And it sort of seemed obvious like why are we
00:47:18
Speaker
You just get a sister tool, exact same holder, exact same body, exact same inserts, and then you just hot swap them, and then you take the sister version and you can take the 30 minutes of that cycle or even longer over at the tool station and take your time cleaning. Yeah. Not even, frankly, that expensive. How accurate and z-height are two identical tool stackups? Like a face wheel?
00:47:43
Speaker
So holders are shockingly repeatable themselves and their bodies are also quite repeatable. Technically, if you look at the variation on most ground, most inserts for steel are not ground, they're just pressed. And those have more of a variation than you might think on tolerance. But in practicality, they're not. And for us on our plates,
00:48:09
Speaker
we don't have a hyper strict thickness tolerance, like a couple of thousand, not going to be a big deal. First off, the biggest wear is on a rougher, which obviously doesn't matter at all here. Um, and then the only time we need to worry really about nominal is on matched sets. And in that situation, we of course wouldn't swap, swap out. Cool. Yeah. So been a good, good, been a good, easy improvement. I like it. Yeah.
00:48:34
Speaker
All right. Anything else? We'll put a link into the description on the date, April 13th, Saturday with times and some sample photos. I debated having like a free registration, just to get an idea of the numbers. Cause I kind of want to make sure some people show up, but I think it's going to, I'm already hearing from folks that chime in that like, if anybody wants to DM me, I guess I certainly wouldn't be upset or email to say, Hey, you're planning on being here. I mean, if we're going to have 200 people, I'll call and get a food truck to come by or something like that. You know what I mean? So we'll figure out.
00:49:25
Speaker
Super cool. Awesome. Thanks. Bye.