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#343 Four Areas that will put you out of business
321 Plays1 year ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo visited Kern Precision in Chicago!
- Four Areas that will put you out of business
- What I need and want out of the company by the end of the year
- Tour of Lapmaster
- Saunders made a splash guard for his Okuma grinder
- "we have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one"
- Confucius
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Factory Tours
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode three hundred and forty three my name is john rims mo my name is john sunders and this is the weekly podcast for john and john talk about basically these factories are gonna tour themselves i love that phrase of yours and yeah last week i got to go to current precision in chicago. And i also got to do a very surprised and very amazing side trip to lap master walters.
00:00:28
Speaker
Yeah, which is so good. Nutel. Yeah, so I guess I'll just jump right in with the whole story. So I actually forgot that I had promised Tony that I would attend this event.
00:00:44
Speaker
like six months ago, he's like, yeah, we're having an open house. You want to come? And I'm like, sure, I'll be there. And then it kind of snuck up on me and I was like, right.
Forgetting an Event and Solo Drive Reflection
00:00:51
Speaker
I said, okay, yeah, totally want to be there, busy with family and stuff. But I was like, yeah, I'll be there, no problem. And so I ended up driving out instead of flying because it's like probably 11 hour drive with charging.
00:01:04
Speaker
which is a commitment, but I was like, you know, a nice time on the road by myself. It was actually really wonderful. Um, a lot of good time to think and reflect and plan and, um, had my notebook next to me. I could jot down quick ideas. And, uh, that was really, really helpful for me to kind of no stress, no pressure, all just me and the road kind of thing. Um, I haven't had that in a while and, uh, that was really nice. And then I had all day Thursday, all day Friday there.
00:01:34
Speaker
The new facility that they just bought and renovated in the past year and they did a lot of work on it. They gutted the whole thing and really, really, really good job. Similar to when you bought your factory and we moved into our place, we put a lot of work into it. It's just cool to see them do it again with a bigger company, more revenue, a bit more money to throw at it kind of thing.
Facility Setup and Precision Machine Networking
00:02:00
Speaker
So it was neat to see how they did it. You know, all the electrical panel and cables and wires and up the wall and stuff, the conduit is, is laid out extremely well to like OCD. Well, you know, yeah, right. That kind of stuff. Um, very German kind of thing. Uh, Tony was saying that even all the office furniture and desks and everything, they shipped over from Germany. So they would match what they had in the current, you know, facility there. Um, that was really neat. And,
00:02:28
Speaker
The turnout was amazing. Even Tony was like, you know, you throw this event and you hope people show up. And like almost everybody showed up. That's awesome. People flew in from all over the place, California, Colorado, um, East coast, Florida, everywhere. And, uh, got to meet a lot of other current owners that I, some knew, some of that I knew and some that I did not know. I was like, Oh, you have a current or, you know, or new people that I met that was like, whoa, what do you do? Um,
00:02:56
Speaker
one guy in Vermont, Vermont Microtechnic. Follow him on Instagram. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He's got seven curtains, some older evos. And I think he's got two micros. And Caleb is really, really cool guy. Really nice. They do all kinds of stuff, but they really specialize in micro hole drilling. Okay.
00:03:18
Speaker
So that was, that was kind of cool. It's just nice to kind of put in the back of my head. Um, we're talking like one thou holes. I was going to ask, could you elaborate? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have to be careful because a lot of the conversations were like kind of, I don't want to say trade secrets, but like, you know, people's specialties implicitly like, yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't tell everybody, but it was interesting. He said after a certain point, drilling doesn't work and you actually have to interpolate the hole.
00:03:48
Speaker
with an even smaller end mill. Yeah, that's crazy.
Vendor Setups and Kern Machine Discussions
00:03:53
Speaker
Experience is the only way to know this, right? Yeah.
00:03:58
Speaker
One guy gave me a pamphlet, just like a little brochure thing with ... Remember at the current factory, they had the big poster on the wall with the human hair and the hole drilled through it? This guy actually had that in his brochure pamphlet that he gives to people with the hair of the operator that drilled the hole and then a one-thought wire going through the hole, and it's just a cool display. It was really neat.
00:04:22
Speaker
I was like, do you do this on a current? And he says, no, we actually built our own machines from scratch to do this. Whoa, okay, cool. So anyway, I had that brochure on the table.
00:04:34
Speaker
you know, dinner tables, whatever, out. And then our buddy Dave Precise looks at that and he goes, John, is this yours? Who is this guy? I need to talk to this guy. And like, I actually have an application for this guy, like, like hook me up with this guy. That guy had already left. But I remembered that Caleb from Vermont said, I also do microholder links. So I was able to put Caleb and Dave together. And they had a great chat. And that's great. What else? What else?
00:05:03
Speaker
They had a lot of vendors on staff, although honestly, I spent 90% of my time talking to other people and not the vendors themselves, even though I would have loved to spend more time with the vendors, but a lot of other people did, so that was great. They had an HD, just looping through 10 different palettes with 10 different programs all day, like constant loop, just air cutting all these programs, a little bit of live cutting.
00:05:28
Speaker
Whether it's like shiny copper with MCD tools or in canal or all this crazy stuff. It was the current HD too so it's like fast, like really fast and so fluid. It's actually, it looks different than my machine just the way it kinematically moves. It's like just zippier and a bit more dampened, I don't know.
00:05:51
Speaker
I talked a lot with both Tony, who's the president of current position in the US, and then Simon and Sebastian are the co-CEOs in Germany, which we met and we got a tour, a personal tour of the whole factory a couple of years ago with them. Such great people. They're not that much older than us. They're only like four or five years older than us, which is pretty cool.
00:06:15
Speaker
Which is crazy. I think when we did that tour, it was probably four years ago, John, certainly pre-COVID. So they would have been a heart H now. I know. That is weird. Yep. Yep. And they're just wonderful people. So smart, so savvy. They worked at 3M for many, many years where they cut their teeth and learned business kind of thing. 3M put a lot of money into them to teach them leadership in business and things like that. And they're like, all right, let's buy a company and go nuts.
00:06:44
Speaker
and they have and they are. Being there, Simon and Sebastian gave several presentations. They had a nice seating area with projector and stuff. They got to tell us the current state of the company and the future plans for the company. Sebastian was really clear. He's like,
00:07:06
Speaker
We could go in so many different directions, but we're going to concentrate. We're going to focus on what we are best at. We will not make a desktop machine anymore. Not that they have in a long time, but they used to make a little MMT. And they're like, for the foreseeable future, not on our radar whatsoever. And I was like, aw. But understandable, completely understandable. And basically, the current HD is their poster child that they're just going to get very, very good at, which they are.
00:07:35
Speaker
A bunch of stuff like that, which was really neat. I talked a lot about the differences between my Kernvario, which is a ball screw linear rail machine, versus the HD, which is linear motors and hydrostatic ways.
00:07:53
Speaker
and we talked about kind of the crash proofedness of these machines. Because the Kern Micro, my machine, is an amazing machine, but it's not a Maury, it's not an Akuma, it's not meant for like a 40 horsepower hogging cut. It's not really meant to be bumped every now and then. And it's built in a way that the linear rails can shift with a hard enough bump. So then you'll be out of alignment.
00:08:18
Speaker
In a good way? Something has to give? Okay, no. Something has to give, for sure, exactly. So you'll be out of squareness if push comes to shove kind of thing. Push did come to shove, yeah. Exactly, exactly. And it's adjustable. Text can come in and realign it and get you right back to going. And there is software comp with a whole table where you can fake squareness as necessary kind of thing.
00:08:44
Speaker
versus the Kern HD, which is like every ways, every hydrostatic way is hand lapped or something, and it takes a week to lap them or something like that. So they basically get it as straight as they can, and they have the casting go back and forth to the CMM and back to the bench and stuff like that. They get it as straight as they can, and then they software comp the rest of it, basically. Oh, interesting. OK. To get it, because there's no adjustability after it's made, you know?
00:09:13
Speaker
No, I don't know, but I choose a word for it. Exactly. Oh, I see. Because you can't like realign the rail. Exactly. Because there's no rail. It's like built into the whatever casting. Interesting. Yeah, right. Right. Makes sense. Sure. What's also interesting is the way they describe the hydrostatic ways. What did he say?
00:09:34
Speaker
Most have like a rectangle with a cup, you know, three quarters of a rectangle over top, like a hat that have side to side pressure and down pressure. Theirs is more like an L shape where it has down pressure and side pressure. And then the magnet holds it in the other two axes, pulls it down the magnet of the linear motors. Oh, okay. It's down and over. So he says, worst case push comes to shove, you will just dislodge the L shape from the magnet. Oh my God, that's incredible. And then it'll suck back in.
00:10:04
Speaker
Yeah, and the hydrostatic pressure holding the axis against
00:10:09
Speaker
like from rubbing basically, the oil film is so small and so high pressure that it's like never gonna touch. And they've crashed their machines hundreds of times on purpose to like see if it touches and they're like, it doesn't touch. That would be the best like, you know, crash test dummy job because it's like, I'm trying to understand it's operating threshold and to be, to know that that film layer of non compressible fluid actually is better
00:10:37
Speaker
as a performance mechanism and it's better offensively and defensively, that's amazing. Right? Yeah. So yeah, Simon was explaining this and he was very proud of it obviously and he should be and I was like, I didn't know all of these details. That's fantastic. The problem is the whole show just makes you feel like my micro, my current micro sucks and I should be getting an HD.
00:10:59
Speaker
Which is a great, this is life, John. This is the outside perspective of your life from my viewpoint of it's all relative. Absolutely. When you buy your shape Oko, a Tormach looks great. When you buy a Haas, everyone's telling you to buy a Nokuma or a Mori. And then there's the, you know, the two Isekis and Kerns and Hermlas of the Worlds. Yeah, exactly. And then within the Kern, there's higher and better Kerns and newer Kerns. I know, I know.
00:11:29
Speaker
At some point you got to go, what do I actually need? What can I actually afford? And does this meet my needs? A tormac met my needs for many years. Host machines meet most people's needs forever kind of thing. And yes, I'd love a current HD, but the extra many tens of percents more in price. I don't know. Is it even relevant?
00:11:54
Speaker
I want to keep hearing the rest of your story and trip. That's my theme for today and maybe some of our future conversations is truly, it's not even forcibly, it just has happened naturally of just removing the John Saunders aspect from Saunders Machine Works and the emotion and the I own this machine, I'm buying this machine.
00:12:16
Speaker
The totally unemotional analysis of like, okay, I bought a machine for $100. It's now could be sold for 65 and 112 gets me a new machine, which means the Delta is this. Is that appropriate for us at this point in time? Like just simple conversation.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yep. And it's separating the John Saunders from the Saunders machine works, the company, the past couple of years, I've finally started to transition my brain to say the company and say the company needs this or it, you know, it operates like this separating my, I'm still got a lot of emotion tied to it, but, um, I'm seeing them as two separate entities, you know, me and the company, which is, which is really cool. I think employees have helped, uh, separate that when it was just me and Eric is like, you know, we do everything, you know,
00:13:01
Speaker
All right. What else? What else? Yeah. Talked to some other current owners. One guy bought a current HD for cash, which was really impressive. Yes. Like a guy who just is successful from another industry who just wants the ultimate playing machine or
00:13:24
Speaker
No, Successful had a need for sure. He said he now runs it two months into running it. He's emptying almost two totes of chips a day. What? Aluminum. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. Or maybe they're half totes or something, but like a lot of chips. So he's running it hard and he loves it. What else?
00:13:51
Speaker
I gave a speech, which went really well. Yeah. Tell me, what was your speech on? It was just, uh, I thought a lot about it. You know, it was like, either I could script it. I could PowerPoint it. I've never made a PowerPoint speech. Um, so it's like, I'm just going to tell my story and tell how I ended up with a current, how I bought a current, um, and how we use it. And I gave some, certainly some nerdy, um, details at the end about all the little,
00:14:16
Speaker
things that we've done, all the custom macros and programs and a tool life tracker and the Raspberry Pi and how we use all that stuff. And I got a lot of cool response from the audience after that. A lot of great follow up questions and a lot of people coming up to me after going, we got to talk about this, this tool touch off script that you made. So that was really cool. And even the guy from Heidenhein, I think he's president of Heidenhein US was there and he was asking questions during the speech too. Like Heidenhein questions.
00:14:46
Speaker
He asked, how do you like Heidenhein over Fanek? And I was like, great question. Actually, well, how do you? It's, Fanek is old and stable. Heidenhein is new and I don't want to say complex, but just a lot cooler. Pretty easy to wrap your head around and just so powerful. Yeah. Like super cool. It's the future whereas Fanek is like stable, like I said.
00:15:13
Speaker
But if you did get a, I believe, uh, pretty sure Kerns only come in high nine, but if they did come with say a FANUC, you wouldn't screw that. Yeah. We're not even close. If, if I could choose hide nine for everything going forward, I probably would. Yeah. Um, yeah. They, they throw a good party. They had a stick meal there. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:40
Speaker
You know, it's like the whole event. Um, I couldn't find anywhere where the actual hours were. So I'm sitting there in my hotel room in the morning going, what time do I have to be there? I'll try to show up for nine kind of thing. I was the last person there. Oh, that's funny. I was like, what? Okay. Like I walk in and Simon's giving a speech and like, Oh crap. Like, okay. Sorry. Um,
00:16:02
Speaker
But like, so the whole day event, lots of speeches, lots of talks, everybody sits down and then gets up and talks to vendors and talks to each other back and forth a couple of times and then around five, 5.30, something like that.
00:16:16
Speaker
parties over, beers come out, and everybody just starts hanging out. And then we're like, sweet. Okay, I guess I'm assuming we're all going to break for dinner and go find dinner somewhere. And then appetizers start coming out with waiters with little steak bites and little kebabs with stuff. I'm like, these are delicious. So good. I was super happy with that. And then an hour later, Tony's like, oh, no, dinner's still coming.
00:16:40
Speaker
stake dinner, butte buffet kind of thing. I think they had a charcoal pit in the back that they built.
00:16:47
Speaker
It was well done. They really thought it through and they really valued their visitor experience, which was amazing. Yeah. Good for you.
Business Insights and Economic Outlook
00:16:57
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as, I mean, I've thrown little get togethers at the shop and it makes me realize how much next level something like this actually is where you got caterers and you got sound and audio and lights guys that come in and do this presentation and like, whoa.
00:17:13
Speaker
I'm not used to this. But they're justifying this rightfully so though is selling very, very profitable union centers and good for that. But yeah.
00:17:25
Speaker
I had probably the most amazing conversation with one of the CEOs, Sebastian and this other guy who I mentioned bought the Kern HD. Just the three of us for a solid half hour where it was like digging deep into business and leadership and what his role is in the company and what he's not happy with. He's like, I'm still doing too much kind of thing and how to
00:17:52
Speaker
elevate and delegate and how to hire under you and how to make sure that you're like on the strategic vision not just in the weeds all the time and he had this great analogy that I think they taught him at 3M where he said he said if your business is struggling or if you have stress or anxiety or whatever it's when you dig down to it it can only be one of four things either
00:18:19
Speaker
leadership, revenue, profits, or cashflow. Okay. And I'm listening and I go, well, honestly, all four of those could be better in our company. Like, you know, so I was fighting back and forth with him a little bit and he goes, no, no, no. Like which one will lead to your demise? Which one will put you out of business if it keeps going the way it's going? And I'm like, our leadership is good. We could always do better. None of us are leadership experts. So like, you know,
00:18:46
Speaker
I'm always thinking everything can always be better, but I'm like, our leadership's solid. Revenues could definitely be better. Profits are solid. If revenues were better, profits would be better. Cashflow is pretty good. We make money every day. That's not our demise problem. So I'm like, okay, for us, it's actually revenue. If we sold more products, if we made and sold more products, everything would be solid.
00:19:07
Speaker
And then for this other guy, we're talking about it. And for him, it's cash flow is his big thing because he's got the military contracts and he'll make, you know, he'll get paid millions of dollars, but then not for two years kind of thing. And then he has, you know, he makes a lot of money when he told me his annual revenue. I was like, whoa, sweet, good for you. And he's like, not really, because so much goes out from materials and like ITAR certified, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like it's a very expensive operation to run, but also, um,
00:19:39
Speaker
Yeah, his cash flow spikes up and down are in a completely different league than mine are, because we finish products every day and we sell products every day. And that's pretty solid. So cash flow for us is not it. It's literally just production revenue. Of the four is the one that's going to put us out of business if we don't give it the attention it deserves kind of thing. And I thought that was really fascinating, those four things, leadership, revenue, profits, and cash flow.
00:20:09
Speaker
He had a couple other, you know, four or five finger analogies like that. And I thought it was just really great. Good to put it in perspective. Yeah, sure. At the end of the day, this guy and I were talking with Sebastian, we're like,
00:20:22
Speaker
Both of us are looking for the golden ticket for Sebastian to say the magic word that just makes it all sense for us and tells us what to do. We realize that's not going to happen. It's all perspective. It's all that he can offer us. It's just perspective, a bit of advice, a bit of guidance, and that nobody's coming to save us. It's up to us.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yes. I've always felt that it's important and good to get outside your comfort zone, look at questions that force you. It's kind of why I've often said, hey, what happens if you have $10 million?
00:20:59
Speaker
things change in the world. And look, I just read a great paper from a guy I really look up to who writes periodic newsletter things about. None of us in the working world have actually
00:21:13
Speaker
been an employee in an industry environment, because anybody who would have been around as a very young employee in the 80s is now 50, 50 years old. So very, very little chance. And so rates are not going back down. And this isn't like a financial podcast, but...
00:21:33
Speaker
what the era would look like that are different and not necessarily going back in the United States, at least, certainly most of you are in my pressure periods, depending on the declining or low environment growth and just things are different. So literally the US government, the Fed is actively trying to slow things down. That's their explicit goal. And so it would be naive to not think, okay, well,
00:22:01
Speaker
We're in a great position, which makes me feel good, but the truth is that it's easier for us to sell a fixture plate when somebody buys a new VF2 than the VF2 that they've had on their floor for two years and is running. It would be naive to not think that we may have to contemplate what life could look like if things are different. On the flip side,
00:22:22
Speaker
machines like Tormach did really well 12 years ago in the Great Recession because more people ended up in a situation where they had more time, whether it's because they left their job laid off, whatever. They took that leap to start a business and bought that shape over the Tormach, whatever, the home machine, the garage machine, the startup, the nights and weekend thing. So it's not necessarily all bad news, but it's definitely the potential for change. Yes. And keeping that perspective is critical.
00:22:50
Speaker
It's very easy to be in the day to day like, things are good or things are bad today. I just got to keep my head on straight. I just got to get what I got to get done. But if you lose that kind of one year, five year perspective of your own business and of the world and potential things like that.
00:23:06
Speaker
I mean, we sell an expensive premium product. If people stop spending money, you know, discretionary money in the world, if we have a massive recession, great recession, like something like that, that might really, really hurt us. Ours are probably the first product that you stop buying.
00:23:23
Speaker
Please don't stop buying our products, by the way. Things I think about. No, for sure. Look, you got to dance when the music's playing. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to be a doomsdayer. It comes back to the rhetorical question of what is leadership? I think sometimes leadership is simply having the confidence to recognize, no, we are well positioned. Yes, you make an ultra premium product in a
00:23:49
Speaker
Very, very, very proven deep market, John. Yeah. It'd be different if it was something where, I can't even think of an example, but like- Like fly by night fad kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. You're super-nitchy. It's tied to the augmented reality world, or iPhone 15, where it's like, ah, if the thing changes, or somebody else might smoke you.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's why. Like bamboo versus Prusa. I wouldn't really want to own Prusa right now. Exactly, exactly. That's a good point. And that's kind of by design where we put ourselves in a position 10 years ago, we're not making knife handles for other knives. We're making our own product from scratch with our own design to our own audience, to our own market. And that's worked really well for us. And I'm also, as I've said hundreds of times, I'm too slow to be a job shop. Like me personally, maybe my team could pull it off.
00:24:43
Speaker
me personally to take on work, be a job shop, I wouldn't turn it around quickly. Oh, you're too slow. You're in your, the way you work. Yeah, exactly. Right, right. Because which allows me to put that focus into our own product and like go deep into it, go full Vrimsmo and have it pay off hopefully in the end.
00:25:01
Speaker
But yeah, I'm talking to some guys who run job shop work and they're like, we don't have time or luxury to do that. Um, like I'm able to establish a repeatable tool life for a chamfer tool in titanium. You know, whereas they're like, we got different jobs every day. Yeah. Like everybody, Dennis is like, he's got to get good at a material and a strategy, not a process or like a product, you know? Sure. Yeah. That comes back to the.
00:25:30
Speaker
idea too about leadership. So this is the top of mind as I think about the rest of this year and what I need and want out of the company for next year, which includes what it does for everybody here. And some of that leadership also means
00:25:47
Speaker
making sure that we do a good job explaining and defining role responsibilities and sometimes even challenging people if there's a natural desire to... It's always been important to me to, generally speaking, have a balance of a hustle focus workplace that's also
00:26:05
Speaker
Generally speaking, stress-free. By stress-free, we're organized. We have the systems and tools in place to do what we need to do, but also not, so it's not fly by the seat of your pants.
Visit to Lap Master and Lapping Technologies
00:26:15
Speaker
It's a mess. The wheels are flying off, but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be expectations of everybody, including me, about, hey, challenge it. Push yourself. This is what we expect of you, because that kind of reminds me of
00:26:29
Speaker
Something that doesn't come naturally to me as a leader but it did as an employee is like i want to be challenged i want to give me a chance to push myself to start my stuff i want to be.
00:26:41
Speaker
That's who I am. Not everybody points to me like that. That's okay. That's what I care about. I think I've learned to be very good at pushing myself and I have no problem doing that, but I have a lot of struggle pushing other people and giving them new challenges. Even if they're totally within their grasp, I still feel weird being like,
00:27:01
Speaker
Hey, I got a project for you. Hey, can you do this thing for me? Or I got to figure out a way to both phrase it for myself so that it makes sense to me, but also get them on board and get them excited for it. That's something I need to get better at, and I will, I am. I'm jealous you got to hang out with Adam.
00:27:19
Speaker
Yes, Adam, Laney Machine Tech, stud. It's like you get to know these people online. You see their online personalities. And when their real life personality is exactly what you expected, maybe with a few more curse words, then it's just like the best. And yeah, he's just awesome, awesome guy. I've spent a lot of time with him, which brings me to the lap master
00:27:44
Speaker
thing. So one of the guys we were hanging out with was like, actually, I've got a two o'clock meeting, you know, somewhere I got to take off. And eventually it came out that was at lap master Dave precise. And, and Adam's like, need a plus one. And he's like, Yeah, sure. And I was like, need a plus two because I'm not saying no to this. It's like, Yeah, sure. So the three of us jumped in my car and we drove to lap mastery was 20 minutes away. And
00:28:11
Speaker
We were greeted because Dave was already going to meet somebody there and they're working on a project together. I walk in the door and Dave introduces us and I'm basically like, Adam and I are both lapping nerds and this is really surreal to be here right now. This is really cool and I've got a lapping machine too and the guy Chandler is like, he's like, what do you have? I'm like, I have an Angus and he's like, there's the door, get out.
00:28:37
Speaker
Okay, so I was going to ask, they're a service or they make the machines or what's there? Both. Okay. So they make, assemble their designs, their lap master machines, their sister company to Peter Wolters in Germany, which makes huge fine grinding machines, like double-sided fine grinding machines. So they also sell those in the States and they had lots of machines there. And then they also have a huge
00:29:02
Speaker
R&D facility for lapping, and then also a contract manufacturing lapping shop. Oh, wow. So if you have 1,000 parts that need to be lapped to within two light bands, then they can do it for you. They're happy to do it.
00:29:15
Speaker
And it's not just like, uh, yeah, we'll run a thousand parts, but then you gotta buy a machine. It's like, no, no, we'll just run a thousand parts. No problems. We'll run 10 parts. We're in five parts. Um, they had a plastic part that they were lapping. That was really interesting. Some medical blood device with all these little channels and microfluidics and stuff. And it's an injection molded part that gets lapped on the ceiling surface. And I was like, that's really cool. Can I film that? No. Yeah. Right. Right. Huh. That's cool.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah. And I filmed the whole shop, which was amazing.
00:29:46
Speaker
I basically said, you know, what can I film? What can I film? Okay. I'm just going to film what I can and you can review everything. I'm not going to share anything proprietary, but I will let you review everything. But, um, you know, don't get in my way. Like, like I'm just going to film. I'm just going to have fun. Um, and it was wonderful. And they had an old guy there, Joe flash, who's been there for 50 years, something like that. And he's, he's nearing retirement. Although I heard he's been nearing retirement for 10 years now. And he's.
00:30:14
Speaker
finally actively downloading his knowledge to the younger staff around him because otherwise it'll disappear with him and this is the guy that like knows everything and for Adam to be there was so good because as an educator Adam knew all the questions to ask to get Joe talking and Joe was happy to talk and share everything and so they had this
00:30:41
Speaker
computer-based interferometry machine that measures flatness with like x-ray scan or something like that. Laser, yeah, sure. Laser basically, but he said it was like half a million dollars. And Adam's like, I know all about those, I built one.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yes. Not for half a million. Joe was like, what? Yeah. That was the topic with Silo's garage. And he is somehow connected to Adam. I can't remember if or how. They're bugs. Yeah. OK. Yeah. We're building these diamond turning glaze where you need equipment of that level to even know what you're doing.
00:31:17
Speaker
or measure them at all? Exactly. Because you're making flatness. You need flatness. And to be able to measure it the best way possible is the way to go. So both Adam and Silos Garage are super nerds for diamond turning and flatness. I'm just more flatness. Adam's getting into all the contours of telescope parabolas and making spheres. I have no interest in that. I think it's cool. But I just care about flatness, single plane flatness, parallelism, things like that. Because that's what applies to my business.
00:31:48
Speaker
A lot of little things around the shop, I was like, what is that? That's really cool.
Driving a Tesla and Shop Management
00:31:55
Speaker
Diamond lapping film that you can buy in a roll in every micron from 3M, which I knew they had discs. I've been buying these five inch discs that are stick on adhesive that have from one to 30 micron. We've been using them, they're great. Then you go there and you're like, it's the same thing in a paper towel roll.
00:32:12
Speaker
Interesting. Of paper, and not only that, but they built this device that's like a flat lapping plate, 12 by 12, where this roll of paper goes underneath, strings over top, and that's how they can flat lap things before they go under the optical flats so that they don't scratch the glass kind of thing.
00:32:31
Speaker
The five-inch adhesive-backed that you buy go on what? Just on a lapping plate? On anything flat, we put them on a granite surface plate. We put them on a piece of steel, just like anything flat enough. We've used that to flatten carbon fiber, steel, things like that. They wear out, but they're great.
00:32:54
Speaker
But yeah, it was just, just wild. It's like, it's an old company, LiveMaster. They've been around since the fifties or something. Um, so a lot of the machines have also been around since the fifties, but it's like, they work great. And they just.
00:33:07
Speaker
for their contract side, they're like, yeah, this machine just runs parts. They have one machine that's 96 inches in diameter, the plate, which is, I don't know how many feet, seven feet or whatever? Eight feet, 2500 millimeters or something. Yeah, yeah. And he said, we use that to lap lapping machines, like this one at once. Yeah, yeah. That's legit. Yeah, so it was a wonderful experience. Super, super happy that
00:33:37
Speaker
that that came about. The tour would have been amazing without it, but with it was just cherry on top. And then I have a silly Tesla question. I know I'm kind of out of the loop or behind the ball, but when you do an 11 hour drive, are you using, there's no full, what do they call it? There's no, my understanding is they haven't released full autopilot driving because of a variety of reasons, but you can still do a, basically I have to nudge the steering wheel every once in a while, but I can kind of check out otherwise.
00:34:07
Speaker
Do you do that? I think it's 45 seconds, 60 seconds, something like that. Every little bit. If you just keep your hand on the wheel, then it does it. It's fine. It's great. Just hold your speed. It'll slow down for the car in front of you. It'll even exit off the highway. Why would it exit though? If you're going to somewhere. If you have your GPS in it, it'll take the exit for you.
00:34:32
Speaker
Okay, because let's say my truck does adaptive cruise and lane assist. Will it slow down for the car in front of you? Oh yeah, absolutely. It'll track it, keeping the distance, but it doesn't.
00:34:45
Speaker
It's pretty cool if you have your blinker on and you change the lane just fine. If you don't put your blinker on, which I use my blinker, it'll fight you a little bit. Cool. In no way would I be able to check out. I wouldn't be able to have a good thinking session without also feeling like I have to pay attention to the road. Obviously, I still pay attention to the road.
00:35:07
Speaker
The car drives itself. Yeah, that's cool. I don't even have the full autopilot like Amish has where in city streets it'll do everything for you. Mine's basically an enhanced cruise control, which is still awesome, still amazing. Cool. Then I left on a full charge and then I charged two times to get there.
00:35:29
Speaker
So I had two charging stops. So basically I drive for three hours, charge for 45 minutes, and then drive for another three hours, charge again. Yeah. It's great. It's a nice time to stretch my legs, get some lunch. It's great. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. That was my trip. Glad you had a good time. Yeah, me too. Me too. How was the shop life with when you were MIA? Pretty good. A couple issues with the current, surprisingly.
00:35:59
Speaker
It was nice to be at Kern when we have those issues so I could directly ask the people that I needed. Okay. It was like Tina's the service tech that came up here and did our spindle a couple months ago.
00:36:11
Speaker
The whole first day I saw her from a distance, we kind of like quickly waved at each other, but we never hung out, talked. And then the second day I was like, hi Tina, by the way, I have some technical questions for you. Pleasantries aside, other than that shop went great. It's not hard to leave for a couple days and everything just runs and that needs to further improve as time goes on because
00:36:38
Speaker
The company needs to become self-sustaining. It needs to not rely on me as the sole source of all answers and that's kind of a focus of mine for the next several years is getting to the point where the company either through documents, procedures, training documents, experience, notes, whatever, all the answers are available. They're not just stuck in my head. You know what I mean?
00:37:02
Speaker
I definitely know what you mean. I'm not sure I have super strong opinions except to realize that's something that's harder to effectuate over time slowly. If that's the path
00:37:18
Speaker
I went, then it wouldn't have happened because it's a one step forward, two steps back. As you outsource more, you continue into... It's more of one of those cold turkey, you need to just have a much more immediate structural change, if you will. Of course, there's going to be longer term things, but it's not. Cool. What are you up to? I don't remember if we talked about the Send Grinder project.
00:37:48
Speaker
a few times. I think you've mentioned, I forget if you mentioned last week. Yeah. Yeah. Nine out of 10. We ended up filming a video. Cool. Which was fun. It was not a project I actually intended to take on. I actually shared it with Angelus in case. Yeah. I was asking for his advice on a few things and then she was, I showed him what we, because you guys have the exact same grinder, but I didn't plan on doing it myself. Just planned on getting enough information to Upwork and
00:38:16
Speaker
realized this just works. It's great. It is working, which is awesome. So you basically made, you made a quick and dirty prototype and it just works.
00:38:26
Speaker
Well, yeah, that's the dilemma on something like this is it's not an isolated project. In other words, when we used Upwork to build fixture plate storage crates, it was just built from scratch, fixture plate storage devices that go on rack. We're not starting with something. Here, you're starting with a complicated grinder. Complicated media has lots of different sheet metal bends and things.
00:38:49
Speaker
And so I used CAD, cardboard-aided design, cut out some cardboard, some duct tape, found a linear rail for 40 bucks. I was like, well, I'm just going to buy that because if it works, great. And if not, whatever. I actually made the videos for Upwork on my phone and just be like, hey, here's what we want. And then when I stuff the cardboard on the
00:39:11
Speaker
linear rail with some three different parts, I realized, wait a minute, it's basically done, ordered some send versions of what I had done in fusion in like four seconds of just like squares and rectangles of acrylic. And yeah, works right. So basically, two semi-permanent sides that block the coolant and then a sliding door in the center, which gives you access, but also blocks the majority of the coolant. And it looks nice. That was an important thing. I didn't want the janky curtain shower door.
00:39:41
Speaker
I think I saw a video of it running splashing and I'm like, that looks really pro. That's like, yeah, right. Nice job. Yeah. Happy with that. On that same sort of topic had a sort of fun debate slash question with Renzetti and Spencer Webb over social and so forth about.
00:40:02
Speaker
the best process or shop habits out of demon, I think weighed in to on Spencer's podcast about when you precision or flat stone a part, do you then touch either surface again with your hand or with a microfiber or anything or air and pressed air and, um,
00:40:22
Speaker
I was half joking half serious about like, well, what if your skin cells get on that when you wipe it off? And I don't, I mean, yes, skins, you know, chunks of skin, the best hands, like you could absolutely get residue on something from that or skin oils was more just like,
00:40:39
Speaker
I have a really hard time stoning something and not wiping it afterward, just to have a habit. Most people, it sounds like, do that. They stone it and then they still do a hand wipe. Maybe we're saying that your hands should be clean and free of hang nails that are about to fall off, type of thing. I think the mental perspective is stoning is like sandpaper, like sanding, and it creates a dust. It creates something, right? So your subconscious just goes, oh, I got to give it a swim.
00:41:05
Speaker
Right. Right. Well, and certainly if you hit, I mean, that's the beauty of, oh my gosh, if you're listening and you haven't ever used a flat ground, a stone that's been ground, Democrats, it's very cool. It's a very pleasurable experience. And then you do hit that nick or that high spot and you feel it so easily. It's not really a feeling you have to learn. Like it's pretty quick to understand it. And then you can send it away, stone it away, and then it's gone. And then you're like,
00:41:30
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's flat now. That's what got me into flatness was buying my first set of flat stones and now I'm absolutely addicted to all things flat. Yeah.
00:41:41
Speaker
We built a really nice, well, it's 90, 80% of the way there, a new QC gauge that would let us check the dimension that I really care about. It's very awkward to check on one of our products. And we had an old contraption that was a hodgepodge of hot glued granite with big bulky magnets, mag based indicators. And I
00:42:06
Speaker
I did what I've said I will do, which is I'm gonna use my brain. I'm not the best at this stuff, but when I actually stop and think, I can come up with some decent results and use the bamboo. Realize on these 30 minute prints on the bamboo, you can turn off bed leveling and you can turn off flow calibration and our machine's stable. You don't need that every print. And it helps a lot on these shorter prints to get a part done in 18 minutes instead of 31 minutes.
00:42:34
Speaker
and so did some kind of rapid iteration and got a design that works. It doesn't work because the 3D printed
00:42:45
Speaker
This process creates too many undulations for a metrology tool, but it told me exactly what we needed. And then I actually handed it off to Alex and I was like, hey, this is what I like. I want to replace this with a ground rail and use three printed areas around it to support some of the ways we stabilize the product as we swipe it through or use it as a metrology tool.
00:43:07
Speaker
And yeah, it felt really good. I really like it, which ties into our goal and theme of the fictional example that's driving me of when you come or anybody comes to see the shop and they like you. Oh, that's really interesting. This is your process bin for this product. This is how you're storing the inventory with these new 3D print inserts that store them in a much nicer way than we were doing it before. And here's the tools for that. Here's the QC gauge for that.
00:43:35
Speaker
You even talking about this develop a sense of pride in how it happens. And I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw a really great quote yesterday. I feel like it. I like it too much to not share it, but it sounds almost sound ominous. I don't mean it like that. Apparently, it's by Confucius if the internet doesn't lie. But oh, she I gotta find the quote. Sorry, John.
00:44:04
Speaker
Um, because it's, I want to read it verbatim here and I like it because it's that motive for you and me to not mess around with, with the time that we've got left. Here's the quote. We have two lives and the second begins when we realize we only have one. Hmm.
00:44:28
Speaker
And I think there's too much of your my aspect that has grown up from this 2009 garage days and passion and newness and like outsider and and that's part of my driving factor of
00:44:42
Speaker
Again, there's no ominousness to this. We're doing great. But this business is over being something that doesn't work, period, full stop. We have a team of people that handle these responsibilities. I am here as the leader. I'm able to weigh in on the technical aspects and the leadership, the capital planning. The business needs to earn a reasonable return.
00:45:03
Speaker
If it doesn't earn a reasonable return, it's not a financial metric. I don't actually care about that. It certainly doesn't make me happy. But if it doesn't meet that metric, then we need to change something. We need to think about allocating our resources differently or changing the machines that we have, the real estate footprint.
Ongoing Projects and Tooling Discussions
00:45:20
Speaker
A business that does not make a reasonable return is going out of business, basically. That's something I've learned.
00:45:27
Speaker
Yeah, or just, okay, this is your hobby. Yeah, exactly. That's a little bit unfair. Again, I'm sharing a lot of personal head thoughts.
00:45:40
Speaker
ever wanted to retire, I start having that conversation and whatever. And then I realize, obviously, this is like well done, well in the future. Then I'm like, it would be great to just do what I do now without any stress. I have stress. So that kind of comes back to your four points of anxiety. And it's like, well, if your sales
00:46:04
Speaker
were revenue were guaranteed. Like life doesn't work like that. Like guarantees don't like life would be boring if you knew everything else was going to happen in the future. Like it would change your risk appetite and your thoughts. Like I still think a lot about like, Hey, you know, we had some good day yesterday was a really good day. Actually then we've had some slow days. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:22
Speaker
And is that sustainable? Is that what you want out of the company? Where are you going to put your attention? Because as we both know as leaders of our company, there's a million directions to put my attention. I could put my head inside the electrical panel of a machine, or I can design a new thing, or I can design a silly fixture and put way too much work into it, or I can design a new product that has huge returns for our company. Or I can teach the staff how to do a skill to take it off my plate kind of thing and help them grow and
00:46:50
Speaker
There's a million different ways to go. I need to laser focus my efforts into the most kind of most required and bank for the buck kind of things. Yep. Yep. But as you just said before, you kind of glossed over it. But would you say that the days of this business not working are over or something like that?
00:47:11
Speaker
Yeah, which like the business never didn't work. But like, I agree. Yeah, like it kind of ties back to that line in the sand like it's over. Like, yeah. Yeah. Then that Confucius quote of like, I'm not going to spend the next two years or five years to 10 years not having a business that is adequately
00:47:34
Speaker
Yes. ... has the right team, the right people. It's John from Area 491-9 who has had a much better growth trajectory. I can blame growth on allowing that, but the truth is I think there's a lot more to it that he deserves credit for than just it's all he got lucky. It's all sorts of things that are different, that are admirable.
00:47:54
Speaker
No, I guess they are adding machines, they're growing equipment, they don't have a problem recruiting because people want to work there. Because they've got this technology, the infrastructure, the people, the resources, that's great. And he's not doing even what...
00:48:11
Speaker
I do it and I know you do it. I'm like, okay, actually to blame myself right now, I'm wiping a computer to redo a QC computer because I don't want to have a full-time tech person. It's no big deal, but I say that and
00:48:27
Speaker
That's me not doing stuff that at some point I need to be doing. Exactly. And it's the same. Simon and Sebastian, Kern does $55 million a year last year, and they have the same problems. Yeah, right.
00:48:45
Speaker
But no, it feels gives me a lot of motivation around all those topics of leadership and of how we build our sales channel and how we focus on the profitability of certain products or what we make and how we manufacture them. And yeah, it's good. It's good. Up and up. Yes. We're over our informal time limit. Yes. Does it matter? Yeah.
00:49:12
Speaker
Anyway. Good. What are you up to today? Today, we've got a guy here from Fair Technique working on the speedio to finally get the Aroa integrated. Oh my God. The amount of electronics he's adding to our speedio is nuts. The amount of relays and switches and sensors. It's like, holy crap. I thought this would be kind of easy. Yeah. Not easy. Not easy. Huge, huge cable chain, like silly, silly.
00:49:37
Speaker
Got some optimizing to do on the Kern, and I wish I could have this video to make parts, but the guys here do instead. Yeah, spending a lot of time with Angelo working on hiring another person. Nice.
00:49:51
Speaker
And yeah, we got to get that posting up. We're working on it. It's getting close. Stuff like that. You? Formatting this computer that we're talking about next week. I got some tooling questions for you too about countersinks. I don't know anything about countersinks.
00:50:10
Speaker
Serious? Not really. Well, no, you'll have something to add to this. Like a counter sink tool? Or a... Cutting a large... Okay, we'll talk about it. Gen 2 mod vices use inch fasteners, which means the counter sink ring, we'll call it one inch wide flathead screw, is almost an inch wide, is 82 degrees. Well, you can buy 82 degrees, provide helical... Got it.
00:50:40
Speaker
chamfer tools and you could even buy them as inserted tools like this. But moving to Gen 3 with metric hardware for a variety of other reasons also moves it to a 90 degree, which has interesting benefits. And so many of the products that we make right now with 82 degrees get roughed and then surfaced in, and we're pretty quick at surfacing them, but nevertheless, I am debating
00:51:04
Speaker
We'll still rough it with a stair step finish. And then do we use a insert tool or a solid carbide tool? Do we try to do it in one plunge pass or one 2D contour pass? Or do we still use a smaller 90 degree helical file tool to bore it in? So you're actually sweeping down through. And it's not a round circle, right? It looks like an oval.
00:51:28
Speaker
Uh, it's deceiving the underlying, the smaller ID is oval, but the, no, the circle is a circle. Yeah. I guess you could bore that or you could just, I mean, 2d pocketed kind of inside the outside kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, surfacing is probably fine, but if it's minutes you're looking for, um, what I've noticed is stair step roughing, and then you bring in your chamfer mill, it's going to wear a stair step into that chamfer mill eventually.
00:51:58
Speaker
Right. So I'm conscious of that. Okay. Have you done any, I know your parts are generally so much smaller. Have you done any,
00:52:09
Speaker
counter bore, angled surfaces where you use the angled tool. So let's say it's a 60 degree angle, it doesn't matter. And you use a 60 degree angle tool that's way smaller and you use the boring option to follow that down along the taper. I don't know if I've done much of that. And I want to say if I have, it wasn't super beautiful, successful. So I generally try to use a chamfer tool that's bigger than- Yes, agree. You're right, our chamfers are small enough that a quarter inch chamfer mill fits.
00:52:36
Speaker
Yeah. And the few times I've tried it in the past without caring, it didn't go well. You see witness lines and step overs. It's not pretty. It doesn't make you feel like a good machinist. You see blind lines. Right. But I had this AB tool, chamfer tool that's huge, but I'm not sure. It has no back relief. Have you tried it yet? No, it's just- I think it'll run great. I'm going to try it, yeah. Yeah.
00:52:59
Speaker
And then you get a three sided triangle insert that you can just flip and rotate. That's probably the way to go. It's big too. You can just do it in a couple of passes.
00:53:07
Speaker
Yeah. The, they didn't seem to have a ton of insert variety nine, nine or ever ready or whatever their name. I hear the same company. Um, you've used their stuff, right? Nine tools, like the word nine and then the number nine. Bingo. Yeah. They, and, um, that's W equipment. Uh, who was that? Nine, nine.
00:53:30
Speaker
ever ready. To me, that's a battery company, but it's ever EDE. They sell a bunch of stuff too that had more interruption than Sandvik actually has some stuff, which is my go-to here because I just call my rep and be like, hey, give me a pitch off my plate. Just tell me it works and I'll try it. This is a situation where I don't care about to a life cost because it'll be insignificant for the foreseeable future. Exactly. It's a product you care about, you want good, you make a lot of.
00:54:01
Speaker
Well, no, that doesn't, I would think differently about if it were, when it's our drills or tools, we eat up a bunch, but here, like, especially the first one I'm doing is aluminum. The, even buying $150 solid carbide tool would last us two years. So I don't really care. Yeah. Got to find a solution that works. That's what it's all about. Yes. Cool. See you next week. Have a good week. Bye.