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Business of Machining - Episode 137
227 Plays6 years ago
Buckle up for this EPIC episode of BOM!
Saunders and Grimsmo both have a LOT to talk about as Grimsmo bargains for the shop of his dreams, and Saunders takes on multiple projects that each have BIG implications and potential.
Behind the GrimsBRO scenes
When it comes down to it, Grimsmo Knives was started by two brothers, and they continue to make big business decisions together. Grimsmo shared a chat on his Insta story (@johngrimsmoknives) between him and Erik, and it left people guessing.
BUT Grimsmo KNOWS what he wants.
After visiting his dream shop a couple days ago, he says:
“[The shop] is different than what I expected, but it’s also everything I expected. Price wise, it works” - Grimsmo
NYC CNC 5-Axis Machining Class FINALIZED
Saunders finalized his first 5-axis machine training class! The ROBODRILL is rigged up and ready, are you? 3/6 slots are already sold out, so reserve your slot ASAP
2 Day Class (Dates): Dec 5 - 6, 2019
Price: $1750
Hey girl, you wanna Netflix n’ LEARN??
Both Johns recommend the Netflix documentary on Bill Gates.
What is YOUR definition of success?
Highlight: Everyone has a different definition of it, and yours shouldn’t be defined by someone else’s parameters for your life.
“Work and family are really the only two things I care about in the world” - Grimsmo
Saunders and Grimsmo discuss what success means, and what role happiness plays in the equation.
Book recommendation:
Delivering Happiness By Tony Hsieh
Also discussed in this episode:
- Google ads campaign for fixture plates. What social media platform is best for your business to advertise on?
- Check out Grimsmo’s video on cleaning out the Mori Mill
- Saunders visit with QualiChem, and a discussion of different coolants and filtering methods (Water matters!)
- Cleaning parts with an Ultrasonic Cleaner, and which one to buy
- Saunders admits that he’s warming up to lathes. Proof: “I have a fanuc in the shop, and I like lathes” - Saunders. Will BOM ever be the same again??
Recommended
Transcript
Speculation on Shop Acquisition
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 137. My name is John Saunders. My name is John Rimsmo. Good morning. Good morning, buddy. I have a lot to talk about. Oh, I love it. How are you doing? Really, really good. Yeah? Yeah. I'll let you go first if you have lots to talk about.
00:00:22
Speaker
No, no, I got my list here. I actually saw that Instagram story of you and Eric talking late night. Is that news that I think it is?
00:00:36
Speaker
On a shop? It is technically not, although I realize the out of context, you know, everybody's going to think what they're going to think.
Exploring a Potential Shop
00:00:46
Speaker
That chat was technically about merchandise, but it applies to everything else. Yeah, we went and looked at a shop yesterday.
00:00:57
Speaker
that I want to be in. And I've wanted this shop for three months. I've been trying to track the guy down. This was one of those, it's not even listed. There's a rundown building who owns that building. Let me find out. And I've literally for three months, I've been texting this guy back and forth trying to get a showing and trying to figure out what they want to do with it.
00:01:20
Speaker
Long story short, I got a showing yesterday. It's different than I expected, but it's also everything I expected. It's four minutes from my house. It's out in the country. It's 26,000 square feet, which might house my ambitions.
00:01:47
Speaker
And it's available.
Shop Condition and Negotiation Strategy
00:01:51
Speaker
I think we're going to work out a lease to purchase deal and the prices are right. I feel like I have to convert that for our metric friends. I think that's 2,400 square meters. How many square feet? 27,000? 26. 26,000 square feet.
00:02:11
Speaker
It's a lot of space, John. I know it's a lot of space. I've looked at everything else in the area for the past two years. Well, not everything, but a lot for the past two years. And this is the only one that's truly spoken to me. Is it a warehouse? It was a printing factory for the past 30 years. 100% perfect for manufacturing.
00:02:36
Speaker
Is it dilapidated, run down? It hasn't been used in three years, so there's actually mold growing in weird places, but it needs a good clean. The current owner, I don't want to say too much because this is not at all final yet, but current owners had big plans for
Subdividing Space and Tenant Contributions
00:02:55
Speaker
it, started renovations.
00:02:57
Speaker
you know, started tearing down all the offices and things like that. And so it's a bit of a construction site right now, not bad. But also they dug up a lot of the concrete or tore trenches into the concrete to put drainage for whatever they were doing. So there are hilarious like trenches all throughout the concrete that
00:03:17
Speaker
wouldn't be too big of a deal to fill in and close up. Yeah, it is interesting. I did not expect that whatsoever. But yeah, that and some other stuff that it needs, but there's definitely some wiggle room in the negotiations here, which is cool. Are the current owners, the owners that have owned it for some period of time?
00:03:37
Speaker
No, just the past few years. They had big plans, started working, plans halted. Got it. And they've been entertaining me for the past three months. So they're obviously curious about what
Advice on Real Estate and Business Separation
00:03:50
Speaker
to do. Sure. Have you guys gotten to talking details, structure, price? Yes. Okay. I sent him my proposed terms and his very next sentence was, let's go see it this weekend. Got it. And I was like, oh, wow. I didn't. Wow. Okay. Yeah.
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, I know it's huge, but even price-wise, it's right. It's insane. Can you demise it into two or more spaces? Maybe. So I'm definitely keeping that an option.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, John, that's, that's every, that's exactly many smart people that I've met up. In fact, the, uh, internship summer in New York city, one of the guys ahead of me in school was, was, yeah, they show you the ropes and he was like, yeah. And this is all illegal in New York city because everybody does this, but he,
00:04:42
Speaker
had rented a effectively two or three bedroom apartment for like seven or eight grand a month. I mean, it's insanely expensive, but had then further subdivided it, which is the illegal part. And he was living rent free. You couldn't make money off of it, but you could get enough roommates to have your
Shop Deal Negotiation Tactics
00:05:01
Speaker
rent go to zero. But 27,000 square feet, John, I'm just going to tell you, is way too much square feet. And what you-
00:05:08
Speaker
What you may not be thinking of is that manifests itself in the form of property taxes and utility bills and upkeep and maintenance and inefficiency. But oh my gosh, you could subdivide that into three 9,000 square foot spaces. And from what I've heard from you over the past
00:05:26
Speaker
two years is there's not an abundance of excess space in that area. So talk to a broker, I would highly encourage you to kind of quote unquote partner, not legally partner, but you would want to bring on a broker to help incentivize the marketing efforts and they would get paid a commission to find tenants for the space and so forth. But oh my gosh, John, you could potentially
00:05:53
Speaker
If you had one or two other tenants, they could potentially pay the mortgage. Well, one financing house that I was talking to, the only one I've fully talked to about a mortgage, they put the clause in that your tenants can't pay for more than 50% of the mortgage. That doesn't make any sense. That's their rules.
00:06:15
Speaker
Send me that language, like a screenshot of that. It was verbal. It was verbal, but yeah. No lender. If the owner occupies it as well, I think was the language. I
Reflections on Skills and Real Estate Knowledge
00:06:29
Speaker
would humbly say there's something lost in translation there.
00:06:32
Speaker
Maybe. I don't know. Okay. But yes. Yeah. What if you were... It doesn't make sense. What if you were only 3000 square feet and the rest was... Look, I don't know Canadian law, but anybody in the US would do this such that Grimsville Knives does not own the building. Right. J and E, Real Estate owned the building, John and Eric, and then Grimsville Knives is just another tenant.
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah, I wonder if that is a way around that somehow. I don't know. Well, it's not a loophole. It's not a way around it. It's just simply appropriate. Right. Interesting. Well, dude, that's awesome. Very interesting. Yes. Good for you. It's cool. Yes, and we were walking around.
00:07:19
Speaker
I should go as part of my fall agenda it's been going through some of the NYC CNC content to make sure we haven't let anything get stale like what needs freshened up but one of the things I will check this after we hang up is to make sure I've got the latest and greatest
00:07:37
Speaker
stuff on real estate, like lease and shop things to think about, borrowing money type stuff.
Meeting the Owner for Negotiations
00:07:42
Speaker
Because again, it's been part of my realization in 2019 when I think about what I do well, that top 10 list, do something that you are really good at. And it's not that I'm a bad machinist, but my machine skills are frankly average. We can, I think machine above average parts by probably just focusing and being good at that. But it's that
00:08:04
Speaker
combination of having those outside experiences bring it in. It's awesome. It goes without saying, but let me help how I can. Of course. Yeah. We're super excited. I need to get more face-to-face time, well, any face-to-face time with the owner. It's just been through text until now.
00:08:30
Speaker
and see what's up because I don't know what their plans are, but they're obviously entertaining us. So I'm super curious and this needs to happen fairly quickly.
Impact on Grimstone Knives
00:08:40
Speaker
And they know that. Well, just be careful. Play your... Yeah, I know. Don't get too excited. They don't need to know it's quick. Well, they need to know my timeline so that they don't drag feet for two years.
00:08:51
Speaker
Play the poker game, play the chess game, one step ahead. I have been, but he never gets back to me, so I put some pressure on him, timeline-wise, and then he gets back to me. But I know what you're saying, of course. Sure, but you can put that... Make sure you... I don't know, I assume he doesn't listen to the business of machining podcast, but you need to find another space, even if that space exists only in the figment of your imagination, so that he doesn't think you're the only solution.
00:09:20
Speaker
Of course. And you should brace yourself for this to not work as well. Yes. Because that stinks. Not to be. It does stink. Yeah, it's a real possibility. So I'm both trying to plan for contingencies, but also just betting the farm and trying to see if I can make this work. Awesome. That's great, dude.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, if it does work, it's going to be insane and could house grimstone knives for any amount of growth we conceivably see possible.
Current Shop Layout Challenges
00:09:53
Speaker
And that's exciting.
00:09:56
Speaker
where we rigged in the robo drill yesterday and it's interesting. I don't think we have great shop layout and maybe nobody thinks that, but it's surprisingly feeling tight, even though it's not in any way tight. I mean, good grief. That's a 4,000 square foot room that doesn't have that many machines in it, but... Well, it was good three machines ago.
00:10:22
Speaker
Well, yeah, the the Robo drill though is only annoying because you do need to bolt down the robot to the floor. Oh, the Robo drill itself is quite easy to move around. So we have it kind of in its spot temporarily. We were running power, running a new sub panel because we effectively ran out of main with three panels throughout the shop and they're mostly full, but we have another main breaker.
00:10:48
Speaker
I don't know what you call this. We have another spot for a main breaker to run it on the full load panel somewhere else. So we're doing that now. And then we'll hook that up. Do you have three? How many inputs to the shop do you have? Just the one? Just one. But it's eight or 900 amps, I think. Oh my goodness. Yeah. At what voltage do you guys have?
00:11:09
Speaker
See, everything up here is 600 volt. Yeah, I realize how nice that would be these days. Some of the machines need step-down transformers, but boy.
00:11:19
Speaker
It'd
5-axis Machining Class Excitement
00:11:20
Speaker
be nice to have run a higher voltage, lower wire lines to these sub panels. It's fine. That makes sense. We're probably going to spend about $3,000 to buy the new panel. The breaker alone that goes in the main panel was $660, but that should get us through years of stuff, as best I can tell.
00:11:46
Speaker
So, so it's not, it's maybe I'm overreacting cause transformers aren't too cheap either, but it seems like it would be nice to have higher voltage. Yeah. Each transformer, I don't know exactly, but it's like a thousand bucks. Sometimes we've gotten, we've gotten used ones from an electrician that worked fine, but just the little things like smaller wire is easier to pull. You can fit more into small conduit. It's just easier to kind of tweak it. Um, so no big deal. Yep.
00:12:17
Speaker
So we've been busy. I finalized our first five-axis machining training class. So we're doing one in December. We're keeping it small because it's our first class and we obviously want to make sure it's an awesome experience. We had some folks on the wait list, so we actually already sold out three of the six seats. But if other folks are interested, this is to me awesome because it's a chance to come and spend two days going through five-axis workflows when it comes to
00:12:46
Speaker
everything from work holding to tooling to machine setup to the process to thinking about automation to actually making parts on the machine. The Fusion 360 tips, tricks, the templates that we begin getting up to speed with. And it's very much in the spirit of what I've been so captivated with lately. So I'm excited for that. That's epic. Yeah. I'm tempted to go down myself.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah, you would actually benefit from it at this point, seriously.
Discussion on Bill Gates Documentary
00:13:18
Speaker
I'm sure I would. What is your current Novemberish? Oh, man. Yeah, interesting. I'll send you more breakdown of what we're thinking of the curriculum is so you can figure that out. Do you have a price for the class? Eric and I were talking about this yesterday. I'm just curious. I do. I have to look it up.
00:13:40
Speaker
CNC, hands-on classes. It is December 5th and 6th, two-day class, $1,750. Six people. Yeah, I'm excited. Perfect. What else? We are, what was I gonna say? Oh, watching the Netflix documentary on Bill Gates,
00:14:09
Speaker
I haven't seen it, but I put it in my watch list. Is it good? It is. It is interesting what they did. It's three parts, at least so far. And the first one is about his humanitarian and philanthropy efforts, which is interesting to me because it wasn't what I expected. And then I think the cynic in me thinks, because the second and third are much more what I was hoping for and expecting. And I suspect that they may have put that first because if they put it last, people may have skipped it.
00:14:39
Speaker
And that's not to discredit what he's doing. I think we probably take it for granted living such comfortable lives in Western civilization that things like diarrhea and clean water and sewage systems aren't important. And it is actually really fascinating stuff, but I want to see Bill Gates from the inside kind of raw emotional business side of things. And the two takeaways that I had that are both
00:15:06
Speaker
Just simple takeaways to be digested ordered to be discussed further one is bills answer to things throughout his career when he hit struggles or difficult points was just work harder he had a.
00:15:22
Speaker
singular focus that did not deviate, arguably at almost any expense, which is different than his counterpart. Unfortunately, the late Paul Allen, where Paul wanted to play music and have other interests and do other stuff, kind of actually reminds me of humbly in the back of the strike mark days. My partner had a lot of other things he wanted to do, and I wanted to just pour myself into this business to make it work.
00:15:50
Speaker
But Bill's answer was work, work, work, work, work. And it's hard to say something like that would have regrets, but obviously that comes at the expense of work-life balance. And you can come off as kind of a bit of a brash person because that's all you do. On the flip side, part of me will never, ever deviate from
00:16:10
Speaker
the fact that it's really about hard work. You got to be smart and you got to be smart about how you work, but ultimately it's still the people I've looked up to have seen, you know, is it just people that are just born with this crazy raw intelligence or is it the people that actually studied for their tests and actually putting the time to read? It's the latter. You don't have to be that smart to succeed. You do have to work. Right.
00:16:34
Speaker
Yep. And the passion component makes it so much easier. Sorry. It goes without saying. I should admit, yeah. Absolutely. Well, it doesn't go without saying because you could be a car salesman and hate it and work, work, work, work,
Defining Success and Personal Goals
00:16:46
Speaker
work. And that's when you have a bad life. That's true. Because you're miserable. You're putting in 40 hours a day and blah, blah, blah. But in what you and I have found for ourselves, it's not even work. Yeah, right. I mean, it's busy and it's stressful.
00:17:03
Speaker
Work and family are the only two things I really care about in the world. Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:10
Speaker
So yeah, I love it. I can't wait to watch that. So that's what you just said is actually interesting. And this was the one that hit me, that kind of just hit me last night actually was the question of you have, and that's actually the quote or the question came from his mother who's also deceased, but was a huge influence in his life, both as a productive person and a phenomenal female
00:17:37
Speaker
for her time in terms of what she was able to do and board seats and successful and so forth. But shaping who he was, but she's on the podium speaking to somebody and she sort of said, I actually need to go rewatch it. But the way she said it just hit me, what is your definition of success?
00:17:59
Speaker
And you and I talk about this so much about business and machining and the daily stuff and all that. But I don't think, I know, I can't tell you succinctly and with conviction what my definition of success is. And that's something I need to reflect on more.
00:18:21
Speaker
Yep, I think about it a lot. The one that I like that I have heard is the pursuit of one's true potential.
00:18:34
Speaker
knowing that you'll never actually reach it because once you reached one level, you set the bar higher. So it's always the pursuit, it's the game, it's the challenge of what you're truly capable of, of what your business is capable of. But that's somebody else's definition of success and it works, but I need to frame that into my context, into my world, which might not work for you, might not work for anybody else listening.
00:19:04
Speaker
me knowing, like having my own definition, my own phrase, lets me work
Entrepreneurial Insights from Zappos Book
00:19:11
Speaker
towards it. I think that's what's hard for me is to make sure, as I think about this question, what is your definition of success? Keeping it something that's personal to you and not having it be what others think of you.
00:19:31
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's a good way to put it. This is very much an open book, but your John Groomsville's definition of success shouldn't be that other people think he's successful. And that's so often I think part of too much of what we as society want is it's not necessarily whether we're happy or feel rewarding or love our families, our wives and our good people. It's whether other people think that about us. And that's not right.
00:20:03
Speaker
No, that's not worth pursuing. Yeah.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's a tough one. It has to do with happiness. I mean, I'm happy when I work hard and have a challenge and overcome it. And as hard as it was, as stressful as it was, overcoming it makes me happy. Isn't it funny? Because I think happiness, people think, well, you're playing soccer in a park, or you're on a beach with a margarita. Nope. Exactly. Nope.
00:20:38
Speaker
I have no interest in those things. I want to travel. I want to take certain time to relax, but that's the downtime. That's not the happiness. That's not the success. I need to go reread at least my notes, if not the whole book from the Zappos guy. What was that book called?
00:20:57
Speaker
Oh, really? I'm reading it now. Yes. Oh, that's hilarious. What a coincidence. I've never, I never truly finished it. My last bookmark is two thirds in, but I'm like, Oh, I'm going to start it from the beginning. I'm about one third in now and I'm going to finish it straight through. It's very, very good.
00:21:12
Speaker
I cannot endorse it or recommend it enough to anybody out there as an entrepreneur because it's one of the first books I've read that feels raw and intimate, but he doesn't complain. He almost loses it all, but it's not a sob story. The conclusions that he reached at the end are invigorating. Yeah. He sold his first business for hundreds of millions of dollars. He took away whatever, 40 million.
00:21:42
Speaker
within months, bought everything he ever wanted. And then he's like, now what? And it's, it's, is this all there is? I'm bored already.
Ultrasonic Cleaning Tips
00:21:50
Speaker
Let's start another business. That's what you, uh, it's awesome. It gets me so excited. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:00
Speaker
Okay. The next three things on my list are our, uh, our buyer's choice. So you get to pick which one we talk about, um, rolling out a Google ads campaign for fixture plates and some of the lessons are already learned. Number two, quality chem is visiting this afternoon to talk about coolant and water stuff. And number three, cleaning parts and potentially ultrasonic clear. Oh, that's tempting. Okay. Let's go back to the order here. Ultrasonic.
00:22:30
Speaker
So we have our shop air conditioned and we coat our mod vices and other steel stuff with like LPS3 or some equivalent after they're done and stored for inventory. And we're still noticing some spots of rust. And what we concluded is that that's residual coolant that wasn't adequately removed.
00:22:55
Speaker
So we need to go back. We need to go ahead. So you want to you want to clean the part like strip it clean clean and then coated in oil. Correct.
00:23:09
Speaker
Interesting, yeah. I never work with rustable steel parts. My blades are stainless. They don't really rust. Then titanium is impervious. We deal with spotting and stuff like that, but interesting. I think we're just getting inconsistency results as we wipe rags with LPS3 on parts because you don't always get everything off, especially like blind to tap holes or the inside of the V-groove or dovetail. You need a fluid to wash them off in a
00:23:38
Speaker
Would it, would it be a terrible idea? And maybe the answer is yes to put LPS three in an ultrasonic cleaner as the final. I can't answer that. I'm not sure. Well, it's not cheap and I'm not sure that that's, I think the better solution is to ultrasonic in a normal way and then to the LPS and afterward.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah. It just, that would get them into all the threads, all the bubbles. Oh, interesting point. It would agitate the water enough that blind holes and everything would get fluid. I will note that. So I was watching a video last night and this guy who runs like a car engine YouTube channel has this genius ultrasonic video of showing that if you have an ultrasonic cleaner, this is better for small parts. It won't work for mod devices, but you can put the parts inside like a peanut butter jar
00:24:32
Speaker
and the peanut butter jar can have gasoline or kerosene, it could have LPS3, it could have a detergent soap. And then if you just drop that container into the ultrasonic, the waves will go through the plastic into your part and then you're not contaminating your ultrasonic base fluid. Absolutely. No kidding. All the time. Awesome.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah. It's one of those things you figure out, you talk about privately, like my friend Brad Southern showed me how he does it, same thing. He's actually got a foam, foam topper that floats and fills up the entire cavity. And he's got a little square cut out of it that he drops a Rubbermaid topper too.
00:25:10
Speaker
So the foam floats and then you drop your tub so it doesn't tip or fall or whatever. And then, and he says he loses a lot of agitation through the plastic, through the foam, through everything, but it's, it's enough to clean parts. And then he'll put, uh, I forget what he said, but some sort of oily substance or whatever. Um, or even just simple green in there so that your, your ultrasonic cleaner can stay water. And then you have this, you know, super chemical inside. Awesome. So he has a larger. Yep.
00:25:40
Speaker
It's not the baseball size or iPhone size ultrasonic cleaner.
Exploring Cleaning Techniques
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah, the jewelry ones. There's the jewelry ones for whatever, $100, and I got one of those. I hated it. Therefore, I hated ultrasonic cleaners because it didn't do anything. I feel like it was a
00:25:59
Speaker
very low wattage, like 40 watt or something like that. And then, I don't know, six months ago, we got 200-ish, 300-ish dollar one from Amazon. That's more like a sheet of paper would almost fit inside. I think I had the same one for parts that may or not be the size of AR-15 bolt carriers.
00:26:22
Speaker
Or lower receiver. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Ours are like stainless steel with some blue accents around, and there's this flat steel metal lid, flat panel buttons on the front. And it's great. We had one, had it for a month, and we're like, we need a second one. So we bought a second, and the price is a couple hundred bucks. It's so cheap.
00:26:46
Speaker
It's almost a disposable price. If it breaks, you just get another one. Then there's the American made ones that are good. They're like $2,000 though for the same size. You literally read my mind because I'm like, we don't make my advice. We'll make them a hundred at a time, but it's not like we're doing them 20 an hour that need to constantly go through there.
00:27:07
Speaker
I'm like, a couple of those $300 ones would let us prove out this workflow before we invest in ... I actually want to go watch the orange device video because I think it was
00:27:18
Speaker
Actually, it may be a similar system to what Milterra had, but it almost looks like a wet bar refrigerator system, like a low refrigerator, but it's ultrasonic that goes into steam, that goes into washer, that goes into a dry. I mean, these are probably five-figure systems. And then at Orange Vice, doesn't he have an oil coating system at the end of the day? Oh, yeah, maybe. Sorry. I don't even remember at this point. Yeah.
00:27:48
Speaker
Yeah. But I'm careful. So Jared said yesterday, we need to get a parts washer. So I'm thinking, OK, $100 parts washer. But then it occurred to me that doesn't actually always, it's kind of the dumb.
00:27:58
Speaker
You mean like an automotive mechanic spraying solvent out of the paintbrush kind of parts cleaner. Yeah. I used to use those at my friend's shops in the car days and they're not funny. It's one to one labor and it's not that it wouldn't work, but I don't think the right solution compared to what an ultrasonic can do, especially for the threaded holes, the little features, consistency.
00:28:23
Speaker
So the problem is getting coolant off the parts, not adequately oiling them. So I think ultrasonic will do an excellent job of agitating residual surface coolant so that it is pulled off with a detergent. So that actually should be pretty easy for an ultrasonic to do compared to what they often do, which is caked on, crud, nastiness.
00:28:47
Speaker
So I got to pick up one of those. But then hearing Dennis on the WhatsApp chat last night talk about whether it's caustic etching and there's passivation and there's dishwasher setups, which I know Jay Pearson uses a dishwasher type thing.
00:29:03
Speaker
And that's also not particularly hard or expensive. And we have had the problem more with our mod vices than our fixture plates. Fixture plates are a little bit easier to spend investment time on each plate kind of going through it. But ultimately, I would like something that you can put a fixture plate into. That's not so easy or cheap on for an ultrasonic though, when they're 200 pounds, large plates.
00:29:32
Speaker
Yeah, the ultrasonic reaches a critical size where the money starts getting silly. We may have to go back to a detergent so that agitates. But again, that shouldn't be hard because I think the need of just removing surface coolant is not that hard to do.
00:29:52
Speaker
No, it just has to be everywhere. And I see, I see Jared's point. So if you had a big fixture plate and you could drop it into a parts washer, a manual, like, like basin, which is the stream of solvent. Um, it would, it would work, but it's not, it's a mixture of plates. I'm okay with on that, but my advice is need to have a better system, like a better automated. So we, we drop.
00:30:17
Speaker
10 of them or 20 of them in an ultrasonic for 10 minutes, pull them out, swap the baskets out. That's fine. I think a dishwasher would work great.
Coolant Systems Exploration
00:30:27
Speaker
You just can't leave the parts wet in there for very long. You don't have to use water. You could use a rust inhibiting closed loop system.
00:30:37
Speaker
You're right. Dishwasher would actually lend itself better to, um, can you imagine a mod vice in like, uh, I'll have to take a bunch home tonight and see what our kitchen dishwasher, uh, stack them up in there. Trust me, honey. It's for science. It's funny.
00:30:55
Speaker
It's actually a good segue into the second topic, which is quality chem is visiting. They literally just cold emailed me and were like, we haven't checked on you in a long time. And I was like, we actually kind of sort of stopped using your stuff, not for any reason other than really, we were getting a little popping out of the spindle, which I think is the viscosity, but then also I want to just try something else. And I want to be a little bit more scientific and
00:31:19
Speaker
I want to have experience opinions, not just opinions on coolant, but we've been really struggling with the coolant that we've been testing, which is a synthetic. And if you start to dig in, which I have,
00:31:34
Speaker
Synthetic coolants are incredibly difficult to use because semi-synthetics basically need at the beginning and need in perpetuity perfect water and perfect water is incredibly difficult in a pain in the butt.
00:31:53
Speaker
for a semi synthetic needs perfect water all the time. Um, and the problem is like in our example, we quote unquote contaminated a full tank of synthetic coolant by using a little bit of top off when the RO membrane had gone from eight parts per million to 50. And that's now not a thing you can undo or fix. Whereas a semi synthetic, you should start with.
00:32:20
Speaker
regular water, meaning it can have some, and it actually needs some minerals in it. Now you want to be careful about how much range that is, but top offs should be quote unquote, perfect water. But if you do a top off, that's not a perfect water, not a big deal. So I want to get a little bit more sciencey on this. We're going to put out a video showing the stuff like we've learned the mistakes that I think are kind of prolific about how you use a refractometer and how you measure water and coolant and what is good water. RO water is not all the same, that kind of stuff.
00:32:51
Speaker
So if you use our water on a semi synthetic, there's no minerals in our water water just is a percentage
00:33:00
Speaker
basically percentage cleaning, and it has to do with how good your input water is, the condition of your membrane, and how much you're wasting out of the RO bypass. But you can take 100 total dissolved solids, PPM, water that's at 100, which is not so bad, and RO can make it freaking great. But some places have 400 or 500 to start with in an RO filter, especially one that's not brand new, may only bring that down to 200, which is
00:33:30
Speaker
It's pretty quote unquote hard. You need those minerals and originally an assembly synthetic for the actual coolant stuff. This is what I want to get more scientific about to react with, to work with, to emulsify, et cetera.
Switching to Deionized Water for Coolant
00:33:43
Speaker
Whereas a semi-synthetic has all of that, doesn't want any minerals and the presence of minerals will cause problems big time. Yeah. And the reason I'm oddly curious about this now is because the shop we just visited,
00:33:59
Speaker
is on well water and it's very hard water, they said. And because they were a printing factory and they needed perfect water to every single machine, they built a huge RO system. That's all that I know. I don't know anything more about it, but all their water comes through this.
00:34:17
Speaker
We're doing this in a video so we can present it in a summary set of facts, but we have a quote coming in from our local water company to just give us the DI system. The DI system, which is DI and I is not distilled. It is expensive if you're doing something like a car wash where you constantly need hundreds if not thousands of gallons, but for a machine shop where we're running closed loop systems and we just need top off water, DI is the way to go and we'll be almost certainly abandoning our RO system for it.
00:34:48
Speaker
Interesting. I never heard that. Deionized is what they use in EDM machines because it doesn't conduct all the facility. Well, it's just the minerals they conduct, so you just got to get the minerals out. Deionized is still not as good as distilled. Distilled is where you basically steam and vaporize the water and then condense it back when it's perfect.
00:35:08
Speaker
Interesting. Although that would not work for an EDM machine because I don't know. I think the concern I'm getting beyond just beyond my knowledge area here, but the concern with perfect water, like truly perfect water is that it will then attract anything it can find. So if you have it in pipes or how you're transferring the water or moving it through a machine. And then the concern with synthetic coolant is if you have
00:35:30
Speaker
things in your machine like zinc, which a lot of Haas machines have some zinc plates or zinc parts around. That is a very easy metal to contaminate your otherwise perfect water. Right? Interesting.
00:35:45
Speaker
It's been fun to get out of this rabbit hole, but the reality is I just want a simple answer because we're not perfect. I can't have it that if my RO membrane was a little bit a couple of days past when we should have replaced it, that it ruins 60 gallons of otherwise good coolant. Yeah, absolutely. How is your coolant sucker upper device? The ones that are on the machine.
00:36:13
Speaker
No, no, the big 100 gallon drum. Oh, the chip trapper. Yeah. It is amazing. Amazing. That's part of our video too is just, I am so glad that we bought that because it lets us- So spend four seconds to explain it because it sounds amazing. It's a drum.
00:36:31
Speaker
They make a 55-gallon drum and a larger one that we bought, which I think is 110 gallons. We went with the larger size so that we could adequately drain the UMC 750's coolant tank, which I believe is 75 gallons. It's kind of like a shop vac hose. It uses a pneumatic pump so it doesn't require power.
00:36:51
Speaker
You just hook an air compressor line up to it. And it quickly sucks the coolant out. As it's sucking it out, it's pushing it through a bag filter, which I like because, number one, they're relatively inexpensive. And number two, you can purchase them in different micron thicknesses or mesh filter sizes. And then after you have pulled it in through the filter, it's sitting in the drum. You just turn a dial on the pneumatic pump.
00:37:20
Speaker
and it pumps it right back out. So emptying your sump is easy. So if you want to clean the sump and doing that process itself, just back out and back in is a way of cleaning the coolant. I love it. I need one so bad.
00:37:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, they take up a little bit of space. So maybe, maybe better once you get to the new shop, but it's for sure. Great. Yeah. Well, I think with the move, the Maury is probably due for new coolant and the lathe is definitely due for new coolant. So I might just start fresh.
00:37:57
Speaker
That's the trifecta of our, our, our weekend coolant and water is I finally have our like paperwork done with safety clean. And they're supposed to come Friday to do a massive stored, stored, use coolant takeaway. Okay. How are you storing it now in drums somewhere or.
00:38:18
Speaker
We have like three or four drums. Yeah. We did some coolant swaps. We were experimenting. We bought that Robo drill, so it had a casserole coolant that has been sitting forever. So we had to drain all that out. So we've got a lot of coolant to get rid of.
00:38:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. We've got two drums full right now and the machines are still full. That's just like waste stuff. Yeah, but there's a local company that comes and cleans all that for not too expensive. You've done it before. Cool. We did it once a couple of years ago when I cleaned out the Maury.
Expanding Fixture Plate Sales
00:38:52
Speaker
that took away two drums and lent us two empty drums that we've just hung on to and dumped stuff into. Yeah. They asked us if we want to let them take the drums or they can just suck it out. I was like, oh, that's great. We'll just keep our drums. You back your truck up to our drums, turn on the pump and just suck out the used kabut. Okay. Interesting. The hard part was just getting through the
00:39:22
Speaker
I couldn't get someone, it's like so often seems to be the case with vendors and companies sometimes getting somebody to call you back. So finally got the call back, got the meeting, and then they have to do a sample I think to make sure you're not misrepresenting what the coolant is. That was, we apparently passed no problem. And so yeah, onward now. Perfect. So that's cool. Quality comes to coming today. What was the third thing on your list?
00:39:48
Speaker
Let's save the third one for next week. I'll give you the teaser is I would like to grow the sale of fixture plates beyond the folks that happen to come across us from this podcast or YouTube, et cetera. We have started a paid Google Ads search engine marketing campaign. It's worth talking about.
00:40:14
Speaker
This is interesting. Yeah. I've heard all about it, but I've never looked into it. Um, cause thankfully we, we have enough word of mouth, um, as it is, but that's interesting. And Facebook ads keep getting talked about too a lot. Um, so between those two ad platforms.
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah, there's, there's some reasons. It's funny, as cynical as I am, there's a reason that things like Instagram and Facebook might actually be better for us. But I also, as a consumer, just dislike seeing sponsored stuff because it undermines, I think it undermines your and my contribution as true, passionate content creators that, you know, to see stuff just forcefully wedged in between there that's paid, just always, I never loved it.
00:40:58
Speaker
true, but is that your perception and not the customer's perception? Yeah, you're totally right. Is that your distaste, which is hindering you from maybe seeing something amazing. Yeah. No, that's an awesome example of I've got to push myself outside of my comfort zone, but my own natural
00:41:19
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Yep. Your own head predispositions. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And I find that a lot either in myself or in people around me or in you or whatever. Um, you're stuck with what you know and what you like and what you, you know, and whether or not that's holding you back. Sometimes you just got to step back and look at it and go, wait a minute. I've been telling myself this whole time that blah, blah, blah.
00:41:42
Speaker
We really don't use our Instagram channel to push our products. We'll put in a subtle thing every now and then. What if somebody in California just bought a VF2, follows us on Insta, doesn't really know that we make fixture plates, which is totally possible, and then we do a sponsored ad. They see it, they love it. It helps them do what we want to do with fixture plates, better fixturing and quick setup. That's actually a good thing. I should not be doing that.
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah, you're right. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes I'll see sponsored ads from people I don't follow or never heard of. A lot of times it's garbage, but sometimes it's like, whoa, that's actually kind of cool. I never would have found that otherwise.
Productive Day and Swiss Machining
00:42:22
Speaker
Because I don't spend a ton of time browsing Instagram.
00:42:29
Speaker
So I'm not following that many people. I don't go down rabbit holes cause I just don't spend the time to do it. Um, so when, when random stuff comes up, whether it's in a comment on somebody else's cool post or sponsored ad or whatever, um, sometimes I kind of admire that, you know?
00:42:46
Speaker
Good. Well, I'll tell you, I'll share more about the upwork and process and details because I think it's like it or not, it's business 101 in this day and age, which is most people need to understand the ability to market products. Marketing is not advertising and it is difficult and it's something that I think is, I have a lot of respect for folks that know how to do it. What's going on today?
00:43:15
Speaker
Today is another busy day. I think Eric and I have a lot to talk about with the shop and just thoughts and stuff. Cranking away on the Swiss. Making amazing parts.
00:43:32
Speaker
Good. So good. The parts like, I held two parts in my hand, like they're pivot screws. So they're, they're 0.350 diameter inch and that's the head diameter. Um, and that's one of our bigger parts. But anyway, I held an old one and a new one and just showing the head to Eric from like a foot away, two feet away. And I'm like Nakamura tornos. Can you tell the difference? Oh yeah. That's awesome. Oh my gosh. That is awesome.
Machining a Jet Engine Part
00:43:59
Speaker
Yeah, so that was cool. We'll end with this. I spent yesterday afternoon making a part for Andrew Barth, the guy from Project Egress, who was awesome. Yeah. He is in school for rocket science or aeronautics or jet engine stuff. So he's, I think, somewhat qualified to do this. He's already built his own jet engine. He wants to make a better one. We offered absolutely to help him make some of the parts for it. And I've spent the afternoon on the Tormach lathe
00:44:27
Speaker
making this jet engine intake part. And I will tell you, John, it was absolutely wonderful. I know we joke. Because you love lathes. No, seriously, it was absolutely wonderful. It really was. Some of the new stuff in Fusion with boring, they have a pecking option to help break the chips. The tolerances that you can get was great. The finishes you can get, it was actually really fun. Yeah, lathes are satisfying. It's cool. Yeah.
00:44:54
Speaker
Boy, I have a FANUC in the shop. I like Lays. Oh my goodness. We may have to shut down the Business and Machining podcast because I don't know if you take any more of this. That's awesome. Have a good week. I will catch you next week. Sounds great. You too. Take care. Bye. Take care. Bye.