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Business of Machining - Episode 92
195 Plays6 years ago
Anodizing Paintball Guns, a Brochure, and a Parking Lot
Jay Pierson's story of past failure in his MHub speech conjures entrepreneurship jitters of 2010 for Grimsmo. Failure is almost a pre-requisite for success and as a major industry player points out on the NYC CNC forum, "You first have to exist [in other people's minds]."
Click HERE to Watch Jay's Speech
Don't forget: the successful people you admire today were once standing in your shoes.
[[]>-- Renaissance of Making IN THE MAKING --
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Jay Pearson's M Hub Speech
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business of Machining episode 92. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. Morning, buddy. Good morning. How are you? I'm fantastic today. I'm in a great mood. Good. What's going on? Thanks for good.
00:00:15
Speaker
I was doing, uh, I woke up nice and early, did my workout this morning and I was watching Jay Pearson's M hub speech that he put up last week. Yeah. And it was cool. He put a lot of like really good editing into it and, uh, pictures from when he was trying to be a struggling rock star and all this cool stuff. So I was like, good for you to go watch it. I watched the first few minutes, but.
00:00:35
Speaker
Assumed it was more of the same but now that you say that I'll go watch it because yeah, there's not a lot of extra stuff But it's enough to make it, you know, and then you hear the story again. You're like what a cool guy, right? I worried that you and I talked about this too much would be and maybe we if we do then we should stop or I should stop but It's okay to not be successful in the beginning. Like yeah, you're gonna have it's almost required.
00:00:59
Speaker
Yeah.
The Journey from Ideas to Marketable Products
00:01:01
Speaker
I actually wanted to bring this up and this is a great segue that I'll tease everybody that somebody, a pretty major guy in this industry was on the NYC forums talking about this thread we've got on like creating marketable products and inspiring entrepreneurship. And he was like, one of the things that people don't take for granted is that to do any of this, you first have to exist.
00:01:04
Speaker
I
00:01:24
Speaker
And you know, so like when I was thinking about go back to strike mark, like when I was thinking, Hey, we're going to build this auto reset rifle target. We're going to be a player in this industry. I've got this design. I shoot. I, this is going to be awesome. All of that was in my head. You walked into any range or law enforcement or store or anywhere. There's zero existence or knowledge of that product anywhere outside of my head. So in my head, I'm crushing it, right? No matter how cool the idea is.
00:01:54
Speaker
You have to exist right you have to tell people you have to you have to get the word out there somehow you have to make a physical products you can show people or at least share the idea yeah. Man.
00:02:06
Speaker
I've been thinking about talking about this for the past few months, but before before I found knives, I was making these blow off valves. No, I was I was doing custom anodizing for paintball guns and I made up this brochure that I was going to go to all the local paintball stores and like have them put it on their counter if they would to anodize paintball guns.
00:02:27
Speaker
with my pricing and a bunch of colors and cool stuff.
Building Confidence and Community Connections
00:02:30
Speaker
And I spent a lot of time making this. And I remember literally sitting in the parking lot for 45 minutes in one of these places, too afraid to walk in the door and ask. And I left. And really? Yeah. And I was I was kind of crushed at that, like bat in a bad way. And and then you were scared, nervous, nervous. I guess I didn't have enough. Like I have zero
00:02:55
Speaker
Interest in the paintball market really like I'm not a shooter. I don't have my own guns I just wanted to provide this service. So it's not like I'm walking into a cool store. That's my people Right. I think that was part of it and it's just the entrepreneurship jitters like no confidence in myself And you know, even though I knew I could provide a good product, etc, etc Yeah, that was me in 2010
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, right. That's crazy. Well, it's interesting because some people have it. Some people can just own it, they can sell, they can have that charisma. But on the flip side, sometimes you got to go about it in a more indirect way, which is getting, it's kind of the awesome
00:03:40
Speaker
way of getting those people to reach out to you somehow. If they're like, hey, we've had a bunch of guys come in here that have said, you do this or they call you up. Is that something you do? Then you can swing by and you're like, hey, here's my flight. That's not always easy to do, but that's one reason why I like to talk to people so much about being a member of the community. If you're starting a machine shop,
00:04:02
Speaker
Go get involved in the local VEX robotics team, because guess what? Other engineers are going to be on that team, other parents. It shows you paying it forward, being a good person. And then all of a sudden, hey, you know what? Maybe somebody says, you're running a shop now. You guys taking on work. All of a sudden, that kind of just happens organically. Yep. You create this rapport with people. You get your name out there, your word out there. People have to know what the heck you do. Otherwise, you're just a nobody. I mean, everybody's special. But if nobody knows why you're special, then you're
Strategic Business Decisions for 2019
00:04:30
Speaker
not special.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good perspective. So you were saying, so you sat there, you went back two days later? I went to a different place two days later. I gave up on that place. Okay. And did anybody reject you or get upset? No, it was fine. The guy was like, yeah, it'd be awesome. Let's do it. Put it on the counter. I don't know if I actually got any calls from it, but at least I had that mental win of like, Oh, I finally did it. Like got over that, that hurdle. Um,
00:04:55
Speaker
And I think I did it for two or three places. And then knives came up, and I was like, oh, clearly, I'm good now. Yeah, right, which is OK, right? It's great. I mean, had I not done that, other things might not have fallen into place.
00:05:10
Speaker
You know, like, like you have to step out of your comfort zone and tell people, I mean, in most of my businesses, you know, people ask, what do you do? I usually downplay it and not go full into it. But man, if you can develop this confidence and charisma in yourself and in what you do and just tell everybody, you never know where business is going to come from or ideas or partnerships or money if you need it or advice.
00:05:35
Speaker
I literally talk to my dentist and my chiropractor about business because why not? Right. I think a lot of us, I'm happy, not willing, I'm actually happy to have a conversation about just about any topic. I could literally listen to a dance company director talk about how they organize a ballet, if they're passionate about it and they have a method and a reason and a fascination because
00:06:04
Speaker
It's fun to be around people that are passionate and energetic and have that. And usually you can find parallels to your own life and world. Yeah, yeah. In weird ways too. Like, I never would have thought of that. But yeah, that passion is so contagious and it makes you happy to hear people talk like that. I think that's a big reason why you and I just naturally are so excited about what we do because A, we love it, but we love to share it and we love to
Balancing Spontaneity and Strategic Planning
00:06:30
Speaker
It lights us up inside to talk about it. That's why we do this podcast every week. Yeah. I was thinking about that. Do you think that podcast has changed? When you and I started, it was a lot. I remember thinking you want to kind of not vent, but I think just because the businesses are doing well and we're more in a lock step. I'm not sure it's bad or good or even something we have to talk about, but it's just interesting.
00:06:59
Speaker
You're crushing it, which is awesome, right? I guess I'll ask you that. So what stresses you out right now?
00:07:08
Speaker
Oh, if you even want to, if there is stuff where you want to talk about, I'm pretty good these days. There's a lot of big, um, big pieces in play. Um, like the lapping machine just came in. I've got serious thoughts for 2019. Like, what are we going to do? We're going to buy a building. We're going to build something. We're going to buy a five axis machine. Like I want all of this to happen in 2019. What products are we going to release? So we're going to make lots of pens. We're going to bring out flashlights. We're going to bring out more knives. Like we're going to hire more people.
00:07:39
Speaker
It's not that that stresses me out yet, but I certainly spend a lot of time thinking about it. The things that stress me out are just little things like breaking tools or not figuring something out. You break tools?
00:07:53
Speaker
Don't do that today. Don't break tools. Come on, don't break tools. I came in this morning and the mill was complaining. Hours since I destroyed a high feed mill. Exactly. Yeah, I can count on one hand the amount of hours it's been. What happened to the mori last night?
00:08:09
Speaker
Just an engraving tool, the last op, a hard engraving the blades. Got it. Most times. That's fine. I just had the pleasure of opening a new distributor account, which if I said pleasure, I mean, not fun. But I need to buy some of the 99 stuff. Yeah. And so one
Challenges in Delegation and Trust in Business
00:08:30
Speaker
of the things I want to try is their engraver. That's actually not the tool I bought for now.
00:08:34
Speaker
But I thought, let me just get one. If what I've learned is buying three tools that you want to test and putting them on your desk doesn't mean you're going to test all three quicker, even though you may save like $8 on shipping. So I'm like, let me just buy the one that I want to have right now. We'll get it in. We'll see how it works. And then I can, I know the engraver I want and I'll get it later. Exactly. But you should look, well, I'll let you know how it goes, but I've heard good things about this. I've heard many good things for years about that company. You're using solid carbide engraving. Yeah. Just a one 30 second ball.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, right. Got it. And it just breaks because, I mean, it gets dull, but it's just, it's one 30 seconds. It's like so small. Yeah. 30 thou. Have you played with speeds and fees on it? Yeah, very much. Okay. But I mean, I'm engraving hard blades and there's, there's one up that it always breaks on. And I think if I used a bigger tool there, um, it'd be fine. It would last a lot. Okay. Got it. We'll do it.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah. I'm running out of tool spots. I have zero extra tools in my 30 tool carousel. Right. So this is important, though. Going back to, because I know you well enough to know some of the more about those, quote unquote, 2019 goals. It's a bit arbitrary. It's not so much that they're 2019. It's just the idea that you don't want to put them off forever. You want to identify these are real estate and five-axis machines. New products are all important.
00:10:00
Speaker
Really, one thing I'm learning is as the business grows is how
00:10:05
Speaker
decisions aren't these intuitive, entrepreneurial, in your head, snap point decisions that you and I have basically been able to do to the state, but rather their processes. It's like the E-Myth where even if you don't have committees or groups, which are not necessarily good things, you have to be more methodical about understanding the consequences and the decision factors that go into
Setting Realistic Goals and Streamlining Operations
00:10:30
Speaker
these decisions.
00:10:31
Speaker
I thought I would encourage you to go back to something like what I was using and kind of still am I've changed it again but on the left hand column is what you're doing today not like a BS like what I'm thinking about doing but literally like what you're doing today and maybe this week very very very granular and focused and then on the right hand is is you know five axis machine pen knife flashlight whatever you want to call it all these things have you want to group them and make sure that
00:10:59
Speaker
the left column points to the right because it's going back to the whole goals are a terrible thing because most people focus on the idea of the goal being the end or the destination without talking at all about the journey.
00:11:16
Speaker
I think for me, the process is everything for almost most things that I do. The goal is, okay, we want to build it. What's the process? What's holding you? You don't necessarily have to answer this now to me or even publicly.
00:11:34
Speaker
Is it because buildings are easy? The buildings are hard because unlike a machine tool, you can't just open up a catalog and say, I want this building and this location. Exactly. Yeah, right. That's one of the quintessentials of real estate. It's sticky. Sometimes it's available. Sometimes it's not. Right. Part of it is I want to be ready when it's ready.
00:11:55
Speaker
you know, like if we start peeking around for the next few months and something comes up, well, you know, at what point are we ready to jump on it? Also with the end of the year coming up.
00:12:04
Speaker
And this year was phenomenal. And we have two months left to really seal the deal on the balance sheet for the end of the year, because that's what the banks look at. As much as interim statements, a month to month are cool and show you're doing well, but they really want to see end of year statements. And for us today, that was 11 months ago. And business is way different today than 11 months ago. And we will lock
Enhancements in Manufacturing and Training
00:12:30
Speaker
out this year solid.
00:12:34
Speaker
that sets us up for 2019. So we're trying to really not so much push, but just do our best in a sustainable way for the next few months. And you shouldn't hesitate to show a banker they're going to want your historicals. And like you said, you don't necessarily. We don't hesitate.
00:12:54
Speaker
Well, right, but you don't necessarily control the historicals in the sense that they are the past and the past is the past. But you shouldn't hesitate to show them a pro forma, which is just a fancy way of saying a budget of saying, look, I can show you based on the last three months, this is what we're now doing. This is the equipment. You're showing that you own this and you got it. Don't be outlandish with them, but a lot of small businesses have a steep growth rate. And you can say, hey, 2019 is going to end.
00:13:22
Speaker
a lot differently and better. And this is where we're going. Yep. Yep. That's exciting. It is exciting. It's not in a stressful way yet. I mean, I'm sure enacting any of these plans is going to elicit all kinds of stress, but I'm up for it. I'm happy. Things are good. That's awesome. I was, uh, I did a podcast yesterday with, um, the folks at Bantam tool.
00:13:49
Speaker
I've heard of it. It's the new name for other mill.
00:13:55
Speaker
Okay. Software? Other mill is that little PCB. Oh, yeah. It's like a white thing that you... We saw them together, I think, at AU. Yes. Okay, yeah. I totally remember. I don't really know the specs on the machine. I mean, it's very small. It's meant for circuit boards, and the Z height is minimal, but the idea is you can do circuit board machining on it, and then maybe some wood, maybe aluminum. It's meant more like as a...
00:14:24
Speaker
desktop machine for an engineer or something. Anyways,
Future Equipment Purchases and Operational Efficiency
00:14:30
Speaker
Brie Pettis sort of got involved and then ended up buying out and taking over the company. And he is one of the three co-founders of MakerBot. And so it was really, really cool. We had like this one hour conversation and Brie didn't know. Well, I think he knew our channel, but he didn't know me personally.
00:14:51
Speaker
When I was starting to get involved in all this, literally 12 years ago, which was like I graduated college, I was trying to figure out strike mark, I was trying to learn. That's when all these things came together with I found machining, I found the online forums, and I found CAD CAM.
00:15:09
Speaker
I found Arduino, which was such a huge thing for me. And so I found what I arguably is one of the first hacker spaces in the country, which was NYC resistor. And so I was hanging out at NYC resistor and doing these classes and Brie founded NYC resistor. And I actually had a few conversations with him. And one of them was memorable because he had just come in, he had one of the maker bot prototypes.
00:15:34
Speaker
And he, it was like all these wires. It was in like this kind of hacked up together Pelican type case. And he was like, yeah, we just got back. I think he, yeah, he just got back from a trip to Washington, DC, which I vaguely remember that that trip itself was like going down there to promote it or meet with people or show it off. Like it was putting yourself out there. It was the paintball, paintball parking lot type of trip. And then
00:15:59
Speaker
On the trip, I had remembered that he was like it broke and he was sitting there working on it like soldering wires on the train dining car table. But he said the story yesterday and that kind of makes memories get fuzzy. But he was like, yeah, we were sitting there working on it or talking to people and this person sits down and we had this like fascinating conversation, super ingrained, and ends up that that was one of the journalists covering this space that we didn't even
00:16:28
Speaker
know, or realize yet or something version of that. And so we start printing parts on the Amtrak train down to Washington DC. Um, and there's just so much coolness about that because it's like, you just have to do it. You have to put yourself out there. You don't necessarily know where things are going to be. And sometimes it's not the like really hustle cold called meeting scheduled formal stuff, but rather just the anecdotal thing that happens that can be such a big break. Yep. Yep. So I thought that was great.
00:16:59
Speaker
I don't think they're going to air the podcast till January, but it's interesting to hear. They're moving the company from California to upstate New York as a move I'm very sympathetic to because it's like, hey, let's start this renaissance of manufacturing and making in a place where everybody here can afford housing and have a higher quality of life. San Francisco is not the end of the world or the only place you can live.
00:17:27
Speaker
and they're going to start tooling up and buying machines and all that. So it's interesting to see what'll come of that. That's awesome. Yeah. I love hearing all these little small company growth success stories and you know, some of them thrive like crazy and some of them crash and burn, but it's really, it's fun to watch. Yeah. Agreed. I'm great. Um, what, how is, I gotta ask how's pro shops going? Still the same.
00:17:57
Speaker
Good, yeah. I am the bottleneck at this point. You've been the bottleneck. I know, exactly. Nothing's changed. Yeah, so it's sort of smooth and steady. I use it a lot for some things. I don't use it a lot for what I should be doing in some ways. So I just got to do more. But what I use it for is amazing.
00:18:21
Speaker
I would never go back. I don't know how you think about it. Are you just a user approach shop the past week or are you also continuously trying to expand, move stuff into it, add stuff? Just using it pretty much. Got it. Yeah, rinse and repeat sort of things. Okay. But yeah, it's there to grow with us and it will. Okay. Yeah, you've got a big time constraint issue.
00:18:46
Speaker
Yeah. I worry that this could be the same for three months. I think about, should I take a day off and just spend that day? I should do this really, and I will actually, now that we talk about it, but I should just spend a day out on the shop floor
00:19:03
Speaker
organizing, not like clean organizing, but like we just putting those last touches and finesse on cards and lay out an organization. Like I just, it would be, there's zero chance I'd do that and regret doing it. Yeah, exactly. But you can put it off for years, literally years. Absolutely. Yep.
00:19:24
Speaker
We started to hear from some folks. So it looks like Odoo, I've only heard from one person, two people maybe, sorry, who are US based to have implemented Odoo. So I haven't started a dialogue with them, but I've got their info, which is exciting. Heard from a couple of people who've used the Oracle product, which is NetSuite, I think, and then SAP's Business One.
00:19:49
Speaker
So it's interesting that to me, I think it's – I guess it's uncommon that our audience – I guess I'm surprised – I'm not surprised there aren't more users of it. I think that will change.
00:20:06
Speaker
You want there to be more users. I want there to be more users. And look, I'll just say it may be as simple as if you and I start doing this publicly, it will probably implement. It'll probably cause a lot more people to embrace ERPs and understand them. And some of the pricing is not prohibitive at all. A large part of it is just the lack of understanding of what it can do and how it ties in.
00:20:30
Speaker
We're actually redoing our Shopify product pages right now, not the whole site, but just some really important elements within it. But if we went to Odoo, there's a lot to be said for letting Odoo run your whole e-commerce front end because it just will so seamlessly tie together.
00:20:48
Speaker
That's one of the goals that you have for it, for the ERP. I'd be okay if they talked to each other, but I feel like the more tentacles you have where you've got import exports and reconciliations, the more risks things break or just don't work together well. Look, frankly, Shopify, we just added three, what do they call them? Apps. They're all $20 a month.
00:21:17
Speaker
That's not the end of the world, but it's like, hey, that's just an extra $700 a year that I'll never get rid of because that's that service subscription model on top of the base Shopify thing. That's one of the things where, well, 700 bucks a year for the next 20 years, I would rather pay two, $3,000 to own something or have it implemented or coded and then not have that obligation.
00:21:46
Speaker
I'm trying to think what I need to do next on ProShop. One thing that they've suggested is often they'll fly one of their consultants out to spend a couple days with you and your team and integrate and hands on ask any question, answer any question, train, teach, things like that. It will clearly be a disruption of business depending on how we do it.
00:22:09
Speaker
obviously for the better because everybody would learn. So I am considering that because otherwise, I mean, I just, I haven't done it myself. I could easily just stop everybody and do it. I feel like the, and I don't know the day to day, but it seems like what you should do first is just
00:22:27
Speaker
tell John Grimsmo you're not allowed to do anything else for the next four hours, except new pro shop stuff in just four hours, not more, not less. And then do that every, do that twice a week or something. Yeah. One thing you said to me a couple of weeks ago was like,
00:22:43
Speaker
you're not allowed to make another pivot screw. Like establish the process in such a way that Angela or somebody else can handle it. And that's really stuck in my head the past, since you said it. And I'm working towards it too, which on a couple of projects, which is great. Awesome. Good. Yeah.
00:22:59
Speaker
How's the lathe running? Good. Um, time meet me time. What do you mean? I don't have time to like be on it enough. So are there people running it? No, John, you got to fix this dude. I know you're not like any, any good person will push you to say, I don't, I'm not going to listen to a single conversation about expanding your shop or buying new machines when you don't know how to, you don't know how to keep your current ones running.
00:23:30
Speaker
That's a good point. You've got Skye, who's in that space. You've got Angela, who's literally experienced. You've got yourself. There's no, you've got to figure that out. It's probably a John Grimson time issue. Yes. And letting go of control. That just happened. Two seconds ago, it just happened. Right, right.
00:23:59
Speaker
But yeah, especially as we grow, I notice that in a lot of areas with, you know, programming fusion or designing new stuff, it's all me, it's always been me. Deep in the subconscious of my brain, it will always be me, but I need to kind of beat that out somehow and share it.
00:24:19
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know what to tell you about this. I'm not, I was more, I'm just like, get over, get over, get over yourself. Like measure parts, put processes in a place, but you can't, you gotta, you gotta stop.
00:24:35
Speaker
This will, I'm trying to think of a specific example, but there are absolutely companies that have failed, like absolutely gone bankrupt and failed because you don't scale, you don't put processes in places, the entrepreneurs aren't willing to get out of their own way.
00:24:53
Speaker
Um, the irony is you have the software, you have the equipment, you have the manpower. That's like the, one of the most difficult things. Yeah. Most people don't have people that they want to trust. If you can't trust a person like Angelo to run any machine in your shop, you can't. I mean, he, he has got this skill, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I, I feel like I'm towing a.
00:25:20
Speaker
a delicate balance between like, we're making it work right now, we are growing, we are thriving, but I'm still clinging on to it for dear life. And what, what's life gonna look like once I do start to release that control, and give more responsibility and control to other people. And I know that's the way to go. And I'm
00:25:44
Speaker
slowly and painfully working towards it. Um, and I don't think it's amazing. I don't think it's a slow process. Oh, so it's okay. So what you're right. What is, what is, we're going to hang, we're going to hang good. I'm making it a slow process. That's right. And I'm trying to unmake it a slow process here. I'm listening. Bear with me. Uh, what? Yeah. Okay. So we're going to hang up. What are you going to do? Like today.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yes. Oh, to implement that. Um, no, no, no, stop. Like, what are you, are you going to go run a knife pallet parts? Are you going to run out, set up the lathe? What are you gonna do? Yeah. Today I'm going to run a knife pallet part. We got new stuff I got to put together. Somebody else can put it together. Um,
00:26:23
Speaker
And then I'm going to get to lay it together and start planning what the next week is going to look like parts making wise. And I know Angelo can run probably three of those parts on his own. Okay. So first thing you're going to do is load up a Norseman palette. Is that what I heard? Yep. Okay. So you're not touching that palette, right? Yeah. When Barry comes in, he can do that depending on when he comes in. But yeah, that was a very nebulous answer. What's the time thing? I want it running as soon as possible.
00:26:53
Speaker
Okay. So then you need to have, um, from a, you know, time, time clock standpoint, you need to have somebody in it. I guess you get an earlier than everyone else. So that's a problem. Cause again, you shouldn't, you shouldn't be coming in early just to get the machine running. Cause it'll, you'll never know. Uh, normally I come in at nine berries and it's seven, seven 30. And he can most of the time get the machine running unless there's a tooling problem.
00:27:21
Speaker
Right. I guess that's what I'm saying is even I. Yeah. So most of the time we do that. Right. And I know the podcast is awkward because you don't want people there when we're recording. But even it bothers me. It irks me for sure to walk by and see a machine idle or waiting. But if I intervene, I've interrupted the process. I've usurped somebody else's job. The problem is not that somebody needs a hit cycle start. The problem is that we don't have
00:27:48
Speaker
the right system in place. Why isn't somebody attending to this? Why isn't somebody loading it? And that person is not John. John Griswold does not load Norseman pallets on the pallets anymore. Once in a blue moon, if there's a fire drill for Christmas orders and everyone, Aaron included, is sitting there loading parts, maybe that's the exception. But on a Tuesday or Wednesday, no. I'd say I load pallets 30% of the time.
00:28:17
Speaker
which I'm fairly comfortable with, but I can do better. It's just, if I'm here and I'm available. That's where we're different. It's not, I can do better. It's, I am, you are not touching a pallet. Over, done, out. That's not even skilled labor. I know that you can screw it up if you, you know. Absolutely. But that's not truly skilled labor. That's a trained process. Exactly. But that's what I'm saying. You should not,
00:28:46
Speaker
You know, Jared will come grab me if we have a fixture plate. And for some reason, no one else is here. We've got to do something like flip it for QC. Or even with the new Skyhook cart, that doesn't let us flip the plates safely without two people. He can load them on his own. And that's what it is now. That's how it works, period. Nice. But it's a cold turkey sort of thing. Right.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah. We're getting there. Okay. Hey, stay on me. I mean. Yeah, just grims on knives, makes knives. Those knives don't get made unless somebody loads the machine and you are not the person loading the machine anymore, period.
00:29:32
Speaker
Um, I would highly suspect we can call them up. We can, we can conference call Jay Pearson. I'm not going to do it now because it's like four in the morning in California, but I would bet a pretty penny that, um, Jay Pearson does not touch the machines load cycle start. He lets his guys.
00:29:49
Speaker
do their jobs, which they take pride in. It's their machines, it's their responsibilities. Again, if somebody calls up and needs a bunch of his pro pallets really, really, really, really urgently and it's a major crisis, I don't doubt for a second that Jay's out there
00:30:06
Speaker
lockstep with the guys, but that is a once a year event. Jay doesn't walk by machines and say, oh, I could probably swap out that Roto device and hit cycle start. And since John's in using the restroom real quick, no big deal. Nope, doesn't happen. And then the same thing on the lathe. So triage your resources of what people are working on and Angelo should be setting up that lathe the next thing.
00:30:31
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, he's spending a lot of time working with Eric past few months because we just need the resources there to get knives out the door. But now that we have our new guy, yo, working there.
00:30:45
Speaker
Angelo is like much freer to work on the machines with me now. Awesome. It's perfect. Like the plan is working. Um, he's been on vacation the past few days. So today he's coming back for the first day. So, uh, yeah, so we will be, uh, well, there you go. We'll be rocking. Yeah. Like the timing is working perfectly. I just, I need to give him more of my responsibility and that's, so don't say it as a future tense things to say it as a like, okay. Yes. I will be giving him, I am doing it today.
00:31:14
Speaker
In the next 60 minutes, Barry's going to be solely responsible for the dirt vertical. You're not going to touch the pallets. You're not going to touch the machine control. You're not going to open the door. You're not even going to swap out tools, John, right? That's not something you should be doing. And then you're going to show Angelo the file infusion and then tell him to go run the knock and he's going to ask you questions and pull you in, but have him pull you in on a reactive basis and then you step away.
00:31:43
Speaker
I think I try to make it too proactive. I want, you're right, I need them to be more reactive so that they ask the questions that they need and they get it done. I provide them enough instructions to get going, but then they, you know. They're smart people. Yeah, and I know that, but I don't utilize it enough.
00:32:02
Speaker
Right. And that's the irony. You're not even one of those, you know, those guys that are, those people that are, that always act like they're smarter than you. So they always need to mansplain everything to you. You're ironically, you're not that kind of a guy, but you, but you're doing that. Sure. Yeah. I believe that. Yeah. Cool. Good.
00:32:23
Speaker
OK, so what is on the knock? Is it laid stuff or pen stuff? It's both. Pen stuff, I want to make at least one part exactly to print. I think I probably said this last week, and I still haven't done it. And then knife stuff as well, because the guys are running low upstairs. But yeah, screws, spacers, and bearings, Angelo can run by himself, like knife stuff, which is awesome. Yeah, good. And then the pen stuff we can do together. But you're right, he can handle it.
00:32:53
Speaker
Not together. Not together. I mean, I guess one of the things I would worry about with you on a sort of medium term or long term basis is the fact that you guys are doing well now changes the pressure. And I don't want you to get cozy and comfortable and goes back to this idea of how do you need to be measuring stuff? I'm going to make an assumption here at the risk of making an assumption. I'm going to make the assumption that you
00:33:24
Speaker
are looking at your business on a daily or weekly. We make all our ends meet. We make payroll. We make payments, all that stuff. We're making money so we're good instead of looking at metrics as
00:33:38
Speaker
What are your metrics? Your metrics need to be, right now, the really only metric is Norseman's Mate, because you're not making any other products this month. Right. Penn is still kind of R&D-ish, and it's harder to measure an R&D. So you've got to be conscious of that, of how you're measuring your short-term and long-term performance metrics about, hey, I mean, I would say the Penn is, your goal, 30 days ago, your goal was to have a Penn done by October. And October, you're not even close to done with that.
00:34:07
Speaker
Nope. Failed that one. Yeah. Yeah. So look, I'm not your, you don't owe it to me. I don't, you don't answer to me, but I'm pushing you to, to, you know, act like the pen. If you don't get the pen done, you guys are going to lose the bit. You don't even act like there's a fire, you know? Um, and if you keep it all in your head and on your fingertips and when you're doing it, it ain't going to happen.
00:34:30
Speaker
Yeah. Then it's only going to happen within the resources that I put forward for myself. And there's so many things I want to do at all times. Yeah, it's good. I have some, I have a lot to work on. Good. Sweet. Sweet.
00:34:47
Speaker
So what are you up to? We are making really, really good non-minor improvements, meaning they're not like major changes to the way we make stuff, but they are small details that aren't trivial. So like changing some fixture designs and changing some ways we... I hate saying it because it sounds so boring, like the way we load material onto the machines or...
00:35:13
Speaker
The way we... Yeah. And so it's just awesome. We're kind of on hold. Are you putting together a bunch of things that you've wanted to do for a long time? And you're like, finally, no, let's do it right now. No, ironically, not even close to that. Interesting. It's actually reactive stuff that's kind of happening more real time. And it makes me kind of happy and proud that we're like, okay, yeah. What it is is we've been making these plates for, I don't know, two years now. We know how to make them and we know what's important and we know what
00:35:42
Speaker
Can cause problems and so now when we see something that we can improve it so quick to make a good decision about it cuz we're like oh my gosh of course like that makes so much sense you know we're not like two years ago in fact here's the irony we're redoing something.
00:35:59
Speaker
that we gave up on two years ago because now we know we can do it. I know that sounds very fluffy. We're in the middle of training this week, so that puts the shop stuff on hold because we got a full class of students, which is awesome.
00:36:17
Speaker
And it makes me really glad. I was hesitant at first to start doing the Haas machines for the training, because I just was different and I didn't know. But it's clear that there's huge demand for that. And I like the fact that it's like, hey, come learn on our machines and our curriculum and our program for the machine that you need to learn on. If you're going back, there's a lot of transferable stuff. But I like the fact that these guys are coming to learn on a Haas, and they're going to go back to run their Haas. That's great.
00:36:48
Speaker
So as soon as that class is over, we've got to get back to, um, finishing off some fixture plate process improvements. And then, um, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're going big time. Like we just read it a rack and that even since you toured, actually that's funny. Even since you were here, what was that?
00:37:05
Speaker
A week and a half ago? Yeah. We moved a rack. We got those pallets off the ground. It's going to let us see visual inventory better, pick and pull orders better. Yeah, it's awesome. It's really good. Yes. Nice. Yeah. And then unlike you, I'm trying to think about, I think we need another vertical
00:37:28
Speaker
But I want a five axis and I want a turning center, but I decided to hunker down this year like you and just try to end the year really strong and not try to shred myself too thin and buy more stuff. Yeah. Well, you were talking about the pseudo pressure of the section 179. Exactly. Right. It's going to hurt, man. I mean, not having bought a machine is going to cause me to pay a lot more taxes.
00:37:55
Speaker
I'll be, knock on wood next year will be, I would have had the same problem next year, so I'll just buy a machine next year. Right. I'm happy to let tax stuff be a part of the decision process, but you're not going to let it drive that process. Sure.
00:38:13
Speaker
Yeah, because you don't want to make the foolish decisions that eat up all your cash flow or too soon, too fast kind of thing. Yeah. Well, and it goes back to we thought about buying a huge vertical, like a 60 by 30 machine. And what we've now learned is it's just not going to make sense to sell fixture plates.
00:38:31
Speaker
always subject to change, but to sell fixture plates that large. It's so much more uninteresting because you've got this huge expensive piece of material, like literally a 25 by 50 inch plate or something. And so mistakes happen. Tools break on our end and shipping or the customer end, loading it, unloading it, cleaning it. So this goes back to what I was just mentioning. We figured out
00:38:56
Speaker
a way to better control our processes in-house and the stuff that we sub out. So what we're going to do is we're going to, and this goes back into changing our website. So where we have solders machine works fixture plates and we have, we're calling it A's and B. Actually, I'd love your opinion because I don't like the idea of A and B, but that's what we've been calling it internally. An A plate will always match an A plate.
00:39:20
Speaker
So it's plus or minus one thou or something. We kind of figure out the exact tolerance, but you know, if you have an A plate and you need another plate next to it, you can just buy another A plate. You're good to go. Not every plate that we make will become an A plate because of the manufacturing process. And so then those will become B plates. So B plates will not match B plates. B plates will have a wider fluctuation of thickness. Now there'll still be plenty good on parallelism and flatness. Like a B plate is a great plate. If you're buying one,
00:39:49
Speaker
If you bought one plate for your new Robo drill, you'd be fine with a B plate because you're not going to put another plate next to it. But B's don't match B's. B's will have fluctuation. But A's will always match A's. It's what we've done on our VM3. We have four A plates next to each other. It's wonderful. If you need to replace one or you damage one or you want to pull one off, it's much more manageable.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah, no, I like that. You're worried about the A and B making people think that the B is worse, less quality, something like that. Correct. Yeah, and I get that feeling. It's like in the gauge pin world, don't they have like Z class and ZZ class? Yeah, and tell me you don't like that, because I don't like that. It is what it is. I accept it. I don't know. Which one is better, John? Yeah, that's right. You don't know, right?
00:40:41
Speaker
No. Exactly. ZZ plus ZZZ minus, there's X or something else. Yeah, I just assume I'll reference the website whenever I need to understand that. Right. I think A and B is fine. Right. Clearly explain it on the website. A's are just within tolerance so that they match each other. B's are just random, still within a tolerance.
00:41:06
Speaker
That's what I don't want to say because I don't want to imply that these aren't with intolerance because the B plate will be beautiful. It will be perfect. But let's say, let's say we're aiming for 900 thou on thickness and let's say we had a flatness problem. So we had to deck it or go down another seventh hour grind or whatever. So it may be a beautiful B plate, but it's nominal thickness is now 893. Well, most people aren't going to care when they're just running a single B.
00:41:34
Speaker
Just say the A's match. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that's the plan, which is very exciting. Sweet. Yeah. Yeah, I love the idea of running multiple plates on a bigger machine instead of you having to worry about making one gigantic 60 by 30 plate. That sounds like a headache you do not want. Exactly.
00:41:57
Speaker
And then it's great cause like we've got this new workflow down and a guy emailed us yesterday and is like, Hey, um, love your plates. Um, want it for the Haas, but I actually want to have you to delete these holes and put orange. Ball locks in these locations. And we now have this workflow down to where we're like, yeah, rock and roll. Like no problem. And if that guy orders two, and then later once a plate to hang off a fourth axis, as long as he orders an A we're good to go.
00:42:26
Speaker
Right, right. Yes. I'm fired up. I'm excited. That's epic. I need to spend time on that smart supply toolbox. I'm freaking excited about that because it has that tinge of ER penis to it and it could really help, but I'm just putting it off. I was like, wait, are you serious AU is next week? Yes. Oops. How's your presentation going? Oh, it's in my head. It's done.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think I give my presentation in exactly seven days from like right now.
00:43:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. Okay. I'm going to cheat and I'm going to ask. My talk is on speeds and fees. I actually have outlined my presentation already, which is I like to break things down because if I outline it and get the slides in order, then when I come back and work on it again, I'm reacting to my own outline. To me, it makes it easier to do. But what are the things that you would want to see, hear, or ask on the speeds and feeds presentation?
00:43:33
Speaker
Since I'm on such repeat production, I found speeds and feeds somewhere, I implemented them, I hand tweaked them, and now they're good. But whenever I run a weird job making aluminum fixtures or something, or drilling a one inch deep hole, quarter inch diameter, I just need to know where to start.
00:43:53
Speaker
I need someone to just tell me what to do. That's the thing I've been alluding to for some period of time. I need two more months, I think, before we roll out the beta, but that's what we're...
00:44:09
Speaker
That's what our new company is going to solve, for sure, explicitly. I don't want to turn my AU presentation into a pseudo-shill for my new project. No. That's not cool. Right. No, but it makes you the expert. It gives you the pedestal to stand up and be like,
00:44:30
Speaker
I know a lot about this. I'm certainly not the leading worldwide expert, but I'm going to start talking about it because not enough people are talking about this. And we've got solutions in place. Now, my business example is probably a lot different than a job shop who's running D2 one day and aluminum the next day and copper the next day and change, change, change, change. I don't have that much change, thankfully. But I think what you just said,
00:44:57
Speaker
subconsciously alludes to this idea of do you need to know it and understand it? Do you need to know what coding to use and why and chip thinning? Or do you just want someone to say, here's the recipe, it works? Both at my discretion. Yeah, fair enough. Understanding chip thinning helped me get better finishes on my parts.
00:45:23
Speaker
because now I'm able to take a much heavier cut, but way slower and it works. Does that have to do with those feed forward lines that we saw at Milterra on the microscope? Exactly. That's awesome. That's really cool. I'm feeding at three tenths per rev. Yeah, that's too slow.
00:45:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, per tooth, which is bonkers slow, but it works. If I do nine tenths, I see the feed forward lines and I don't want that either. Yeah, that's interesting.
00:45:57
Speaker
I mean, not going to argue with it, though. But I would love to speak to the world expert who has perfect knowledge and information about your 1-32nd engraving ball end mill. Why is it breaking? Tools, why does a tool dull? Literally, why does it dull? It's the wear on the honed edge. And I would suspect a major assumption, but I would suspect a lot of that tool breakage has to do with recutting chips.
00:46:25
Speaker
Could be wrong. Could be. But you think about if you take a really nice brand new Home Depot shovel, like a spade shovel, and dig into some nice soil, you're going to use your boot and slam that shovel down and it's going to crisply break right through that topsoil, no problem at all. Well, now put a half inch
00:46:48
Speaker
you know, rolled over edge on that thing. And it's going to be harder to push that in. Now, take a little two by four perpendicular to the face of that spade, which is a broken chip that you're recutting in front of that dull tool and try to push it in. Now you just broke, now you break the end mill.
00:47:05
Speaker
Makes sense? That's how I think of this. Right, right. I think you need to provide both solid solutions. Just try this, it'll work, trust me. And then also get granular with the details and be like, you know,
00:47:22
Speaker
This is what I feel causes end mill wear, causes things to break, causes bad finishes. Here's the things you need to know to be a better machinist and to make better parts. Have you ever heard a tool rep or somebody tell you or talk about tooling like, yeah, that tool should last 20 minutes in the cut or 60 minutes in the cut? I've heard of it, yeah. It's not something you think about though. I don't measure time. Okay.
00:47:46
Speaker
We do, and that's the number I care about. Okay. It's a great number, theoretically. It's sort of like exactly what I want to know, especially like so our mod vice production, we have a high feed mill, and we know we should get 55 minutes in the cut on an insert edge. That's really helpful, right? Yeah, you need to know. Yeah.
00:48:08
Speaker
Why is 55 minutes? I don't know. If we slow down the surface footage or change the coolant, I don't know. Maybe we could get more. I'm happy with it because 55 minutes makes the numbers work, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good answer. Right. Can you tell the difference in the insert between 45 minutes and an hour five?
00:48:28
Speaker
When we've run them longer, we have started to see the inserts chip and wear. We've been okay, but these are these, it's the Sandvik 419, so I think it's seven edges per side, two sides. There's 14 edges on an insert. Fun fact, they are really expensive, so I don't want to blow up an insert.
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah. Because I got 14 edges on them. So that's one reason why we're a little bit, I wouldn't call it conservative, but we proactively swap them out after 55 minutes in the cut or something like that. Sweet. Yeah. Yeah. I do that with my end mills too. I'll pull them out after life and I'll be like, this still looks good. But like Eric at Orange Vice said, process reliability. If I replace it now, I know it's good. Right. Right. Cool.
00:49:14
Speaker
I'm serious dude. I wish it was somebody else telling you this and not me because I feel...
00:49:21
Speaker
I don't like saying this, but you need to quit this, not delegating and quit this, like, Oh, I don't know. I'm going to slowly wean out. No, like stop. Like don't touch, you know, those pallets that Amish is making. You're not going to ever touch those. Somebody else is going to open the box. I'm also going to clean them. Someone else is going to load them. Like you should never, ever, ever touch one of those Amish pallets. He also might've wiped something on them. So you don't want to rip or, you know, who knows where that's going. But, uh, seriously. Yeah.
00:49:51
Speaker
Okay. I'll see you. Good stuff. I'll see you Tuesday. See you next week. We'll have to figure out something for bomb next week. Yeah. We'll do it together there. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Sweet. Sounds good. See you. Okay. Bye. Later. Bye.