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ERP Planning and Implementation, Eumachs, Rasks, Hobby Machines & Tooling, and Sourcing Material
246 Plays5 years ago
IT'S JUST A PHASE. While Saunders and his team are busy implementing external phases of re-structuring SMW, Grimsmo's recognizing internal phases of intense creativity that eventually give way to productivity. Grimsmo and Saunders discuss their respective phases in comparison to shops that are further along in development.
Visit These Pivotal Shops Via Video Tour:
S&H Tour Grimsmo Knives Miltera Tour SMW Miltera Tour MetalQuest Tour
Do the hustle! (thoughtfully) While the word "hustle" sounds like hell on wheels, Mike from Miltera has a different type. He puts ample consideration into resource allocation--and it's not just about material, tools, or machines.
Totally Unexpected Benefits of ERP You might think ERP is a numbers and organization game but Saunders sees something much bigger and abstract happening to the SMW team.
Grimsmo's EUMACHS---D.O.A.? The Heidenhain control tech has come! When he opened the panel, it was WAY more than Deja Vu. Grimsmo talks plans for the twins and a plan if the plan doesn't go to plan. Next, maintenance techs are scheduled to perform the 100-point inspection.
A Touchy Subject Saunders highlights a major drawback for hobby-grade benchtop machines like the SmartCarb, Pocket NC, and Tormach xsTech. He proposes a great way to stop touching tools off constantly.
Rasking for a Friend Rasks are progressing slowly but they're still progressing. After feeling some burnout from the self-imposed July 1 deadline, Grimsmo's ready to outsource fixture components!
SOURCING MATERIAL #REJECT During the phase 1 purge, Saunders finds a special blank that reminds him about how he used to source material back in the New York suburb days. Grimsmo discloses a sourcing material story you won't believe. Having up front, explicit delivery, care, and spec instructions are of utmost importance. Accepting material that doesn't meet your standards is hurting your business!
SMW Pallet Jack FAIL While googling and watching videos to find solutions is wonderful and can work, other times, it's about physically trying it out.
GK's Getting SHIFTY in here. One of Grimsmo's employees has move on--to another department. Find out who and why on this episode of Business of Machining!
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Transcript
Introduction to Entrepreneurship in Manufacturing
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 180. My name is John Saunders. My name is John Grimsmo. This is a podcast for two entrepreneurs. Get to have a weekly heart to heart about what it takes to build their manufacturing companies. How are you doing? Good. Feeling like I'm making progress.
00:00:18
Speaker
How so?
Phases of Creativity and Productivity
00:00:19
Speaker
Well, this is a whole other thing. But I'm starting to realize that I go through these phases of intense creativity when all I want to do is make new stuff. And then transitions to phases where all I want to do is be productive. And I'm coming out of the creative phase right now and entering the productive phase. And I actually feel it. And it's neat to watch and understand myself a little bit deeper.
00:00:40
Speaker
And maybe I just want to get going on all those projects I just came up with, but even if some of them are super long-term. But yeah, I'm feeling in a good hustle mode right now. And the creativity is kind of dwindling because I'm burned out from it a little bit. And it's like, OK, let's get to work. Let's do some stuff. Rask's not going to make itself. Sounds like it's a good cycle, though, right?
Building a Resourceful Team
00:01:02
Speaker
I think so. I mean, not if I'm beating myself up about it.
00:01:06
Speaker
Or if I set expectations for myself or others set expectations for me and I let people down because I'm in the wrong cycle or something. So I got to be aware of that as I go forward. But it's valuable. It's what I do is be creative and make progress. But I'm interested to see how long this period of productivity lasts before I start to fiddle around and want to make something new. But yeah, I got a lot of cool stuff on my plate right now.
00:01:34
Speaker
But it's what you're good at, John. And you've got to build that framework. And this is the theme of the 2020 bomb. It's this idea of building these resources and team.
Owner's Strategic Transition
00:01:47
Speaker
I hate to use these buzzwords. But you be that creative person of the orchestra. What's the orchestrator, orchestra master, maestro? The conductor. Thank you. Because that's what you're good at, or you need to be good at. That's what you're in the business of.
00:02:03
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. And building out the team so that all the work gets done efficiently by people who know what they're doing. And I get to focus on what I'm best at. And then I hire people to be best at each thing so that it all gets done. And it's...
00:02:19
Speaker
Go think back, you know, whether it's some of the better shop tours that we've done on NYCCNC, or even guys like, it's Mike, right, that runs Milterra? Yep, yep. And the shop tours that jump out, to me, SNH was one of the first ones, the Southern California or Los Angeles County shop that does major aerospace defense work, like fighter jet parts and all that, and David Fisher was the fellow's name,
00:02:47
Speaker
Likewise, the shop in Nebraska, Metal Quest, I mean, these shops, they're much bigger shops. I mean, literally, they're all both of those shops, I believe, are doing north of $10 million a year in revenue. But a long time ago, when they worked at that level, that the owner had fully transitioned into that phase, that your
00:03:06
Speaker
that we're trying to push you to move into because I think you're ready.
Handling Stress and Delegation
00:03:10
Speaker
For the businesses ready, I don't think you're ready. Right? Right. I'm tasting it and it tastes good. It's not to say that you can't reserve the right to continue to tinker and to let it be the quote unquote hobby or fun or hot. I remember my grandfather was a fabricator and
00:03:26
Speaker
We all idolize our grandparents, right? So I don't know how much of this was my own idolization versus the truth of it. But when he ran his fabricating and welding shop, he would sort of say like, even though he probably hadn't been a welder for years because he ran the company, he'd kind of say like, oh, I can lay down that bead or do whatever. And it's probably not something he didn't. Who knows if the skill, I mean, welding is a skill that atrophy is probably a
ERP Benefits for Morale and Recruitment
00:03:52
Speaker
bit more than
00:03:53
Speaker
your ability to know the detailed nuance of a five-axis toolpath cam set in infusion because you've got to change the triangulation tolerance to get it to not do a bad lead-in. That stuff I feel like we will probably remember maybe. Uselessly, 50 years from now. Yeah, right. Yeah, and I see what you mean.
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, it is really neat seeing those shops that are that much further ahead of us and getting to tour them and hang out with the owner, the founder, the guy that built it up from nothing, and to see what they're doing day to day. It's a different kind of hustle. It's a much more thoughtful hustle. And it's less just running around with your hair on fire, because hopefully they've learned their lessons and can calm down and delegate better than I've been able to.
00:04:41
Speaker
But it's that growth for the future. Yeah, it's not
Resource Allocation Success Stories
00:04:44
Speaker
a, this isn't a reprimand. It's a forward looking, awesome. It's like, do you think Mike at Milterra would fit that description of his job is to kind of quote unquote allocate resources? What jobs do we want to do? What equipment do we want to buy? What team members do we want to put on it and staff on it? How much time do we want to spend on this? Like that's what he, I've hung out with him a little bit. You've hung out with him a lot more, but I got that sense. That's a really, really good way to put it.
00:05:11
Speaker
His job is to allocate resources in all senses. And I like that. And they're guilty of doing too many things, example. Like they've got the cutting tool company, the software company, the actual job shop, the R&D-ish stuff. Like they had their hands in way too many pots, but they pull it off. They pull it off, yep. Because he's been able to allocate the resources to the right pot. And if
Integrating Software and Manufacturing
00:05:35
Speaker
he's got a crazy new idea, like when I've toured their place a bunch of times,
00:05:45
Speaker
internal water cooling setup for the entire building. Every single machine is tied into the central system with a 40-ton chiller outside or something. But his guys did some of that. He's like, OK, my guys can do that, as opposed to paying the experts a lot of money to do it. And other things, he's like, no, no, we paid the experts to do that. But the kind of creativity that his team came up with and implemented themselves, I'm sure he led that.
00:06:03
Speaker
the things that they've accomplished, like whether it's setting up their...
00:06:13
Speaker
certainly okayed it, and it's neat to see the balance. I know he did some of it, but his resource of himself needs to be allocated very wisely as well, right? Right. We should actually probably clarify. The machine shop's called Milterra, but this is the same
00:06:33
Speaker
a company that designs and makes the software TruePath by Clampley, that we both use. John and I both have good video tours. They make, amongst other things, turbo chargers for everything from motorcycles and cars to bigger stuff, and they know what they're doing.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah,
Balancing Creativity and Efficiency
00:06:58
Speaker
they specialize in the impeller of the turbocharger. Exactly. They know what they're doing. They basically invented their own toolpaths and now can cut their own handmills to be able to do this. They're a very, very smart shop. It may look like they have their hand in too many pots, but
00:07:19
Speaker
They're a machine shop. And then they made, I guess they made the software first. They made the software first. And then they built a machine shop to test the software. And then they're like, this is going pretty good. And then they're like, we need better end mills. So they're making their own end mills now. And it's this whole family of companies that supports each other and also sell to the world and make money that way. And yeah, it's really cool. I have a lot of respect for them.
00:07:45
Speaker
You've hung out with him again recently. Does he have stress or anxiety or that entrepreneur sense of, boy, I've got a lot on my plate?
00:07:53
Speaker
I think he hides it very well, but yeah, we've talked about it. We've had some deep ones and we text quite a lot now. He'll catch up on my vlog videos and he'll text me about it and we'll have a 1 a.m. chat on WhatsApp about it. He's learned how to handle it well. He's learned how
ERP for Operational Efficiency
00:08:11
Speaker
to delegate and get things off his plate and make sure things get done.
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's just a different level of overwhelm than a smaller business normally deals with two months on your plate, you know? Yeah.
00:08:25
Speaker
So on that note, one of the benefits that we're already seeing that was not anticipated is what the ERP is doing for our shop in terms of like morale and in some sense, I think recruitment. So we've been calling it Alex. Jay Pearson had the really good idea of calling it Excela, which is Alex backward. And I like it. It's three syllables versus two. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but it is confusing to call it Alex. So we'll see which sticks there.
00:08:55
Speaker
Regardless,
00:08:58
Speaker
having, and we're not done, but for sure. I should stop saying that, right? But knowing how it has enabled people to see stuff, to make decisions, to process information, the benefits continue to blow me away to the point where, again, I thought this was moving into it as a, okay, this will help us, you know, at some point in the future, it'll kind of just help me because I handled a lot of the ordering and stuff like that. And it's totally
00:09:25
Speaker
more
Choosing Between Shop Management Systems
00:09:26
Speaker
than that. And I think once the system has another kind of phase done through it, then I think if someone somebody sort of tours a shop, I think it'll be a holy cow. This is really impressive as a shop, machine shop, but also really impressive as kind of a business. It was that big missing piece. Yeah, like Alex, the software is going to be part of the tour, right? Yeah, it has to be. That's interesting.
00:09:51
Speaker
It's like, yeah, all this, all this is super cool. I know this is exciting. I want to show you this, but you got to check out Alex. It's like at SNH, they have the TVs on the wall and it's in from military. Like it's all, yeah, they did custom. And especially with the big TV, it's you're drawn to it. You're like, what is that? That's data. Oh, we love data. What is going on here? What does that mean? Oh, I know what that means. You know, yep.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yes, that's kind of what we're thinking about now is what makes sense in terms of having like true just TVs or like Chromecast style things where you plug in the USB stick or do we want all of them or some of them to be touch screens because the we will most likely leave certain TVs or monitors set up with certain display screens. So like receiving will have a screen that shows outstanding purchase orders and the shop side will have outstanding work orders. And the shop side may also want to have a maintenance one. But if you're in front of the
00:10:44
Speaker
work order one and you want to quickly check a maintenance thing, you shouldn't necessarily have to go to a different computer. So this is all just to be a web front end, which is quite easy to do. So just being able to switch over quite quickly is what we're thinking about. But this is all gravy stuff. That's the fun stuff to play with now that it's getting put into place.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah, and it's not that hard to think about. If you're going to do barcode scanners, they're, what, $20, $30 or something. And TVs are a couple hundred bucks, and monitors, not that much. And all of this is very, very, very accessible now. And I do like the idea of having display screens non-interactable. It's just like, here's all the stuff we've ordered that's going to come in someday at the receiving table.
00:11:32
Speaker
And the maintenance idea is a great one. And then you go to a computer and update it and check it off, but then it auto refreshes obviously. Yep. And like we had some screws come in from McMaster and we've got a lot of different fasteners that we use. That's the one disconnect is when you send a PO,
00:11:51
Speaker
with a bunch of things on it, when it comes back, McMaster has their own part number. That part number is no longer gonna be tied to your part number directly, but it was simple. I just looked in Alex or Excela, we'll see. I just looked in Excela by that part number and sure enough, it showed me that was the A number and that matched it up. Now in the future,
00:12:13
Speaker
Once we get the receiving side of it kind of done, there'll just be a list of outstanding POs. It'll be easier to just see that I had to search it today, but that's totally fine. Yeah, exactly. And then you see over time, like your fail fast fail cheap. You're like, okay, we're going to try it this way. And then over time, we're going to be like, you know, I wish it was like this. Okay, let's do that. And then you get better and better.
00:12:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's the curiosity side of me once to now. I'm not going to do this right now because it's not a good use of my time. But once
Phases of Business Development
00:12:44
Speaker
I have this kind of behind me, I kind of want to go relook at somebody who has implemented a proper ERP. This is not an ERP. This is really more of a shop.
00:12:54
Speaker
inventory and workflow system because to me an ERP needs to handle accounting or marketing awesome or CRM type stuff. We have a pretty solid wall between orders and shipping and in this system and I'm okay with that for now. I recognize I could regret that. I'm going to keep an open mind but at this point in time, I'm very happy that we're going with a roll your own customized solution
00:13:23
Speaker
versus trying to fit a one size fits all, whether it's fully integrated. Whether it's one of the machine shop ERPs that are getting sold or whether it's
00:13:35
Speaker
or whether it's trying to go with one of the Odus or SAP business ones, where it's just like, hey, this is meant for every business out there, and now I've got to figure out how we fit into their picture. Exactly. It's interesting, because I've always looked at ERP. I haven't been interested in the marketing side of it, in the accounting side of it. We've got that taken care of elsewhere. I don't need it all tied together, but I definitely want the shop management, inventory management, purchasing, ordering, maintenance, machine, inventory.
00:14:03
Speaker
I want all of those things. That's what I want ERP for. And yeah, so I'm okay that it doesn't have those other things.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah, so we redid our phasing. And this is something I really enjoy. Oh, yeah. You had your three phases, one, two, three, that you were working on. Yep. And so briefly, previously, phase one was kind of the old purge and clean and get the racking ordered and so forth. Phase two was installing the racking, starting Alex, getting the VF6s machines online, which was a big workflow for us because that was
00:14:39
Speaker
part of the kind of new Saunders machine work stuff. And then previously phase three was kind of everything looking forward. So revamping our manufacturing processes, you know, we're going to think about how we think about where comp and biweekly Kaizen meetings and a log at each machine, like your idea and the shop water delivery system, like all that, like fun, long term stuff. But what I realized is that's phase four.
00:15:02
Speaker
We're right now finishing up phase two. Arguably, we're done with phase two. And so
Inventory Management Challenges
00:15:07
Speaker
phase three is a totally necessary step, which is kind of a pause and catch up. We have the racking assembled. We have ERP numbers on most of the products, but we did that in a way of let's go do it now that it's there. We need to move
00:15:25
Speaker
certain, you know, think of like, this is what JP or someone would do, right? So finished inventory needs to be here in this state, like near the shipping table, we need to move sub assembly work one row back, and it needs to be organized either by product or have the screws together or stuff like that, put sort of process. And then right now, just to be honest, we're struggling with orders.
00:15:46
Speaker
Part of that's just because of the 10 days of downtime with commissioning the VF6s. But what I want to do is get enough of the mod vice parts in stock, as well as some of the fixture plates that we are currently doing on a just-in-time basis. And that's not hard to do. We just need another week, maybe 10 days to get through that. And that's the thing to come full circle, where it's like, that is a
00:16:12
Speaker
where execution helps everybody. I know in talking with the team that people get excited. That's like, oh my gosh, so what a relief to know that we have inventory. We don't have to struggle or be surprised or leave orders outstanding because one part is missing. Does that finished inventory or raw parts inventory? Both.
00:16:34
Speaker
I want to make sure we have enough raw material. We have different ERP numbers depending on whether it's a raw material product or whether it's something we've already machined like a work in progress type of thing or whether it's a sub assembly or whether it's a customer facing finished product. I just finished DeWalt clamp adapters.
00:16:56
Speaker
We have enough like they're enough in inventory, but I already that already triggered the reorder for the saw cut raw material because Yes, I want to hear on my shop. I'm not gonna wait
00:17:08
Speaker
Again, things like that don't take that much space. They don't tie up that much money, and it's just part of the flow that I want.
Vendor Relationships and Purchase Management
00:17:14
Speaker
That way, I'm not waiting to order it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and we find that too. We've got a lot of our vendors on steady shipments now. Every month, we get a packet of heat treat foils. Every month, we get our shipping cases, the nano oil that we ship,
00:17:31
Speaker
And we're putting more and more into that schedule thing. And then if we see our inventory levels getting too much, like, oh, we got three boxes of that. We're good for a while. Then we'll skip a month. We'll email them and say, yeah, don't do this month. But it's good for them because they can plan it. They can schedule it. And we don't have to think about it. Packages show up. Our credit card gets billed. We're good to go. So we're putting a few more people in there like that. Because then we don't have that, oh, no, we're all out of our little ceramic ball bearings. They only take a day or two to get here.
00:18:00
Speaker
All out is not a good thing. Right. Right. Yeah. And we're actually increasing order size of all of these things. And it's like, whoa. Okay. It's good to make sure we have this stuff on hand. Like we used to order, you know, a thousand ball bearings at a time. Now we're adding 6,000 ball bearings. And it's like, we still go through them pretty quick.
00:18:20
Speaker
6,000 ball bearings probably fits in a pack of, I don't know, pop cans. Two popcan lids, pop bottle lids. That's holy. Not much. They come in this vacuum sealed baggie, totally flat packed, sucked flat. It just looks like a sheet of paper with a bunch of bumps in it. Then you cut it open and you pour them all out and it's like, well, it's like $2,000 worth of bearings here.
Machine Maintenance and Professional Support
00:18:47
Speaker
It's hilarious.
00:18:50
Speaker
What are you up to this week? I did something awesome on Monday, well, last week. I called a company that I know around here. They sell a lot of big machines, Grove and other machines. I think they sell Yosta too, but they also do machine repair, maintenance and overhaul. I've become friends with one of their guys and I was like,
00:19:11
Speaker
Can you guys send a guy to look at the UMAQ machines like some Heidenhein expert and they're like, yeah, we got just the guy. This guy, Tim, is the Heidenhein guy in the area. He's been doing it forever. Okay, send him over because the controls on the two used machines that we have, they're from 2002, I think.
00:19:28
Speaker
There's all these weird errors, like PLC compile error, and the other one, hard drive not found, like in a boot up BIOS kind of thing. And it's just beyond my scope. I can play with it and research in Google and stuff. But this guy comes in, and he knows exactly what he's talking about. And he goes, hmm, OK, it's not recognizing the hard drive. And then he looks in the back, and there's handwritten note on the physical hard drive that says, 2011. And he goes, that's my handwriting.
00:19:54
Speaker
No. No. He goes, who owned these before you? I go, well, military owned me before. And before that, let me look it up at this other company. And he goes, yeah, I probably replaced this in 2011. I was like, what? That's insane. So in four hours.
00:20:11
Speaker
he got them all dialed. And he's like, yeah, like he comes up to me later and he's like, yeah, I referenced the machines, everything works. The tool changers have some issues. So you got to get the company, the maintenance company to come in and like see what's wrong. Really. I'm just a high nine guy. But I was like, dude, that is a big step forward. Thank you so much. That is awesome. Yeah. So that's like, they are not DOA, at least not yet.
00:20:35
Speaker
I'm super excited. So I haven't turned them on and jog them around yet. I'm going to wait for the maintenance guys to come in and make sure there's oil everywhere. But that's the next step. They're going to come in. They're going to do their 100-point inspection, just like a car, and give me a list of what's wrong and how much it's going to cost. And I'll have to decide at that point if it's worth putting money into them or if it's going to be like $1 million to fix them or whatever.
00:21:01
Speaker
I'll have to figure out that. I have a mental number in my head. I can put this much into it and feel very happy, but I don't know. I don't know what it's going to take. To get them in for hundreds of dollars to assess will tell us a lot. Yeah, that's awesome. I was laughing. It's like going to an auction. You really should try to decide on your max bid before you get caught up in the emotion.
00:21:25
Speaker
Nothing like watching years ago was at a small shop and I literally watched a TIG welder sell for more than it sells for new. And maybe
Selecting and Upgrading Machines
00:21:36
Speaker
there were a couple little accessories thrown in there, but I'm like, oh my God. If you're wondering whether people get emotional and carry away at auctions, the answer is yes. Yeah, exactly. So they don't think... Tool changer issues, they don't think will be major, right?
00:21:51
Speaker
I don't think so either. One didn't have air, so he turned the machine on and it just started spraying like, no. I think we put air to it quickly, but one of the tool changer airlines broke or something. And it just started loud noise across the shop. We're all kind of running over there going, what's going on? He goes, no big deal. It's fine. It's just an old airline. Okay. Are they identical machines? I think so, yeah. Yeah. That's actually pretty cool. If it makes sense to
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, like I want to tool them up identical or at least at least the fixturing setup I'm not sure what I want to do yet for fixturing. I'm very tempted by the Pearson Pro palette system But it like I want four of them and that adds up pretty quick
00:22:35
Speaker
Um, something like that. And then I think we're going to have one machine dry for cutting foam and wood and Delrin and things like that. And then one machine will have coolant and we'll cut the carbon fibers will go in there so you can filter out the coolant and then any metals, you know, aluminum.
00:22:50
Speaker
steel, dovetail prep, all kinds of stuff. We do actually have work for them, so it's exciting to get there. We got to make foam for our Norseman cases right now, and we're not looking forward to using the mori, because it's like, oh, I don't want to do that. These machines are so close, and they'd be perfect for that. So that's OK. Maybe we'll run foam on the weekend or something.
00:23:12
Speaker
Dude, having either material specific machine or just even the dry machine, the wet machine, oh my gosh, that'll be awesome. Yeah, exactly.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yep, I did have the, I was playing with the mental image of, OK, if these two are duds, what is a similar machine that does the same kind of stuff that I want? I want light, fast, high RPM, VF2-ish sized kind of machine. I was like, well, VF2, obviously, I could get a Speedio. If I'm willing to buy new machines, there's Speedio, there's RoboDrill, there's a DM2 or whatever DT2. There's options out there.
00:23:47
Speaker
And they're small enough. They're the same size as these machines. If these two are garbage, heaven forbid, what could you theoretically put in their place and achieve the same thing? And I was like, speedos would be pretty cool. Yeah.
Considering Alternative Machines
00:24:03
Speaker
Just buy what you don't overbuy the machine. If you're cutting foam, I mean. Exactly. The foam stuff, I'd even look at a well-built, not a hobby, like a well-built proper router.
00:24:14
Speaker
That's where I was going to go until these came up. I was actually going to either buy one or thinking hard about building one, but it's that time effort. It's the ratio.
00:24:26
Speaker
Man, you probably know this too. For 10 years now, I've wanted to build my own CNC machine. I've just wanted to. Especially a year or two ago, I was like, I could do it in the router. I could do it cool, but there's no point. If you want to, that's a point alone enough, right? I know.
00:24:49
Speaker
So it's fun. I worry about having a similar desire. And then as soon as you start doing it, you kind of lose interest. Maybe. Well, only if it took forever, which it obviously would. Yeah. That's why I haven't done it. It's like, I can just buy machines now. We buy really good machines. There's no way I'm going to build something better than that.
00:25:17
Speaker
I've been thinking, as we moved our hobby machines into the training classroom for now, so it's actually pretty cool because we've got the pocket MC next to the carb smart next to the little excess tech router, and we'll probably be adding some more to it. One of the big drawbacks on some of those machines is lack of tool changer, but then also lack of
00:25:38
Speaker
any sort of standardized tooling system, meaning you just if you just have a like a collar in the spindle, then you have to retouch off your tool every time, which is not. I like hate that. And what occurred to me was I kind of think people are doing this as things like the I think Harvey makes them or sells them. I don't make them Harvey makes them. I think Heimer does as well, which is probably overkill here. But those little almost like solidish are
00:26:08
Speaker
holders that have a little set screw inside of it. And then it would, you know, something taller to those kind of machines would be plenty repeatable. And then you know, you can have your five or 10 tools. Now look, you still have to use probably two wrenches and undo the night and put the new thing in. But that's way better if it does a repeatable Z. Yeah, you don't have to touch it off. You just you could even offline, you know, measure them. And then you're doing just doing an ER call change and then hit go, right?
00:26:37
Speaker
That's a pretty good idea. Yeah. Yeah, like a little machine like that with some ISO 20 drawbar on it or something would be sick.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like we could use a router because there's some things we do on the laser that I don't love lasering.
Outsourcing Component Manufacturing
00:26:57
Speaker
The Datron does well at it, but that's not the same size footprint and that machine may not be here forever. So I'm thinking like, hey, what does the right fit for something that has, it's exactly what you want.
00:27:10
Speaker
don't need torque or don't need insane, you know, don't need- No, you just need table space and like super quick setup and just bang it out. Yeah. And that's kind of what the Shape-O-Co does. You know, we've got our, I forget what size, I think it's the bigger size. And what was it? Angelo wanted a flan, like just a sheet of plastic with a couple of holes in it and like a square hole in the middle and some bold holes. And yeah, Sky's gonna slap that out on the Shape-O-Co. Yeah.
00:27:38
Speaker
There's no better machine for it in our shop. It's like everything else is busy making actual money, so duh. Yeah, exactly. Sweet. How are the risks coming?
00:27:47
Speaker
Slow, but good. As I said, the past few weeks in that creativity phase, I haven't been rasking that much. But maybe I was a little burned out from the push push in June. But now I'm getting back into it. I'm making fixture parts today. And I'm actually outsourcing a whole bunch of fixture components. I saw that on Instagram. I am so excited about. So the big square tombstones that I blanked out on the Maury
00:28:16
Speaker
I'm having a buddy up in north of Toronto do them for me. And he's sourcing the material he's doing. He's got a VF2 or 3. And yeah, he's implementing my redesign. And he's blanking them out. He's not doing all the critical features, because the current will be best at that. But at the point where it's roughed out, it's close to tolerance, I can just clamp it up and go. It's going to be huge. Oh, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.
00:28:46
Speaker
That's exciting. When we were phase one-ing and organizing and cleaning and purging, I found, and this was a pretty cool moment, I found probably eight or nine of these picatinny blanks. And so back in the strike mark days, the
00:29:02
Speaker
So I'm living in suburban New York and the local aluminum place that I found wouldn't deliver to a residence and I called a couple others and they didn't seem to want to either.
Evolution of Material Sourcing Strategies
00:29:12
Speaker
So I had to have them delivered to another place. I would drive there with my chop saw, my DeWalt in the back of my truck. In the driveway, I would saw them to a more manageable length and then I would drive back to my house and then they'd be in like whatever
00:29:28
Speaker
20-inch strips at this point. Then I put them in the tormach and I do the underside of the picatinny on the tormach. Look, I love what my tormach did, but tormachs are not VMCs. When we started having trouble keeping up with the orders,
00:29:44
Speaker
I did that proverbial letting go of the process and realized, well, what if we just had these partially made for us? The fellow that made them for us could basically, I think probably just because he bought so much more aluminum and had a big machine, could almost sell me a pre-cut blank that had the picatinny arty machine into it that I just put into the fixture for the Op2 ready to go for almost the same price as what I had to pay for just the material. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:30:13
Speaker
Right. It was cool to find those and think, man, that was a long time ago, but it was the beginning of the same journey we're still on. Yeah, absolutely. But for that guy to get to that level of efficiency and purchasing power and productivity and stuff, he's got a lot invested. I remember back in the day, people were like, you still buy
00:30:35
Speaker
pre-cut pieces from the local metal store? Why don't you just go to the source and buy a 12-foot bar, whatever, and cut it yourself? Well, that involves a bandsaw. That involves a way to get an unload of these 12-foot bars, and et cetera, et cetera. And I'm just not there yet. So I'll just drive down to the store, and they can cut pieces, and put it in the box for me, and I'll make parts. Didn't we fix this? Aren't you getting that stuff delivered now, though? Oh, now, yeah. I'm talking years
Setting Material Specifications
00:31:01
Speaker
ago, like garage days. Yeah, you got it.
00:31:04
Speaker
We did have a bunch of like square steel fixture place, like things delivered. And the guy just drove up in his truck and they were just strewn in the back of his truck. What? Like not wrapped up, not boxed up, not nothing. And then he's like, do you have a container for this? So I'm like going to the garage, finding a five gallon bucket that was a garbage can. And he just starts throwing them in the garbage can, like on top of each other. And I'm like, dude, no. Like denting them in. What is this? The material? Metal.
00:31:32
Speaker
For like fixture clamps for the current. This is recent? Yeah, this was a few weeks ago. Oh, dude, hashtag reject.
00:31:41
Speaker
I know. It was like my first experience having this company deliver. And I was like, oh, no. I either need to be a lot more specific or try somebody else. And then I bought some other steel from another company. And they came, they're like two blocks away, like one and a half blocks away. I could literally like pallet jack them over. And they came on this beautiful little tiny one foot by one foot pallet, like a wooden pallet, all wrapped up super nice and foam and everything. And it's like, OK, these guys win. That's pretty cool. And they delivered it.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah, maybe not. You probably figured this out. But we've got, I think, two different videos on sourcing material. And vendors aren't necessarily bad vendors. They don't know what to do unless you specifically tell them. Exactly. We have a very explicit set of criteria when we order material about the tolerance scene, how it's stacked, how it's delivered, the condition, and what's interesting. And I would say we have a pretty darn good relationship with our vendors. Haven't really had problems. But we were running some material last week
00:32:38
Speaker
And I noticed that it was a little bit long. And as part of Excela and how we receive material, I kind of feel guilty about doing this. But no, we need to start spot checking material when we receive it. Because at this point, if I'm ordering material to a spec and they over cut it by even 50 or 100 thou beyond the cut tolerance, that is a problem for our workflow. And you got to keep them
00:33:08
Speaker
honest. I mean, it's weird to solve and say, hey, we're rejecting this. But yeah, that's got to be part of the process. If it was clear upfront, then you're within your right to do that. If it wasn't, then they didn't know. Yeah. But yeah, like when I ordered from one of these sources, I ordered some, let's call it three quarter inch thick by three by seven, I think. So I was expecting
00:33:36
Speaker
probably the three inch width to be an extrusion, like almost exactly three inch. But they cut it from plate. So not only were they crooked, every cut was slightly crooked, so they'd taper in all directions. And they were somewhere like 100 thou oversized. And so I basically had to go through and measure everyone and find the biggest of the biggest and cam that as my stock so that I don't break a tool. It was just annoying.
00:34:03
Speaker
Why can't everything be perfect? Yep.
Streamlining Workflow with Tools
00:34:06
Speaker
Same thing, plate versus extrusion, hot roll versus cold rolled, whether it's been descaled, how they even, like one of the places that saw cut it, this is one of those like, you still learn lessons. They saw cut it, it was a spec, but it's like they just drug it through a sludge of oil and swerve when they then packed it in the box that we spec. But I'm like, they showed up and I'm like, guys, the heck is this?
00:34:30
Speaker
You know, you would literally use two rags per plain card size piece of material to clean it off. Right. Yeah. So rasks, you got to get on it or have somebody else. Yeah, it's happening. Yeah, I'm excited for it again, which is good. But yeah, it's one of our biggest, I wouldn't call it lowest hanging fruit, but it's going to be one of our biggest
00:34:55
Speaker
return on investment, especially with the investment that's left of just my time. The sooner we can sell Rask, that's going to make a huge impact to our revenues and to customer happiness and everything. People are very excited to get a Rask.
00:35:14
Speaker
That's part of my phase four toward the middle. Our end of phase four is reevaluating the tools that we have here, the shop machines. I think it's all wishful thinking, but I have to detach myself from that. Remember, it's about the business to sense. The UMC is going to be a much better machine if it has a form of automation attached to it, which probably means we'll sell it and get a
00:35:37
Speaker
newer version, the new version is a big step up. And then Haas has a pallet pool, but man, your compact 80 is totally, I think, the way to go. Yeah, it's epic. It's just so nice. Yeah. And then we use the TM for a lot of things, but boy, I guess I wish I had another VF2.
00:35:57
Speaker
So we're not at the point to make that decision, but it's exciting to think about. It's like the mic at military, you know, kind of like, Hey, let's think about what we need and what we have. We made our first plates this week or last week on the VF6 and John. It's amazing.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to make sure those machines met our expectations.
Lessons from Equipment Purchases
00:36:21
Speaker
We're pretty darn picky about tolerances, the fit, the finish. We've never made a plate on two different machines. How's that workflow going to work? And so far, absolutely awesome. So it's really cool. That's perfect. It's Cat40 still, right? It is, yeah.
00:36:41
Speaker
I think their Haas is starting to push out a bunch of HSK spindle options, but not at all important to what we're doing here. A friend bought a 500 with the HSK, which that could make a lot more sense, but it's a big upgrade cost. And I don't know, I'd be torn. I mean, part of me would love to try it. There's no question it's better. I'm not challenging that. It's just a question of at what point
00:37:08
Speaker
It is the spindle, the weakest link, I guess. That's a good point. Yeah, at the end of the day, just make parts. Like Phil, that survey is, I believe, Cat40. And so is Matt's Herco, and he's not struggling to make some pretty darn nice parts. Yeah, and he's got, what, 15,000 or 20,000 RPM or something? And 90 tools upright. Yep, and that works. We did have one fail. Yeah? Yeah, a pallet stacker.
00:37:39
Speaker
You ever seen those walk behind forklifts? I'm not sure. You've talked about it, but I didn't know if I knew what you were talking about. If you Google a pallet stacker or forklift stacker, you'll see, but instead of a manned forklift where you sit on it and like a riding mower with a cage, these things just have a... It's like a pallet jack that's motorized. Gotcha. That's definitely the better way to describe it, but motorized both in forward and backward, but then also up and down.
00:38:04
Speaker
I thought this was going to be a big part of the workflow for having pallet racking and moving stuff around the shop and absolutely fail. They are way more dangerous than a forklift because of the way that they move forward and backward and the potential to pinch yourself or your foot or
00:38:23
Speaker
how you control the turning of it, like there's no powered steering. And then the one we bought was has stabilizers out the front, which I knew was going to be a potential concern or not work because basically everything has to be the right size for the stabilizers to clear other stuff. And so lesson learned, we're going to sell it. We bought a user, we'll sell it, we'll lose a few bucks. And then I'm going to look at the same thing, but not powered forward back, like you just hand push, move it around like a pallet jacket.
Adjusting Employee Roles
00:38:53
Speaker
Um, and it'll be counterweighted so there won't be the stabilizers. Okay. Yeah. I'm looking at images right now. It looks like they're new. They're like, I don't know, $2,000 to $4,000 or something. And I don't see any that don't have the forward stabilizers, but I'm sure they exist. Yeah. You have to just Google counter, counterbacks to Sacker. You'll see them. Yeah. Okay. No, that's, it's interesting. You don't see those things coming up, but it's like,
00:39:17
Speaker
in your head, you're like, this is going to be a great idea. Let's do it. And then, oh, I didn't think of that. Yeah. So it's okay. I wish I had the ability to figure that out before buying it. And I did test drive them, but just, oh, well, the big deal. Yeah. I like test driving and using them are two different things. That's my PSA though to anybody out there is think about that
00:39:43
Speaker
It's a good lesson for any tool purchase. Here's what you think it's going to do. How do you suss out if it's going to or not? Try to think it through and not just be like, yeah, this will solve all of our problems. I fall into that for sure.
00:39:59
Speaker
Yeah, we've had an interesting change in the company a little bit. So one of our employees, Sky, who's been here for two plus years, mostly in the kind of machining, lapping side of things, has decided to move to the front building and work completely with Eric in finishing knives. Oh, interesting.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah. And he's done it for the past few weeks. And he's like, I'm really, really happy doing this. Awesome. Great. Everybody's winning. Now I need a Swiss machinist. Yeah, right. Oh, no. He was the one that was doing so well, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was an awesome experience to teach him and to show myself that I can teach that. Right. He had the aptitude for it, too. So he picked it up pretty good. But it reduced the fear of me teaching anybody else to do it. Yeah.
00:40:45
Speaker
So that's awesome. But yeah, we're basically looking for one to two people for the machine shop right now and going to start getting a bit louder with that over the next week or two. And it's exciting, trying to figure out who and what and what exactly we're expecting from it. Have Sky start teaching a new person, not you. Interesting. That's the key. Yeah, you're right. Awesome.
Project Updates and Progress
00:41:12
Speaker
Anything else? No, I think that's
00:41:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's what we're up to. Good. We're just doing our doing thing. I've got to go make some parts on the ST20, and we know how to do them because of Excel, which is awesome. And then Julie's actually taking over a lot of adding the stuff to part numbers and all that and just head down, crank it through. It's really fun. I wonder if Excel always sounds like Excel, like Microsoft Excel. Yeah.
00:41:43
Speaker
We'll figure it out. Yeah, figure it out. It's just funny. That's awesome. Cool. Yeah, today I got the Swiss running all day. It ran almost all night until it ran out of Weilu boil because I've checked it recently.
00:41:57
Speaker
And I get in, and it obviously didn't finish the run. There was like eight parts left in the bar. But I'm like, why didn't it finish? I don't understand. I'm looking through the errors, nothing, nothing, nothing. And it wasn't until I started the new part or tried to start that it said, access oil levels low. I'm like, oh, I forgot. You've got to have a maintenance. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so we're making progress on that. And then I'm on the current today. I got a lot of cool, current-y stuff to do. Fun. Fun, fun, fun.
00:42:25
Speaker
Good stuff, man. Awesome. I'll see you next week. Take care. Have a great week. Bye.