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#321 Prototyping SMW Zero Point Fixtures
307 Plays2 years ago
TOPICS:
- The cost of team trips and lunches
- Grimsmo visits the Elliott Matsuura Joint Open House
- Youtube!
- Grimsmo's CMM
- Prototyping SMW zero point fixtures
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Transcript
Meet the Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode three, two, one. My name is John Grimsmough. My name is John Saunders. And this is
Business and Manufacturing Experience
00:00:08
Speaker
the manufacturing entrepreneurship podcast where two buddies have been doing this for probably six-ish years on record before that. And we've been running our businesses for the past, I don't know, dozen years more, constantly gaining traction, gaining speed, gaining momentum, and
00:00:26
Speaker
waiting our ways through the waters of, of business. Yes.
Smooth Shop Operations
00:00:32
Speaker
But I gotta say, I feel like I'm pretty on top of things these days. I'm feeling pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. What makes you, uh, explain, elaborate. I mean, well, leading into the next long conversation about what I did yesterday, um, it was really cool yesterday to be able to come into the shop a little bit early with just two of the guys we got
00:00:54
Speaker
three machines running and we left. So within like an hour and a half of prep in the morning, three machines were running all day long and we went to the Elliott Metzer joint open house for the day. And then Pierre popped by the shop in the afternoon and he's like, sweet, everything's still running. All good. Shop's not on fire.
00:01:16
Speaker
We receive deliveries when none of the shop guys were here to receive them, so our office guys or finishing guys must have received
Productivity and Team Growth
00:01:24
Speaker
them. I don't know. I just know they came. It's cool. We can take a little bit of half a day or a day away and everything still gets done. It's just cool. No, that's awesome, John.
00:01:39
Speaker
That's great. I was going to ask, it was like the silliest question, but we've done, like, if we go out for a shop lunch, that's one of my things I don't like is that, um, I just seems completely antithetical to the idea of a group shop lunch to then ask somebody, you know, draw straws or just say that to the youngest guy or whatever, like you have to stay back and be excluded just because if something arrives and, um, so, but I forgot that I guess it's nice that you've kind of a, well, interesting that you have a separate, like in this case,
00:02:08
Speaker
Office guys won't need to be at a trade show. Yeah, exactly. Although when CMTS comes up in the fall, it's like the Canadian IMTS, I was thinking yesterday, I was like, we should really bring everybody. Yeah. It's in Toronto. It's like an hour away.
00:02:23
Speaker
It is a day of no work, no production. From a business perspective, there's absolutely a cost to that. Not only are you paying your employees their wage, but you are making zero revenue that day.
00:02:38
Speaker
And that becomes a lot of money. Well, you can sell stuff, right? But you're not producing stuff, so you're behind production today. Since we produce and sell at a fairly same pace, we sell everything we produce. So it's like a day's lost production, which has a big dollar sign value to it.
00:02:58
Speaker
However, you got to think what's the growth of each individual going to the show and does that benefit the business long-term either from perspective or from knowledge or from relationships. It's a tough pill to swallow if you really think too hard about it. Sometimes you just got to be like, yeah, we're all taking three hours and going to lunch. The business can deal with it.
00:03:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's the way to, again, I feel more and more lately like I wish this conversation was super private and not a podcast, but look, I wish there was, you can't think about costs, whether it's employment or rent or anything like that, as like, hey, what's this cost to me by the minute or hour or day?
00:03:41
Speaker
got to look at it in a bigger scope of picture of like, Hey, we've got these, these assets or team or capabilities and what are we able to do with it over a great period of time. And that
Efficient Team Meetings
00:03:51
Speaker
helps. It was a mistake I made probably just did not mean it's not that it wasn't a good leader, but it's kind of how you evolve. But
00:03:58
Speaker
in realizing, okay, no, over the course of a week or a month or a year, this is what we're able to do. And part of that is also all these cliche things like team building and bonding and enjoying it. It would be totally wrong to have a financial dollar assigned to the time we spend at our Friday shop lunch, especially if it runs longer. No, that's not the point of life, let alone that. I mean, we actually did calculate the cost of a team meeting.
00:04:29
Speaker
You know, everybody on the team standing outside. Okay. Everybody's salary. Okay. Some production, most productions not getting done except for the automated machines. And we kind of put a number to that and it's like, whoa, that's a, that's not a small number. Um, but that becomes part of the, the, the.
00:04:44
Speaker
day to day of the business. Not everybody can grind eight hours a day nonstop. We
Team Autonomy
00:04:50
Speaker
don't want that in our company. We want some camaraderie. We want some BSing. We want some guys to enjoy themselves and take a break every now and then and all that. But with that number, we did cut our team meetings down from five days a week to now, two days a week and then micro meetings otherwise. It was super funny because on Monday when we had a team meeting,
00:05:12
Speaker
Everybody comes back from the weekend, we tell some stories and then we kind of go over things and I do the state of the union thing and it's like nobody's throwing problems at me like we used to do in team meetings because they have other small meetings to deal with that outside of me. And I actually mentioned that in the meeting and I'm like, is nothing wrong or are you guys just dealing with it on your own? And they're like, no, we got it. And I was like, this is great, but just kind of weird. I'm not used to it yet.
00:05:40
Speaker
It's exactly what happened where I've kind of had to say at our Friday lunches, like, hey, there's stuff that we should bring up in more, I think I've mentioned this actually, but in a sub meeting, if you will, or sub group. And it's too long of a Friday lunch otherwise, or just not appropriate. But it's also frankly, like we kind of started those lunches because we were having some problems. And now those meetings are more just like sharing, frankly, what's going well for the most part, which is great.
00:06:10
Speaker
Um, that's the problem. That's the problem with progress. And I know we've also talked about this, but like the lack of stress or bad things is different than your, my desire to keep improving and looking forward to like, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
00:06:26
Speaker
When I walk into the shop this morning, I thought about, okay, we had one screw goof.
Shop Progress Reflection
00:06:34
Speaker
It's not a huge deal, but some people should do better at it. I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking, okay, the bamboo is so busy. I've got these little things that not you, but if John Saunders from 2012, 2016, 2019 walked into the shop now, my jaw would be everywhere.
00:06:55
Speaker
It's such a weird perspective. And yet the John Saunders today still sees every little Nick and like detail and thing to do in project to finish and unfinished. Like, and then you got all these worries like, well, should we get a second bamboo? Cause the one's working so well, or should we, you know, change the fixturing palette on the thingy?
00:07:12
Speaker
And then I kind of do that automation thing that I've been meaning to. And it's just this constant hunger and drive for, for next, you know? Yeah, right. Which I don't let it be like I'm, I'm doing a better job at just the surgeon thing, which I could talk about, but I want to hear about your open house days. Um, it was really cool. I mean, I've been to this event probably almost 10 times, certainly for the past 10 years. And I've been almost every year. Um,
00:07:43
Speaker
And the progression of my understanding of the industry and my, uh, you know, knowledge of the machines and desire for new equipment and stuff has evolved so much over that entire time. So I still, I remember the feeling of walking into that place and looking at the big mats or a big blue machine with like a $425,000 price tag. They actually put the price on the side. Most companies don't do, but I remember as a,
00:08:10
Speaker
you know, child like 10 years ago is late 20s kind of person. Um, seeing that and I go, Oh man, that's for the big boys. Like all the big auto manufacturers, nobody else kind of thing. And now it's like, we know people with a ma'am 72 and like all the machines that we see are, uh, either in your shop or my shop or friend's shops or whatever. It's super cool. Um,
Gifting Custom Saga Pens
00:08:35
Speaker
Ran into the guys from MTDCNC, both Tony Gunn and the British guy. I can't remember his name, but like the two guys that started MTDC and like run it and the main British guy you usually see on the videos. It was great. Filmed some segments together for Elliot, for Nakamura. And that was really cool. And a lot of it was reconnecting with all the industry people I know at Renishaw or whatever, but
00:09:01
Speaker
What was really cool is Angelo and I decided to put aside eight saga pens and give them to people at Elliott Mazzura that have hooked us up over the years. Oh, that's awesome. Good service because we bought two lathes from them, a CMM and a Zeiss microscope. We gave them a lot of business and they've helped us out in a lot of ways, either with technical support or service or just making the deal go smoothly or specifically the president of Elliott Frank. They call him the Bank of Frank.
00:09:32
Speaker
because he's the guy that puts you in touch with the financing, the lending people, and he'll put his hat in the ring and say, trust them, this will work. And he did that for me in 2016 for our first Nakamura, when he probably shouldn't have.
00:09:47
Speaker
And I told him that and I was like, I want to give you this saga because we've made now thousands of these pens on the machines that you've sold us and I really appreciate everything you've done and it was super nice and rewarding to kind of pay back and everybody was totally blown away. You don't have to do that. Take that Mont Blanc out of your pocket and put this thing in there and this signs your deals from now on. I appreciate that. That's awesome.
00:10:12
Speaker
So that was really fun. Do you not get emotional about that stuff? I do sometimes, yeah, absolutely. And I'm not, like even the little speech I just told you, I'm very uncomfortable doing that, like gushing about something about people or emotions or, you know, like, thank you so much for everything you've done. Like, I don't have a good history of doing that very well, but I'm working very hard to do better at it, because I know people love to receive it. I love to receive praise, other people love to receive praise. It feels good to give it, it feels good to receive it.
00:10:43
Speaker
What am I afraid of for like telling people how good of a job they did? You know, so that was, that was really good and fun to do. And honestly, part of developing the saga pen from the beginning has always been like, I want a product we can make enough of that I can give them away as necessary. Yeah. And, and we're doing that now. And, uh, it's super fun and they can be like scratch and dent ones or ones that aren't perfect or like, who cares?
00:11:10
Speaker
You can't do that with a knife because it's $1,000, too much to give, but the pen has just been absolutely phenomenal and often more useful than a knife in a lot of ways, right? Yeah, that's true. I use my pen five times more than I use my knife, but I need more. I need both.
00:11:32
Speaker
So yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. If somebody could like somehow tally the number of times I take out my, I carry every day, every day, a pen, saga, a knife, and a flashlight. Yeah. The number of times I take them out is- I want to tally this. Yeah, right. I mean, the pen is probably 30 to, I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Yeah.
00:11:58
Speaker
12 to 30 times a day, if not more. The flashlight is probably six, seven, eight times a day, which is crazy. And the knife is like once or twice. Oh, more than that. Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah. For me, it's certainly pen the most flashlight, knife, flashlight, second, knife, third, depending on what I'm doing. But I use both a lot. And talking to people that never carry a knife, never carry a pen, never carry a flashlight, I'm like, what are you even doing with your life? How do you function?
00:12:27
Speaker
So for about a year, I carried the Leatherman, in addition to those two things, I also carried that Leatherman. Oh, I can't remember the model number. It was a really nice smaller one. Like a micro squirt or whatever, the one with the red handles or something? No, it was like a step up from that because it was an actual like beefy frame. It wasn't big, but it was beefy frame. It wasn't that like squirt, I think is kind of flimsy.
Exploring Robotics and Automation
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah. And I still have it. Oh no, I lost it. Nevermind. TSA took it. My fault.
00:12:55
Speaker
I loved having the pliers and it gave me that it had a little quarter inch screw adapter thing for bits but I ultimately found that I was using it like two or three times a month and it was annoying to have in my pocket which yeah okay gone yep
00:13:11
Speaker
That's awesome though. So did you see anything, learn anything, buy anything? Didn't buy anything. I've been, I told a lot of people at the show, I'm like, I've been told by my brother and my accountant that I'm not allowed to buy anything here at the show, but I'm doing research, figuring it out. Um, Pierre said to me, he's like, I could spend so much of your money here, John. And I did see some cool technologies though. There's a,
00:13:35
Speaker
Robotics company like robot arm pallet changer loader machine company kind of an aroa competitor That's been developing for the past 10 years and I see them at this event. They're out of Montreal I've seen them at this event for years super nice guys So every year it's like oh, hey you how's it going? And Every year they constantly blow me away with how much they've advanced from the year before yeah, and they're like I
00:14:02
Speaker
not as big or established as Aroa, but I think their product is probably nearing Aroa level of usability and professionalism and package deal and LEDs and computer panel to integrate with it, to use it, all that stuff. So that got me really thinking as opposed to a
00:14:25
Speaker
say a UR robot picking up a little pallet, putting it in the machine, and you create your own cell, your own racks, whatever like that. Something he said is, at least in Canada, I don't know what the rules are in the US, but it will be almost impossible to get a proper safety inspection for a UR robot loading something like that. Really? Because we need, apparently, we need robotics inspection approval for anything robotic outside of a machine enclosure.
00:14:54
Speaker
So even if you install a FANUC robot on your shop floor, you obviously need the proper safety guarding, but you also need to have that approved by the government or whoever that, I don't know. We haven't had that happen yet. We haven't had them come in, but apparently if you pay a company to install these things for you, they are legally required to get these safety inspections as well.
00:15:16
Speaker
Anyway, he was saying, let's say a UR robot with a gripper on the end, that gripper could pinch you. So that would not pass approval unless it was safety guarded, safety fenced. Yeah, even though the UR is a cobot. Exactly, but it's the gripper. So there's all the little caveats that we as instant machinists don't know because we're like,
00:15:37
Speaker
This guy did it. Right, right. And it seems easy and it seems possible. But anyway, their package is quite affordable. Like you look at the cost of buying a UR new, inventing your own racking system and putting all the time into it versus theirs. He's like, I've got two in stock right now.
00:15:55
Speaker
Dude, don't say that. That's exactly why you're saying that. Exactly. But this is for the Dura Vertical? This is theoretically for the Dura Vertical to palletize it, to automate it. I don't think I have the work for it right now, like the amount of production. However, it was really good to see and really good to talk to the guy, and I've known the guy for going on 10 years now, and he keeps blowing me away. So that kind of thing was really cool to see at the show.
00:16:25
Speaker
Does it look like the Trinity stuff? Yeah, similar. I'd say so. It's got a KUKA robot in the middle, like an actual industrial robot arm of any size. He's got all different sizes and whatever racking system you want. He said he's got three programmers full-time that just do the interface now.
00:16:48
Speaker
And he's building them really good. And he's currently just in the Canadian market, but he's selling his first one to Michigan tomorrow or something. So he's super excited to break into the new market. And it's just really cool. So I've been toying with the idea of a UR on the Dura vertical and hearing that and hearing from another guy that they're like, hold your horses, at least in Canada, maybe that wouldn't fly. And maybe the cost doesn't make sense. I also talked to UR when I was there and they're like, yeah, it'd be great.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah, right, right. Yeah, that's funny. Okay, so that was cool. What else? What else? Went to our DLC coding vendor that also has other PVD codings like TILN.
00:17:35
Speaker
CRN, like every coding you can think of. So that was really cool. We've used them on and off in the past with varying results of success. You know, spots or chips or missing parts or like just not perfect black DLC. Yeah. And we've scrapped parts because of that. And we send them like five knives and you get back one sellable knife. You're like, I, this no work. Yes. Like, no, thank you.
00:18:02
Speaker
But Angelo absolutely insisted he's like, John, you and I have to drive there and we have to sit down with them. We have to have a meeting. We have to bring parts. We have to show them everything. We have to explain ourselves. This is the only way to get the good results. And then they see we're serious and blah, blah, blah. So we did that because they were like 20 minutes away from the show that we were at. So we're like, now's the time. Let's go. So we brought 50 saga pens and sat down with them for like 45 minutes, explained it all. They were super good, super awesome. They got it.
00:18:31
Speaker
And Angelo was like, I want 50% DLC. And the other 50%, you can just play with whatever colors, coatings you want. And the guy in his thick Russian accent said to us very clearly, he's like, we are not artists. You have to tell us exactly what you want. OK, let's figure it out. And then we got to tour their facility, their production facility. They actually invent and design and make their own PVD chambers.
00:18:58
Speaker
Crazy. It's nuts. That's crazy. I've heard in the past that, especially in the Toronto area, that many of the PVD coding companies are Russian descent. It's like they left Russia with the knowledge that they learned in Russia. They came together and they started businesses. There are many Russian PVD coding companies here from like 30 years ago kind of thing. Are you using PVD or just the DLC?
00:19:27
Speaker
Just the DLC, although we're going to get some titanium aluminum nitride and some ZRN coatings and some other stuff just to add color. I wonder if that stuff is more... I'm not sure. Is that stuff...
00:19:44
Speaker
Like
PVD Coating Challenges
00:19:45
Speaker
you said, the DLC problems, obviously, I think anybody who's used anodizers is could have a chair could share a bunch of war stories there. But it seems like and I just may be a naive or off faces comment. But it seems like the end mill companies when they have the ZIRN or ALTI encodings, it seems like that is just
00:20:03
Speaker
Good to go, solid, not issued. Why? You would assume so. But a company like this does coat tons of end mills as well. And then as the end mill manufacturers get bigger, they might eventually buy their own coating oven. Like Deborah Tools, who I use probably 60%, 70% of all my cutting tools now. They're made in Toronto, just down the street from us. And they got their own coating. So they do all their own coatings now, which was a good investment for them. They can control everything now.
00:20:35
Speaker
I wonder how big either the scrap rate is for traditional coding companies, and we just never hear about it.
00:20:42
Speaker
We just get the tools that worked out, or if it's such a consistent process, they always receive spotlessly clean tools. They ultrasonic them again anyway. They rack them in a specific way, a specific time. It's very easy. When you bring them pen parts or a knife blade, and they don't know how to rack it, and they don't know how to like, there's variables, there's differences. There could be like dirt on it. There could be tumbling residue. The surface finish from tumbling might be weird to adhere to, blah, blah, blah.
00:21:12
Speaker
So when you get weird, there's a lot of variances. Yeah, right. However, they showed us a sink faucet like 180 degree tube basically like in your kitchen sink that was polished and DLC coated and it looked in
00:21:28
Speaker
That's weird. It was their demo piece, but it was like glass black. It was just gorgeous. And I was like, this, I want this. I want this. And he's like, your parts aren't as shiny because they're tumbled or straight machine finish. So they won't be as black to look a little bit more gray. But I'm like, OK, but here's what we need. No spots, no chips, no nothing. I need clean coating. If we can do that, then we'll send you guys consistent business. So give us some money, some quotes, some pricing.
00:21:58
Speaker
and we'll see if we can continue to work together. And we brought them two pens as well to kind of sweeten the deal. Oh, that is generous. We've been using them on and off for like eight years. Angelo as well in his private life, his private knife making company. So he's, we have an established relationship, like sort of. Yeah. And do you guys, is that far enough away where you ground ship it or do you milk, do you have somebody drive up there?
00:22:23
Speaker
Like we drove this one, but it's like, it's almost an hour away. Yeah. It's too far to drive it. Like you just couldn't basically, but for this first batch, we're like, yeah, we'll go in. Do you use a courier service? Like an actual, we have like twice and we probably would for this. Yeah. We have some critical. Good.
00:22:43
Speaker
We're kind of in industrial greater Toronto area, so there's all kinds of little vans doing courier jobs all the time. It's probably either cheaper and or better than just Canada Post. Yeah, right. We have some critical custom fixture plates coming up that have to go up for a process.
00:23:03
Speaker
I'm not going to dry these up because it's too many to... Like anodizing? Yeah. And they aren't going to be able to be done while I wait for them. But I did do that a while back. And I'll tell you, it was really good, but not for the reason I expected. Like, yeah, FaceTime with the
00:23:19
Speaker
Kind of sales rep or the team you interface with is helpful for sure and to put a face in the name and so forth but the real take away and I think it's a probably applies to any of these processes like this where you know the sales guy doesn't see your parts and they
00:23:39
Speaker
you know, the way the parts got unloaded, the way they got put onto tables to get prepped to rack, the way they got racked, the way they got moved throughout the factory, kind of told me like, oh, you know, runners don't necessarily work or trying to send along our own QC examples or pins or gauges, that's not going to work because you just kind of get a feel for like, okay, this is, because like, we talked about this before, nobody wants to make bad parts or bad DLC or whatnot.
Vendor Interactions
00:24:04
Speaker
But like, you got to just sort of see like, okay, what's happening here? Yeah.
00:24:08
Speaker
Because the sales guy is not like, oh, a crate came in or whatever. Let's take a look. I remember that conversation with John. He was really nice. He gave me a pen. I'm going to make sure they arrive and the night shift runs them and it happens. Yeah, exactly. So that's something we're trying to, if not avoid, at least be aware of and minimize with the owners of this company.
00:24:32
Speaker
And you know, we walked around the shop and it's not the newest, most space age, you know, a spotlessly clean environment by any stretch of the imagination. But we definitely got our point across and they're like, yeah, normally we just run stuff through, but these ones, we're going to take our time. We're going to like pay attention to these because we want your business. Like you, he said you came at a good time to, to give us this kind of volume and business. So I'm like, yeah, excellent. Yeah. Good. So cool.
00:24:59
Speaker
Was this the day where if you did something, you got service credit? Yeah, and I told that to one of the service leaders and he's like, oh, I was like, you should know this, bro. Is that still a thing? That's freaking awesome.
00:25:16
Speaker
Honestly, I haven't heard in a little while, but I assume the deal was if you go to every four locations, you get eight hours of free service in the next 12 months for a machine that you've purchased from one of these four locations, which we have several. I need to confirm if that's still a thing because I'm making a point to run around a 30-minute drive between locations to hit them all.
00:25:44
Speaker
it was fun. I filmed a YouTube video while I was there. That's going to be fun. I'll throw that together. Oh, good. That's fun. Awesome. Yeah. I really want to get back into YouTube and I've got probably five, six videos on the go right now that we've been filming over months and I want to get back into it. It's been a long time. Good. That's awesome. Yeah, right? Yeah. It's fun, but it's a lot of work. Yeah. That's kind of the balance of like, is it
00:26:07
Speaker
Um, what we could talk, I could, um, you know, uh, over a NA beer, I could, you know, commiserate a lot over like, what's the point of YouTube? And I do genuinely enjoy it, but I don't want it to be work anymore. Uh, it hasn't, sorry. Anyway, that's fine.
00:26:23
Speaker
I filmed a couple of videos and a good, we're actually overdue for just a good old shop update video, which is exciting. But then the other kind of fun thing, it kind of feels like we're growing up is, do you know Thomas net at all?
00:26:41
Speaker
The website? Yeah. Yeah. It comes up when you're searching for like metal. Bingo. And I don't get it really, what ThomasNet is. And it's just like, I don't even understand it. So I mostly ignore the results coming from ThomasNet.
00:26:58
Speaker
And look, I'd be lying if I didn't say I was kind of right there with you. I'm pretty sure it used to be a physical directory that got mailed out like an encyclopedia for service vendors. I think pre-internet, which, you know, the number of people. Like the yellow pages of industry. Yes. Right. Right. Kids these days don't know what a yellow pages is.
00:27:16
Speaker
And it's not even point like the number of people that are professionally working that are still hanging on to pre internet era days, they don't exist like right? Yeah, but uh, but they were kind of pitching us for, you know, rounding out our profile. So they clearly like scrape information and try to build stuff where you kind of like done in Bradstreet, I don't really care about D&B.
00:27:37
Speaker
because that seems to be a little bit more just like financial and company corporate info. But ThomasNet is kind of like, hey, no, I'd like to, if somebody wants to check us out, we do get a lot of inquiries or POs from major corporate users to say, hey, Sautos MachineWorks is a leading provider of CNC machine fixture plates. Here's our offering. Here's what we do.
00:27:59
Speaker
And one of the things that Thomas said is pushing his videos. So they were trying to talk about having a film crew come out here. I was like, that just feels so weird and like, like, I don't know, like to block out time and make sure we got to do I was like, can we just film the video ourselves? So they're like, Oh, yeah, that's totally fine. Happy for folks that they can do that. And I was like, I'm okay doing that. Like the 1% of folks that would that would say to do that.
00:28:23
Speaker
So I actually honestly had most of the footage already. I filmed a couple of new things and we're editing that now, which is fun. Nice. May I ask who's editing these days?
00:28:34
Speaker
Oh, it's me. Yeah. Um, I've used an Upwork person once, but, um, I, do I want to edit? No, but, um, it's so quick because I don't really do second two takes. And I know what I want the video to say. And this sounds kind of bad, but I don't care. Like I don't, the videos are, are, uh, this one is a little bit more legitimate because it's a kind of a sales like Thomas that industry profile, but with the shop update video, it's just, it's just me and you guys like, it's not something where I.
00:29:04
Speaker
I don't envision staffing a video editor again, at least in the future. That's interesting. I've used to have Fraser doing the videos, but they
00:29:18
Speaker
They always with him and me both wanted to be very fancy, very professional, very heavily edited. And now that I've got Ryan working with me and he's got previous experience editing videos, but very little with us. I want to make it simple. I want to pull it back to the bare bones, not necessarily one take, but certainly just I'll film whatever, trim the fat and post it.
00:29:43
Speaker
So we're probably going to film some today. The first video back because we haven't filmed a video or we haven't released a video in like almost a year. Uh, I want the first one back to be kind of powerful. So we're going to do some fun stuff. General shop. Like, you know, what do we do here? Kind of thing. Yeah. Cause I realized I've got so many videos that are like, let me show you this thing. But like, what do you do as a total? What is Grimsman knives? What do you make? What do you like? I want to show it all in one little video. So I think that'll be super fun. Um,
00:30:14
Speaker
Can I chime in? Yeah. I want the videos that we produce just to be a reflection of what I want to consume myself. So like we were doing a bunch of prep work for the five axis class that we already hosted. We have one again next week. So I had a bunch of old notes and working with Vince and I, there were like a bunch of good tips and tricks things that I had. I just don't remember cause I wasn't programming parts every day. And I'm like, these all are going to be awesome. Like three minute videos where like you're not going to fast forward a second in this video because it's simply,
00:30:43
Speaker
three to five minutes of pure content so I'll edit there because I'll edit out the pauses and I'll edit out the
00:30:50
Speaker
whatever, because I just want it to be saturated education. I'm not here to sell you anything. I guess I'm implicitly, I'm telling you we have five access training classes, but it's really more about like, Hey, if you are trying to figure out why the flow flow doesn't work, this video is going to show you what you need to know. Or I need to know that 3d contour shaft and holder detection. Like here's the five minute video showing you how it works in two different examples in some kind of gotchas around it. Yes. That's what I like. I just love it.
00:31:15
Speaker
Honestly, people that I meet that mention you in your videos talk about those weird tips and tricks that you show and post. They're like, thank you so much for posting this kind of stuff. I met one guy at DMG More yesterday who's like the head of 5-axis sales or something. He's like, man, I was watching this one video of you where
00:31:38
Speaker
you put a static Torx bit in your Nakamura and you mill the Torx and then you shove the Torx bit into there with load sensing to see if the tool broke. And he was like, man, that's so awesome. I'm like, dude, I completely forgot about that. Like we don't do it that way anymore. And I forgot that we even did it. It's not at the top of my mind. Thanks for reminding me. That's super cool.
00:31:58
Speaker
Do you still have the pill bottle in the neck? It's still attached. We also haven't used it in like five years since our tornos, but it's still okay. Whatever you haven't cut it out. That's hilarious. Yeah. And yesterday, another guy, the guy who sold us the Nakamura mentioned the pill bottle. And as I also, I completely forgot it's still there because I don't touch that machine anymore. You need to know how formidable this is me compliment. You need to know how formidable some of these things are to all of us that are like consuming your service content. Like,
00:32:26
Speaker
I brought up the Torx thing at Okuma because I was asking the Multis apps guy if we could do that on verticals or horizontals to shove a dummy tool to see if a feature got made as a poor man's probing technique. And you can have a different plugin option on the OSP, but yeah.
00:32:47
Speaker
I freaking love it, John. It was crazy. Honestly, we've done dozens and dozens of more weird things like that that I haven't shown, haven't shared, haven't taken the time to do, but things like that remind me how important they can be for the world to hear and to share around because they're really cool things.
00:33:09
Speaker
Yeah, super cool. Yes. So you mentioned you bought a CMM from whatever somebody probably Yeah, that's probably the most like, I don't forget that you bought one. But like,
Integrating a CMM for Quality
00:33:22
Speaker
tell me more about what's going on. You're both the CMM and the speedio and kind of the Okamoto surface grinder unsung hero in the background. But all three of those haven't really been mentioned at all.
00:33:38
Speaker
So the CMM, currently we have a 3D printed fixture with three magnets in it where you can shove a blade against three stops, like three fixture points. So you slap a blade on, it locates close enough. The CMM comes down, orients itself, so it picks a couple of static points on the blade, does a flatness measurement on the top to orient the top surface.
00:33:59
Speaker
And then it goes ahead and measures the flatness of the entire blade. And then all the features, the lock face, the stop pin track, detent hole, thumb studs, hole diameter, pivot hole diameter, the cylindricity of the pivot bore itself. So if it's oval, if it's belled out, if it's undersized, if it's whatever. So that's like a 3D spiral that spirals down to measure that with thousands of points.
00:34:27
Speaker
and all that happens within a couple minute cycle and two different tool changes I think and then it spits out a report. So every single Norseman blade we're making is getting this report. Oh wow. Oh wow. Angelo's running it completely. I learned the machine in the beginning and I haven't touched it since.
00:34:45
Speaker
So he's doing that for every single blade and it's currently manually loaded every one blade at a time. It's too tricky to do the reporting we want with a nested fixture of too many blades at once. Oh, really? I think that's what he's telling me. So we're just doing one at a time. Whatever. It's no big deal. He'll like slap it in. He'd go walk away.
00:35:06
Speaker
Which is... Why not do 1 out of 5? Why not 10? Because we're having inconsistent fit-up issues with the Norseman knives in general. And we're trying to find the source of it. Okay, so that's where you bought the thing originally though, right? Exactly, right? So tracking every single blade shows us a trend and we're finally starting to see a trend now. And because of all the tool life tracking, we're tracking on the current.
00:35:32
Speaker
Like we're tracking literally every tool life every day for the past two years in a spreadsheet.
00:35:40
Speaker
We can tell the tool that cuts the lock face on this exact blade was roughly, you know, 200 minutes in the cut at our current limits, 400 minutes, whatever. And at 300 minutes, the blades coming off happened to be getting out of spec. So maybe we have to adjust that to a life, um, to keep the form of this 3d surface, like within tolerance. So we're just finally rounding the corner of figuring out that, that logic.
00:36:07
Speaker
Got it. And with the feedback of Eric putting together knives, and Eric and Angela have worked together really closely. Like Eric's got a knife. Oh, this one, this one doesn't work. Can you scan this one again? Or can you show me the report? Oh, that's this is why that happened. So it's a lot more nuanced than I expected it to be. I thought it would be like a scan the blade. Yep, that one's bad. No problem.
00:36:26
Speaker
I remember you kind of saying that you're also looking for a smoking gun and it doesn't sound like there's- Yeah, it's super subtle and super minor and nuanced, but there's a clear difference between like, now we know a brand new end mill makes a lock face 3D radius that's this number, and then it slowly gets bigger and bigger over time. And Eric's blades with a brand new end mill work awesome.
00:36:50
Speaker
Interesting. And blades with an end of life end mill don't work awesome. So, okay, there's something here. And maybe there's the design itself is too constrained or too impossible to machine easily kind of thing. And that's a whole design conversation. But for the most part, it's like, how do we just make it work? You know, if we just replace this fairly expensive end mill more often, sure, why not?
00:37:14
Speaker
Because we're hard machining that feature too, like 61 Rockwell. So tool life is variable. You could, I guess, but you'd want to be a ball shape or a cylindrical shape. Oh, right. And then you got to dress that. So we're getting there. We're getting there. That's cool.
00:37:39
Speaker
Um, funny you say that I'm reading between the lines, but it's kind of like sometimes there's issues that you'd like them to be better, but it doesn't mean that it's a failed part. Like it's okay. Or we correct. Yeah. So, um, you know, we had the same problem going on here. I'd be, I think anybody who resonated marriage company is probably.
00:37:54
Speaker
even though it's fun to say that we're perfect and everything, we're not. But what I realized is this is how we take process bins to the next levels and exaggeration, but inch their value up another little notch on the totem pole. We're starting. We
Process Bin System
00:38:11
Speaker
have not really done this. We just started talking about this week of having a... I started with a number system. I think I'm going to move it to little...
00:38:19
Speaker
Red, green, yellow, red, um, stickers are 3d printed things on the outside of the process bin. Green, green means we are good to run that part. We know how to make it. They don't tend to cause issues like good to go. Yellow, yellow means we're making the parts, but we do want to continue to spend more time and attention to either improve it or consistency or tool life or whatever. And inside the process bin will be comments here. I'm like, Hey,
00:38:44
Speaker
you know, sometimes like, for example, one of our fixtures, one out of the eight parts sometimes has one side that's out of a spectrum, a tolerance that we'd like, but it's not really critical. But it's kind of like, I don't like that. I'm not going to put a green on that. And then red, red doesn't mean stop, because if it's a stop, it's truly stop. Red means this is way too much.
00:39:05
Speaker
hassle and babysitting and frustration and deviation. So we need to really rehuddle, we do fixture, we do cam, that kind of a thing. I love that. And actually, as I was explaining our process bins and Angela and Steven have both been starting to make some of these fixture parts out of the process bins without me here. Good. Awesome. Yes. Super awesome.
00:39:27
Speaker
And Steven mentioned to me exactly what you're asking for. He's like, wouldn't it be great if we had some way that you could indicate to us what parts to run next, if they're good, if they're bad, if they're weird, if they're whatever. And so he's like, what if we printed a little thingy to clip on the end and your stoplight color system is great.
00:39:46
Speaker
Well, you can also move the racking or like the beauty of the process is they're on wire racks. So you can also just have rack shells being like, okay, these are the most important. Again, we don't use them for work orders. Those are totally work orders come out of Lex, but for your purpose, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's cool. I thought I had... Yeah, so I mentioned that. That's good. We had a...
00:40:15
Speaker
finally ordered a macro lens for our Sony a7III camera. It's been on the radar for like a year and eventually I was like, wait, we're filming this video, but what do we do? And I've been mildly diving into the watch industry just for fun and everything in the watch industry shot under macro. And I'm like, we make those kinds of details. Why can't we film them?
00:40:38
Speaker
Oh, right, right. Right, so then I was like, Ryan, how much is that lens again? It's like $1,300. How soon can we get it? Tomorrow. Fine. Order it. And it came in yesterday, and he snapped one picture and texted it to me, and I'm like, oh my goodness. That is more detail and closer up we've ever gotten. Yes, we should have done this a long time ago. Right. That's going to be super cool. That's awesome. I haven't actually seen it yet, but I know it came in yesterday.
00:41:07
Speaker
That's going to be fun. And you can actually film not just super close stuff, which was my interpretation. You can film a far away like talking headshot with a macro lens, but your actual depth of field is very tight. So you just got to be careful how you do it. But apparently the lens has built in stabilization and autofocus and all the goodies, bells and whistles. So that's going to be super fun. Good. Cool.
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah, I spent the last probably three or four days. I wheeled my desk next door. Not ideal to be clear, but hey, I'm not complaining to the UMC 500 and the first batch of the zero point, the parts that we're making around the five axis. There are other parts
Success with Five-Axis Machining
00:41:49
Speaker
get made here on the Willemin and the verticals, but they honestly, they went great. I scrapped.
00:41:55
Speaker
The first one I scrapped because I had a tool pull out is I didn't have the right end mill. Actually, I don't regret this. I didn't have the right end mill. I had one that would work. I ordered the ones I wanted and I was like, I'm not going to not make this part though and use a $20 piece of material to get through a sample. I didn't expect the tool to pull out like it did. What was the holding, like ER or something?
00:42:17
Speaker
It was an ER 32 holding the lakeshore carbide war mill, which is a half inch extended length roughing carbide steel. Um, it's not, it's, it's great when you need it for those reasons, but, um, we switched it to a stubby or excuse me, not a stubby, a normal length, but choked up half inch solid carbide.
00:42:38
Speaker
in a milling chunk, which is like that day more. So, you know, honestly, it pulled out like 15 thou. So the part was still functional for what we needed to try as a first prototype, but, um, what caught the pullout tool breakage detection or, uh, part bad part.
00:42:55
Speaker
What cut the pullout was the surface, one of the planes was supposed to have 10,000 stock to leave, and then when I ran the flat toolpath to clean it up, nothing cleaned up on it. With the next tool, I was like, ah, something happened. Yeah, it makes you scratch your head for a few minutes until you figure it out. Yeah, right. Okay.
00:43:11
Speaker
But then I ran nine more. The second one, I broke a carbide drill, which honestly I don't normally do. So that was kind of like, really? And I quickly fixed it. And then the next nine ran per, or excuse me, eight ran. Perfect. But the real, first off, it was genuinely fun to, like I've said this before, I love, I just liked it. It's prototyping.
00:43:34
Speaker
Well, there's a difference between inventing and testing and fine tuning parts and breaking some tools. You got to break some eggs to make an omelet versus making parts production. Just load and go. That gets monotonous. But that's the life of production. You have a production company, I have a production company. It's this life. But it is super fun to invent and make and break some stuff.
00:43:56
Speaker
The fun thing too was the first time I really dove into the dberg toolpath in extensions and I Had two different how like lollipop tools one was shorter but couldn't reach everything so that I just used the longer one Which is stupid long like too long, but I thought hey, I'm I'm not even I wouldn't even call it a chamfer or deeper It's really like making sure there aren't
00:44:20
Speaker
ragged burrs, if that makes sense, which I guess technically is deburring, but it's more about the elimination of extra chip than this. You're not making a chamfer. You're deburring. Yeah. Technically, yeah.
00:44:31
Speaker
But there were six internal hole intersections where drills intersected solid material, and I wanted those to be good. Oh, internal, and you can deeper that. Yeah. They're all occluded. With the lollipop tool. Yep. Ooh, that's fun. I say it was super easy. It's worth doing a video on it because I did have to tweak or
00:44:53
Speaker
I have more conviction now than when I just opened the toolpath and got it running, but freaking awesome and like really cool five-axis motion. And then I ran the first one while I was sitting next to my desk, and then the next seven, I didn't even stick around. They all just ran. So you loaded the pallet pool?
00:45:10
Speaker
No, so that's a great segue, which I'll do a cliffhanger. I'll save that for next week. Pallet pool versus other options. I have more conviction on that than I did previously. Interesting. Yeah. I thought a lot about that yesterday, too. Tune in, folks. Yes. Yeah.
Tool Changing Tips Video?
00:45:31
Speaker
And speaking of videos, I was thinking yesterday when I was on my walk, I was like, I could literally do at least a 10-minute video on tips for tool changing.
00:45:40
Speaker
Look, change kind of end mills on a machine. A whole segment on why I don't like double-sided end mills anymore. Really? I used to love them and I was thinking through it. I'm like, oh, I have like seven sub points of why I don't like them anymore. I like them because they're cheap. I don't like them because of all these reasons.
00:45:59
Speaker
But I wish you would just do that video. And I don't care about how it's edited. I don't want it to be a 10 minute or 20 minute video on a seven different topic. Do a three minute video of you just tearing into a double sided nose.
00:46:14
Speaker
That's what I want to watch. That'd be fun, right? They're good to hear. Yeah. But I don't care. I want to be careful.
Balancing Content Creation and Production
00:46:20
Speaker
There's a shout out to everybody on there who's taking YouTube so seriously. You guys are smoking me and, frankly, you, not the three of us. There's so much good stuff out there these days. And RockCon, and as a consumer of that content, I'm loving it.
00:46:32
Speaker
I'm not up there anymore. I'm good. Yeah. We have a production company and we make parts. We don't make YouTube videos, but if I can make YouTube videos as well on the side for fun and also for marketing the company and the brand, but without like a full-time job's worth of effort, then let's go. So that's my plan. Good. Well, we're, Phil's in the parking lot. So let's film that double-sided thing and put that up. Sounds great. Awesome.