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Ep. 9: Rough and Tumble
61 Plays11 days ago
Join Curt and Jamie as they explore the The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Tumblers.
Links Discussed:
- Slitting Saw: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004116617362.html?pdp_npi=4%40dis%21ZAR%21ZAR%20231.75%21ZAR%2038.62%21%21%2112.00%212.00%21%40211b813b17404614691585907e3247%2112000029751855223%21sh%21ZA%211908904620%21X&spm=a2g0o.store_pc_allItems_or_groupList.new_all_items_2007523639183.1005004116617362
- Jamie’s PC Build: https://www.wootware.co.za/in-win-iw-cs-chopingre-ps200w-chopin-pro-200w-titanium-grey-mini-itx-desktop-chassis.html
- Curt’s Ask Me Anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uJ5-D0q_6M
The Lone Machinist:
- Website: https://thelonemachinists.com/
- Merch: https://www.jspeceng.com/online-store
- Patreon: https://patreon.com/TheLoneMachinists
Jamie:
http://instagram.com/jspec_engineering
Curt:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to the Loading Machines podcast, podcast where it's just you, your tools, and the work. No team, no backup. I'm Jamie from JSpec Engineering, and every episode we're tackling the highs and lows of flying solo in the machining world.
00:00:21
Speaker
And I'm Kurt from Confound a Machine, here to chat about everything it takes to make it as a one-man show in the shop. From grinding and turning to the struggles of running a one-person operation, we're sharing the stories, the tricks, and the challenges that come with going it alone.
00:00:33
Speaker
If you're out there in the shop grinding away by yourself or just thinking about taking a solo plunge, this show's for you. So throw in your ear protection and let's talk about life behind the machine. How are you doing today, Kurt?
00:00:46
Speaker
I'm doing fantastic. How are you doing this evening, Jamie? No, I'm doing well. I've been having some challenges, but I'm sure we'll get into that a bit later on.
Challenges of Load Shedding in Africa
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're both fighting the electronic demons this morning, but.
00:00:59
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm fighting the government this morning, but yeah. That's a bigger one. The load load shedding is back. So we that's why we're recording early. We're chasing down when my electricity gets turned off on a schedule because Africa.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's, yeah. Makes it difficult. It makes it a tad challenging. Yeah, I ended up losing two hours on Saturday because I had a two and half hour cycle lined up and got a notification saying power's going off in two hours.
00:01:26
Speaker
So I couldn't run. It was literally the last long cycle I needed to run and I couldn't run it. So that was Sunday morning. Is it at least fairly accurate to what they, like if they say it's going to turn off at four, it turns off at four, not like?
00:01:42
Speaker
For the most part, yes. It'll be either on the hour or like a minute or two later. And then normally it turns, so they say it's from, say for instance, four till six. um On the app it'll say four till 6.30.
00:01:55
Speaker
Usually it's on by like five past 10 past six. It just gives them half an hour in case it doesn't go to plan because obviously your electrical infrastructure is not meant to be switched on and off cons constantly. Yeah, ah not typically.
00:02:11
Speaker
No, that is not the ideal situation. But yeah, it's ah it's not entirely too difficult to work around. Fortunately, i don't pay someone to look at my machine while there's no electricity. So it's not too bad.
00:02:24
Speaker
Like I'm in the very fortunate position that I can just shift my hours. So I'll go have a nap in the middle of the day and then just work two hours later in the evening. Yeah, no, that works out then. Yeah, I've got the giant generator, but I haven't switched it on yet.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, I could see that being costable. I mean, from what you told me, it sounds like it's actually a lot more costly than I thought it would be. So it's yeah. ah Government electricity is effectively free when you consider generating your own. Yeah, no kidding.
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah. It is basically free when you consider it. Like if I have to go put diesel in there, I'm going to be lucky if I get away with about $200 a day. Yeah, that's nuts.
00:03:01
Speaker
yeah That's insane. It's silly. So it's there it's there for the in the situation that we absolutely have to get a job out the door and there is no option, then we turn it on.
00:03:12
Speaker
Otherwise, if we can shift around, we shift hours around rather. Yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, so yeah, you seem to have had a pretty busy week. Yeah, yeah. I had, I mean, just a heavy week of production, which was fun in itself. And then I had a big Reddit AMA thing, which kind of just sucked up a ton of my time, but that was super fun to do.
00:03:32
Speaker
And yeah, I was listening to that today. Oh yeah, yeah, I did. I did. vote Yeah, I know I saw your comment. I know one slip of the tongue and I have a million DMs about people wanting a fruit grip. So it's thanks thanks to Jamie, it is going to make its appearance as an actual thing. i don't know how many I'll make, but I think I'll make a handful of them. I think people will dig up.
00:03:55
Speaker
I think they will. I mean, I want one of them.
00:04:00
Speaker
So yeah, that was fun. Yeah, we're chatting in the in the week about some funny quotes and stuff. And you were saying about you wanting to make a slightly cheaper product that you can put funny quotes and things on.
00:04:13
Speaker
I've got one that we will discuss in the after show. Oh, Yes, what I have planned there. It's a little savage. I told John about it this morning and he just burst out alive. He's like, please, I need and need multiple of them.
00:04:25
Speaker
ah But yeah, we'll save for the after show.
Funding the Podcast and New Merchandise
00:04:28
Speaker
Speaking of the after show, We now have a Patreon for the podcast. ah The Patreon goes towards funding the podcast and also getting Kurt tonight's IMTS in 2026. There's multiple tiers. Everything from the second tier gets the after show.
00:04:46
Speaker
And then there's you get on the Wall of Fame on on the... Patreon. Sorry, on the website. You get onto the Wall of Fame. And then we've also launched a shirtline, some merch for the podcast.
00:04:59
Speaker
So if you want to go check that out, that's available also on loanmachinists.com. Sorry, I thought I'd just throw that plug in there quickly. No, that's perfect. and i yeah i like so i I'm just going to buy a bunch of the sweaters because they're actually...
00:05:13
Speaker
fairly reasonably priced. yeah, I'm going stock up because I burned through clothes working in here and getting oil and junk on everything. So may as well wear something that supports both of us. That's kind of cool. I'm surprised my shirts have lasted as long as they have.
00:05:26
Speaker
We also released the shirts, all the designs that I wore at IMTS, because a lot of guys are like please, can we buy these shirts? Because we've got the G84 shirts. um We've got a whole bunch of really classy shirts um that Danica has now put on the Jspec ENG website.
00:05:42
Speaker
So you can support us there, pick those up. um And those are going to change every four months. We're going to release a new line, a new bunch of like four or five shirts.
00:05:52
Speaker
And then we'll we'll roll through Zodanical, whatever. Basically what she makes me, I'm going wear for a few months and then it'll go on to the onto the website. Oh, that's awesome. And then you'll re you'll auction off the shirt you've been wearing for the few months.
00:06:07
Speaker
and so yeah Tell the Patreon members, I'll end it. Yeah, no, my shirts get holes in them very quickly. they're Anodizing the acid apparently eats through clothes. Who would have guessed?
00:06:18
Speaker
Weird. Yeah, very strange. But yeah, we made, there's a couple of funny ones. There's a couple of funny ones in the pipeline as well. My favorite is, I've cut it twice and it's still too small.
00:06:29
Speaker
yeah i like don't know there's i like that she's if she's doing new ones that's super cool too because i yeah so there's ah there's a bunch in the works people were asking for them after imts so we finally made it happen um but being in south africa we look at 25 for a shirt and like that is absorbed like exorbitant we used to like cheap fashion like if pay ten dollars for a shirt it's a lot so yeah yeah but we did it anyway and we'll see how we'll see how that goes Yeah, well, if nothing more, i will buy a few of them. so Yeah, there looks like ah Looks like your week was fun. You have a whole plethora of things to talk to.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yeah, I filled it up. Guess what a plant-tobot did? I don't know, but tell me about it, because I've never had those things function all that well for me. ah Yeah, so the drill bit, it's
Machining Challenges and Solutions
00:07:17
Speaker
my 4.2 drill. It's been in the machine for, I don't know, ever.
00:07:21
Speaker
um I don't know when I changed it last. And I was doing these camera housing parts and the hole drills to about 0.7 mil. Oh no, stole the cable for the Imperializer from my camera.
00:07:33
Speaker
Oh no. Yeah, so it drills down to about 0.7 of a millimeter from the bottom, so about 30 thou. And because the drill bit was blunt, you could see where the hole was on the backside of the part because it was supplying extra force.
00:07:45
Speaker
So I was a bit annoyed by that, but... It is what it is because if the customer has a problem, we can chat about it. But it functionally, it's not going to impair the parts. So it's going out like that because I don't have either the time or the material to redo it right now.
00:08:00
Speaker
So if they, I'm pretty sure the last batch had that same thing and I just didn't catch it. So we'll see. The parts are going out this week. They need to go out my workshop this week because I need to invoice it.
00:08:12
Speaker
Yeah, fair enough. Is it like a ah cosmetic part or is it like um industrial part? Where it is, it's going to be anodized. It's going to be on the inside of a camera housing. Like no one's ever going to see it.
00:08:24
Speaker
Wow. It's just, it's visible and it was bugging me, but I don't have the capacity to redo it right now. So... If they have a problem, I'll remachine the parts and give them new ones, but it is drilled as deep as their spec is and the bottom of the hole, like where the taper starts.
00:08:40
Speaker
So where it goes from cylindrical to tapered, that is 0.7 of a mill from the end of the part. So by the time you get the bottom of the tape, it's like 0.2 of a millimeter. So it's very, very close. Yeah. super So yeah, super thin wall and aluminum. So yeah.
00:08:53
Speaker
But I put a new drill in and it's, you can still make it out on the, so I picked that up on the second part. ordered drills, got drills and ran the third part and you can still, you can still just see where that is. so I'm like, it is what it is. It's not going to affect functionality. So it shouldn't be an issue.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah, I guess. Yeah. It's not, not ideal, but it is unfortunately what it is. Can you switch to a, like a flat bottom drill for that? to Or do they need the point? So the, the way I would fix it is to just bore the hole out with a flat end. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll do. It takes time. And yeah, I'd done two of them already by the time I figured it out.
00:09:29
Speaker
I mean, each one's got an hour and a half of machining into it at that point. yeah So just yeah unfortunate, but is it is what it is.
00:09:39
Speaker
um thank yeah I see you got new tumbling media. Yeah, I was um forever. just There's going to be like a ton of updates on just tumbling because I'm always searching down finishing. And right now, if I can get tumbling, working, and getting the finishes I want, that's going to be a massive time saver for me. So I ended up just buying some.
00:09:57
Speaker
I've been playing around with non-abrasive media, which sounds counterintuitive. um It's just ceramic media, but it doesn't have like. as yeah It doesn't only wear away. Yeah, it's kind of like just. polishing spheres anyways i bought a bunch of little rods um they were very inexpensive to what i normally buy and i was like you know what i'm just gonna give these a whirl so i filled up my old schooly little uh tumbler that i have videos on the like little orange bucket that spins yeah um loaded it up with the batch of pens and the finish that came out exactly how i wanted them and i was so impressed so yeah super jazz well but and it doesn't take it takes six hours to get where i want to be um no that's not horrible
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think I'm gonna buy one of those Rebel 17, I think what they're called here, the extreme tumblers. They're inexpensive, they're like four or 500 bucks, um and they're just a drum tumbler that spins on wheels. It's just something I can play with, because ah yeah, the next option is- I've got Lineman tornado, which is basically that.
00:10:48
Speaker
Okay, yeah, and I mean, they're cheap enough, and I can get them in like a week, and I can play with it, I can do wet tumbling in it. I don't like it, because you can't cycle like water through them, because the whole the whole tub is spinning.
00:10:59
Speaker
um mean, I guess you could you could put like a you know fitting on it, but it just seems tedious. You could overcomplicate it, yeah. Yeah, like why? um So after that, I think, I mean, the next step up from that is just, you know, multi-thousand dollar tumblers.
00:11:11
Speaker
So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to try this, see if I can get the finishes I want. Because I got the finishes I want with my little DIY solution. I just know like that thing's going to blow up any day. um it's just it's it's held together with hopes and dreams so i just don't want to put any more time and like by the time i put time into modifying it i'm like i'd just be better off buying something and just moving along so yeah my one like that the uh windscreen wiper motor died twice okay i resurrected and it died again then i ended up putting a seven to seven and half to one gearbox on a nema 23 motor and i run it with that and that seems to do the trick i've got to tumble some parts tomorrow probably
00:11:47
Speaker
But yeah, that was the same. Yeah. The same game I played here. Yeah. I've got i've got a Lineman Tornado, I think. um And I got it from one of my customers who does reloading stuff.
00:12:01
Speaker
And yeah, I got it. i got it for steal. I got it for like $200. ah Oh, wow. Yeah. Like it was, I think they now... from the dealer here, they're like $350.
00:12:14
Speaker
So like there's someone who bought this and returned it. So he was like, do you want this thing? I'll give you a good price on it. So he gave me good price on it. And I'm sorry, it's called the Lineman's Cyclone Rotary Tumbler.
00:12:27
Speaker
Oh, Lineman's Cyclone. I will at it. Yeah, it's $500. Yeah, typing on the podcast. Oh, I can send you a- Oh yeah, okay. Yeah, very, very similar.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, they're really nice tumbler. I run mine with stainless steel pins and brass. So you run, I've got some little stuff. for It's magical case polishing stuff. I throw a cap of that in with my brass parts. You throw tarnished brass and it comes out like golden shiny because it burnishes the surface.
00:12:57
Speaker
So I yeah tend to throw stuff through when I want to make it look really, really nice. Yeah, that's what these, same thing with these like Rebel tumblers, they're mainly used for like people doing reloading. um yeah But it's got like a nice ah rubber interior. and Yeah, this one as well. It's super beefy, so yeah you're not going to wear it out.
00:13:15
Speaker
No, they they are really nice. And they've got a timer built in on the side, so you just turn it to like two hours and let it run. It turns off when it's done. Sick. Yeah, so I've been um been making tumbling media for those this week.
00:13:27
Speaker
Right, yeah. who we are You saw the little chopper. ah That actually leads into one of the other things on my list. Weird closed loop motor stuff. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I've got these little stepper drivers.
00:13:38
Speaker
It's a little industrial boxy. You can set the speed backwards forward. You can have it go, set number of steps in reverse, like all sorts of weird functions. I use them push button. It goes forward in one direction until I push the button again.
00:13:51
Speaker
Wouldn't run this closed loop stepper. because the closed loop stepper wants a five volt signal and this thing's outputting 3.3 volts. Oh, okay. Yeah. Like spent an exceptionally long time trying to figure this out.
00:14:03
Speaker
I haven't run into this before. Like it's never, it's never been an issue. Most of these things will take a 3.3 volt signal. Eventually just told chat GPT, write me a Arduino sketch that makes a stepper mode to go at a set speed and put that on an Arduino, Arduino nano and bang works. No problem.
00:14:23
Speaker
So that's now doing 2000 RPM and every revolution, it does a cut. And then I've got another motor feeding wire into it on old skateboard wheel, just going chopping, chopping wire. It takes forever.
00:14:36
Speaker
It's really slow. it It looks fast, but it looks like it's hauling. It's many meters to get a kilogram. Many, many meters of wire. And now I've got to make a decoiler for the wire because if you give that thing half a chance, it just springs into a ball of stainless steel spiderweb.
00:14:55
Speaker
So i was I was running production. I had the roll of wire on a pipe on the workbench. I was looping it around the arbor press where I was standing, back around my surface grinder and feeding into the machine so I could make a nice slack loop.
00:15:09
Speaker
And then I could pull out a bunch, pull the next part of the lathe and then get the lathe running while it ate up the slack. Now I get ridiculous, but I ran enough that the guy can at least sell some of what he's got.
00:15:20
Speaker
And then i need to make the decoy this week. So think I might just go buy wiper motor and then... Put a, basically ah a little stick that when it go when it goes up, it runs the motor for a bit. When it goes down, it stops.
00:15:33
Speaker
And then just click forward down. Yeah. Just to keep, because the skateboard wheel doesn't have enough traction to actually pull wire consistently. Like as soon as you let it go straight to the roll, but the part length gets shorter because it's slipping.
00:15:46
Speaker
okay but yeah that's now at least at least it's running because that's been like two or three months in the works that are just it's been on the i mean that's revision four of the thing as it is what is that a wire chop because the wire looked really like i thought it was an edm wire chopper but uh no it's uh 1.2 millimeter 420 stainless okay yeah mig wire this is the roll of mig wire that we chop uses 420 stainless because then you can use it in a magnetic tumbler Oh, I see. Okay. he's using He's using the chopped pieces for something. Yeah, you the chopped pieces are the tumbling media for burnishing brass.
00:16:21
Speaker
I've got two kilograms of it in my tumbler, my Lime and Cyclone. yeah It works really, really well for brass. ah Okay. Yeah. I also discovered my new tumbler is a little bit too violent.
00:16:35
Speaker
yeah that thing looks savage and what you're saying i think on the last podcast was producing the finishes you want like 10 minutes yeah on big pots i put in a bunch of flux and it doesn't deburr them it rolls the burr over Oh no.
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah. So it's no good for that. But I also decided that whatever's on the store needs to get off the store now. And I'm going to put the price up and just spend a bunch of time to actually backside chamfer everything.
00:17:02
Speaker
So what I was doing was machining it as it comes with the machine, throw it into the tumbler. It rounds all edges. I'm now like, screw it. I'm just going to spend the extra bunch of minutes and have a backside chamfer tool come in and back chamfer everything both sides make it super super nice and then it's just it is what it is it costs more that yeah i would like to do some fancy materials at some point but yeah that's still a little way off yeah no that's that's the way backside chamfer everything more time but so much prettier especially on a product like that where it's just like visually
00:17:37
Speaker
So I do a lot of a salami slice method where you use a slitting saw and backside chamfer on that changes everything. yeah, cause then when it parts, when it parts off, it parts off clean. It doesn't leave a lip on your parts.
00:17:51
Speaker
Like backside chamfer on that is, I do wait, like I do lathe parts on the mill because it's just easier. Everything's set up, machine, the little boss, backside chamfer, and then just slitting saw it off quickly, making little spaces and things.
00:18:03
Speaker
ah yeah You've got your workflow dialed. It just makes sense. Yeah, I know that's what I want to do for um my pocket clips on the way I hold them. The same thing, I hold the stock to kind of get machined to one side and then I flip them over into soft jaws. But I would like to salami-size them. I have to get a slitting saw or make an arbor with like a zero like the saw at the face so there's no protrusion.
00:18:24
Speaker
Because I don't have a lot of, like, if I eat up too much space, um I'm just eating up titanium. and a Yeah, but then in that case, you could just go with a slightly bigger saw and have your jaws raised up.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, I have to find to see like the stock I'm currently using. It's an oddball size, but I can get it. I can get exactly three pocket clips width wise, but I don't have enough room to get a slitting saw in there. So I just manually slice them in half when I'm done and go up in size. slitting saw are you looking at using?
00:18:51
Speaker
I don't need much because i'm it's only like 0.3 inches. What's that? Like 10 millimeters. Not even like maybe 8 millimeters. and Yeah, so I only need like, what, 3, 4 millimeters of clearance to get to the midline of the part.
00:19:08
Speaker
um so i've just been looking I mean, I was looking at key seat cutters more than anything just because i only need to go down about a quarter of an inch. And the thinner I can get the blade, the better. How about a 0.2?
00:19:21
Speaker
0.2 millimeter blade? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm adding a note now to the podcast document to say, send Kurt's slitting saw details. I'll send you a link to the ones that i use.
00:19:34
Speaker
Carbide slitting saws, I use a 63 and a 50 diameter in the shop. okay The saw, the Arbor has a ah nubbin on the bottom. But the first thing you do is you take that slingsaw arbor and you face that bloody nubbin down because it comes right four or five millimeters.
00:19:49
Speaker
You go down to like two millimeters. It doesn't need to anything. But then I use a slightly bigger one so that I can, on my self-centering vases, I can literally clear the jaws. On a 20 millimeter wide part, I can reach 10 mil in each side and not hit ma hit my jaws of my vase.
00:20:07
Speaker
Nice. Because it's self-centering, they're a little bit higher up. So it's like ah I run that arbor right there. But you can get the saws right on. I run a 0.8 is my default saw, and then I've got a 2.2 for a job.
00:20:21
Speaker
Nice. I guess I would probably have to make the saw big enough so that I can get my backside tool in there to finish the chamfer. But other than that, that would be... But they're like slitting saws. So yeah, carbide slitting saws, they are the way.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, I'm getting really tired of bandsawing them. It's just so teat. I mean, it doesn't matter because the part is running on the mill as I'm bandsawing it, but I'm like, I could be doing, I would rather just be staring into space than running a bandsaw. It's just not positive thing. No, that sounds like a very unpleasant thing to bandsaw.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, and I've done thousands of them. You can get super narrow super narrow slitting sword blades. lock And there are the the place I buy from AliExpress is, yeah, it's really good.
00:21:01
Speaker
of I buy from them often. yeah i've got they They are permanently in my cart. Let's put it that way. okay I've always got something I want to buy. And they do the arbors as well. Nice. So the orbits are pretty decent, but get the ah the back-threaded ones.
00:21:18
Speaker
I'll send you a link to it. um But basically the nut, it's got a flange on the end and then the nut comes. So you've got to take it all out of the holder to change the blade. But that's not the end of the world. Oh, sorry. They go down to a 0.8 thickness.
00:21:31
Speaker
I thought they were thinner than that. But that's pretty, it's thinner than your bandsaw blade. I say I'm going to need more clearance anyways to get tools in there to do backside work. So, um, sweet. Actually, we'll put the link. i don't know if there's links in the show notes, but we'll put the link in the show notes too. So yeah people listening along can see this fancy pants, fancy pants tool.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah. I've got a thing there to, uh, send you a link. I'll get Danica to add it to the show notes as well. Beautiful. Yeah. yeah We did actually have show notes last time.
00:21:59
Speaker
as far as I know. I didn't check. I'm just assuming it got done.
Improving Lathe Operations Efficiency
00:22:04
Speaker
ah yeah umm I'm assuming that it was done properly by the editing wife. But yeah, so...
00:22:12
Speaker
What else is on the list? I'll see. What do you got here? blarow Oh, your lathe. Turning it up to 13. Yes, turning it to 13 because 11. I can't read what's on there because we'll get in trouble for saying that.
00:22:25
Speaker
ah But yeah, turning it up to 13. So ah used i started this running this job at 600 millimeters a minute. So 0.3 of a millimeter per rev.
00:22:37
Speaker
and then i was like, oh, maybe we can go a little bit faster. So I went to 900. So 0.3 per rev. And then i was setting up to run it and I'm like, I think we can go faster.
00:22:50
Speaker
So I went to 1.2 meters. So 0.6 per rev. The motor's not bogging down yet. Let's go faster. So went up to 0.75 per rev on the roughing passes on 25 diameter or 30 diameter aluminum.
00:23:06
Speaker
It took 30 seconds off my cycle time. You said was 0.75? point seven five Yeah, 0.75 feet per rev. So at 2000 RPM, I'm feeding at 1.5 meters a minute. Yeah, that's 30,000 per rev for the i that crazy among us.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yes. That's ah it's savage. Oh yeah, there we go. Danica did but she did put the links in. ah Yeah, and now it also, the chip is shorter because I'm feeding faster and it's short enough to fall out the way.
00:23:36
Speaker
No, it's not a chip. It's a spring. I watched the video of that thing and it just makes springs at an an incredibly high rate of speed. but So yeah, I did that on there and then I turned my threading up. So my threading used to be at 500 RPM.
00:23:48
Speaker
And then a little while ago, I turned it up to 1000 RPM, cut a bit of cycle time. And then I was like, I wonder if it can go faster. So I checked. So my maximum crossfeed is 4.2 meters a minute.
00:23:59
Speaker
So i'm like, okay, can't quite go to 2000. That's going to be a bit high. So I went to 1750.
00:24:05
Speaker
Wow. waiting is says Like done. ah Yeah. And the thing is with RPM being so hot, when come on the tool change, I used to have a dwell of four seconds to let the spindle decelerate before moving over to do the threading.
00:24:20
Speaker
Nope. Now I just move over and it's decelerated to 250 RPM. I thread and I tell it to move back over and it's accelerated back to 2000 for the usual. So I think we can probably do about 180 parts a day now when we were only able to do 150 parts a day. So a significant increase.
00:24:39
Speaker
And then I was running the EMCO, making some alley parts yesterday on Sunday um because we I had something else was running on the machine. I'm like, cool, let me quickly knock these out that way they're done.
00:24:51
Speaker
And they were also running at, think they were running at 600 millimeters a minute, 0.3, which is like my go-to for roughing alley. It's a pretty safe bet. Yeah, those ended up at one and a meters a minute as well.
00:25:03
Speaker
Nice. I think was where I was watching the spring. Yeah, that would have been the M code. um I was getting tangles of shaving stuff. Nope, that problem went away.
00:25:15
Speaker
Just make short fucking dick shavings and they just fall out the way. yeah, I ran off 60 parts yesterday afternoon and next to no time because what was taking like a minute and a half to rough is now like 30 seconds and it's finished.
00:25:29
Speaker
I like listening to the servo trying to run the spindle. you can just hear like... It was doing a good enough job considering it's a one kilowatt spindle. It's one kilowatt servo on the back there.
00:25:41
Speaker
It's doing the thing. Well, you're probably asking all of that one kilowatt for that rubbing operation. I paid for a kilowatt. I'm going to use a kilowatt.
00:25:52
Speaker
Because that machine had a 2.2 kilowatt spindle motor on it. And then I blew the VFD... And then I put a four kilowatt VFD on a two kilowatt motor because, well, you can get away with that.
00:26:02
Speaker
ah It was the VFD I had spare. And then I bought this motor to test because, I mean, servos are not expensive these days. I think it was $150 for the servo with shipping. So I bought it, had my mate make up the adapter, put it in, and it got so hot it wasn't even funny.
00:26:17
Speaker
So then I put the that inline fan behind it that just blows air over all the time, and it's made thousands of parts. cool. It also cut the spin up time down from like two or three seconds down to like half a second from zero to 3000 RPM.
00:26:32
Speaker
So I lost 1000 RPM because I could do 4000 previously. ah But now I can spin up and down really, really quickly. Yeah, i think that's something i need to do on the hard-inch because I have its old 600-volt three-phase motor that I yeah cobbled down to ah so I could run it at 300 volts. and I remember that.
00:26:51
Speaker
And it works good, but I've just absolutely murdered the efficiency band of that thing. Like, yeah it used to run. And the problem is it also goes through a giant mechanical clutch because the way it was built from factories, the motor ran at a full speed, and then it just ran essentially like a CVT transmission to change the speed.
00:27:07
Speaker
yeah And I left all that in there. Yeah, because that kind of gives me a way, like I can go into low gear and high gear with it. So if I want to do some, like when I do reaming work, I go into low gear because then I can ah run a much higher, yeah, more power to it, a lot more torque.
00:27:20
Speaker
but I should just, I should honestly pull all that off, replace the copious amounts of belts that I'm probably losing hundreds of watts spinning um with just one big belt and then a just beefy, beefy servo.
00:27:31
Speaker
And same thing, I have to wait like four seconds for it to ramp up and then giant. So I was watching, um there's a video on a YouTube channel called Action Box. don't know if you've watched them. Oh yeah, oh yeah, 100%. Yeah, okay. No, they're Canadians as well.
00:27:44
Speaker
Oh really? ah Yeah, i think so. Yeah, I'm fairly certain because they did a collaboration with Hacksmith the other day. I'm pretty sure Canadian. So they bought a big Emco lathe from 94 and retrofitted it. And they put a 2.6 kilowatt servo on the spindle.
00:28:00
Speaker
And they did what I did. Where the spindle used to have five belts, five V-belts. It's now got two because that's the pulley I can buy. Yeah. no Yeah, mine has. Yeah, it has. For 2.2 kilowatts, that's more than enough.
00:28:13
Speaker
I know. And like I said, the amount of power I'm wasting on, like there's four belts that go from the motor to the main jack shaft. And then there's ah two flat belts that come from the jack shaft to an intermediary and then the intermediary to the spindle. So it's like, there's so much waste.
00:28:25
Speaker
I mean, they had to do it. Can you not just intercept the intermediary and put a servo on to see if it works before you rip everything out? Oh yeah, ah there's gobs. I could crawl under there. I have more room than anything. So yeah, it's just. yeah i've but I've wanted to put a servo on Bertha.
00:28:41
Speaker
It was a discussion Danik and I had a little while ago. Do we put a servo on Bertha or do we just put that money aside? Like do do we go and spend $1,000 on Bertha and stretch it for another year or do we take $1,000 and keep it and just suck it up for a little bit and then buy a better lathe?
00:28:58
Speaker
Mm-hmm. because $1,000 on Bertha is going to get me a spindle servo, which means i'm going to use more power to spin up and down, but I can do it faster. So right that's the thing. like You've got to look at your peak draw as well because, okay, 2.2 kilowatts, not a lot of power, but the the main reason these big CNC's come with a bloody 30 horsepower servo is so you can rigid tap M20.
00:29:23
Speaker
If you're not going to do that, Then put a small motor. Like when ah when I did Bertha, I looked at what the Tormach 15L. So I watched a bunch of reviews on that. The guys were saying up to about 50 millimeters in steel, you're good with 2.2 kilowatts. When you go bigger than that, it's it's a bit difficult.
00:29:40
Speaker
And when I did Bertha, that is the spec I followed. I wanted to be able to do 50 millimeter. If I can do that, I'm happy. It turns out my customers think I can do bigger work. And I've done some stupidly big stuff. I mean, I've done 200 millimeter diameter, aluminum in there.
00:29:54
Speaker
Like that was literally run, pause, unpause, pause, unpause, let the spindle bog down and stop. Like pause it, let it spin back up and carry on your cut. And then as the diameter gets smaller, the machine gets more and more capable. But I mean, I could do that job faster than the guys could do it on their proper lathe.
00:30:11
Speaker
Yeah, same thing. The only reason I'm losing or I would be interested putting 7-Vigor on is just to kill the ramp up, ramp down times just to be able to stop faster and spin up faster because I don't... Like I said, if I'm using more than... I bet you I'm never using more than 500 to 700 watts during machining. Reaming is where you're going be using the most power.
00:30:29
Speaker
Totally. And with the gear down, I bet you I'm still only using 300 watts. Well, we do a stainless job and we take, it's on small diameter, but we're taking a millimeter two millimeters a side and that's with the one kilowatt servo.
00:30:44
Speaker
One kilowatt servo. Does it fine? I'm reaming like a foul off the wall. yeah so its You'd probably be fine like properly fine with a servo.
00:30:55
Speaker
So I and don't know if you saw the story I posted late this afternoon about my plans for an external bar pusher. I did, yeah. I just watched that this morning, you bet. Yeah, that's because if I can move that job from Bertha to the Emco, I instantly save like 25 seconds per part.
00:31:12
Speaker
on purport Oh, okay okay. Because Bertha spins up in, to go from zero to actually spinning properly is about nine seconds. And to a full stop that I can engage the bar puller is like 13 seconds.
00:31:27
Speaker
o yeah Which is fine if there's time in the job for it. There isn't time in this job. um So I can't fit one down the spindle ball because it's a 26 ball. So I'm going to make a unit that slaps on the back and just pokes the bar through the spindle.
00:31:41
Speaker
Nice. And yeah, that's where I can put that job on there because after running that other aluminum job on the weekend, clearly the Emco can do it. and i've got to I've got to make 120 of these things um next month. But then hopefully from there, it will be a thousand at a time. So 20 seconds on a thousand parts starts to add up very, very quickly.
00:32:02
Speaker
Yeah, totally. That's where seconds matter hugely. is it It's also so close to like, whatever you build is going to have to be able to fold down, right? Because that's kind of where your garage, like your exterior door is. Yep. So whatever is going to have to come off there.
00:32:13
Speaker
Oh, I can move the lathe. that That's another option. I can squeeze the lathe cloak further into the workshop and take the shelf that's in there out, and then that could work as well. that's what might That's what might end up happening.
00:32:25
Speaker
But this bar pusher is literally only for the 25mm. I won't use it for the other stuff. How long would you make it? ah Half a meter. So the the piece of bar stock is half a meter because that's how long my spindle tube is.
00:32:39
Speaker
So the entire part would be in the tube and the pusher doesn't rotate. it just The end would rotate and it would go down the spindle ball and nudge the thing forward. Right. Okay. Yeah. so I wouldn't have the whole like half a meter out the back spinning because that's asking for trouble.
00:32:53
Speaker
Yeah. And the parts are 39 millimeters long. So with parting 45 mils, so I can probably reliably get 10 parts, nine or 10 parts per bar. Okay. So it should run pretty like annoyingly quickly for 120 parts. But when you got to do a thousand of them, then it makes sense. I mean, we're busy blanking stuff now.
00:33:15
Speaker
Um, it's five parts and each blanking takes like 20 seconds. So you can do nothing. You stand there and you load the hex bar and hit go. goes brr brr brr next one.
00:33:27
Speaker
It auto feeds and blanks all five parts and then you have to put another bar on the machine.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah. That's a nice instance where it'd be fun to put like 15 foot bars in, but that makes so much more complication. Well, that's the thing like that I wouldn't mind getting. i had an option on a bar feeder a little while ago.
00:33:42
Speaker
Uh, it was only a one meter bar feeder, but the guy was like, if you want it, give me like $50, you can have it. And I just don't have the space for it.
00:33:53
Speaker
I don't have the space and I don't really have the need for it. That's the same thing here. I was looking at a few Swiss machines, and they basically just come with a bar feeder because wants a bar feeder. Yeah, it's kind of pointless not having one.
00:34:05
Speaker
Totally. And then, but they're all like, ah you know, 15 foot, 20 foot bar feeders. So I was like working out, I'm like, I can cut a hole in the wall of my like garage that will go into my house, which goes into a closet. And I'm like, then I could just frame the bottom of the closet. So, like you know, it's like a boot shelf. And then that's where the end of the bar feeder would sit. Because that's the only way, like my garage is only 20 feet long. So and you do bar here adelaide we do get six foot ones, six foot bar feeders.
00:34:27
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. it's just most of the ones I'm looking at, like for used machines, they just come with a 20 footer. So it's like, unless I want to buy separate bar feed. Because everyone uses. Totally. If I could find one with a six foot bar feeder, that's fantastic. yeah I still want a Swiss. I want a Swiss just for the fact. I want a Swiss too, but yeah, my customers don't place
Project Planning and Customer Interactions
00:34:43
Speaker
enough orders. I can't justify it.
00:34:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. that is I was chatting to John about that today I'm like, it's it's a bit annoying. They meant to be doing decent orders and they're not, but it's fine. Oh, speaking of those clowns, Eurosteel have stock of tube. I messaged my cousin who works here this morning. i'm like, hey, what's happening with my order I placed yesterday?
00:35:04
Speaker
When can I expect delivery? She's no, no, it's on the truck for today. I was like, and what's happening with my tube? She's like, ha, good news. It came in yesterday. It'll be out tomorrow. So hopefully they deliver the right size tube the first time and I can assemble tomorrow night and deliver on Wednesday.
00:35:19
Speaker
Nice. That's awesome. Let's hope. Everything else is prepped. Like all the bots are machined. I literally just need to cut the tube to length and crimp it together. So that is my plan for tomorrow evening. Nice. Yeah. You're saying as soon as you get the bar, it's just basically like you can rock that. Podcast assemble and go like, it's going to take me, it's going to probably take me,
00:35:41
Speaker
an hour and a half to assemble 200 parts. And that's because I'm gonna let my compressor come up to pressure between every 25 parts. Okay, for the crimping, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because yeah i need to build a hydraulic power pack for that or buy one. And I'm just, they're not ordering enough that I can justify it.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah, fair. Because those hydraulic power packs are not cheap. So it's like, and it's gonna, I did ah did actually think about stealing the hydraulic power off of the off of Bertha, because I have a power pack on Bertha.
00:36:09
Speaker
So I unscrew the hydraulic hose, screwed into a thing, and there we go. Problem solved. Turn it on. It's a 750-watt motor. no But how much is a valve and all the piping going to cost me to do that? like Totally. yeah I might just go and investigate that tomorrow because that is one good thing about the load shedding is it kind of gives me two hours to do nothing. So I go see customers. Like I went today ah to go look at a handgun for my brother.
00:36:33
Speaker
for his mother-in-law. She wants a Glock 42. It's a nine millimeter short, but it's the cutest gun. It literally fits in the palm of my hand. It's tiny. But the guy was selling it. So my brother's like, listen, I'm not flying up to Joburg to look at this thing. Please, can you go have a look?
00:36:47
Speaker
So I took a drive today during low jet and go ahead and had a look at the gun. While I'm there like, shit, I should have bought some mag bases with. So I got chatting to the guy at the gunshot. I'm like, no, I make plus two shoes for CZs and for Glocks. He's like, oh, could you possibly bring some samples for me to have a look at? So I'm like, I'll see you tomorrow.
00:37:02
Speaker
So now tomorrow at two o'clock when the power goes off, I get in my car and I drive to go make some sales. Nice. Okay. Well, that makes it feel like it's less useless time. Yeah. like I went today to go see a customer to go sort out monthly and stuff. Just make sure the invoicing is on par, like all ready to go.
00:37:19
Speaker
Because with them, I have to submit any invoices by the 25th so that they actually pay me on time. Because I'm the only one who gets on their payroll or on their vendor list who gets paid at the end of the month that stuff's been invoiced. Everyone else is 30 days from that. so I'm like, I'm not a bank, so you will pay me at the end of the the current month.
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that seems fair. To facilitate that, I have to go get my invoices signed off on the 25th with them. But that's fine. Like i was there and they've now, they're like, oh, cool.
00:37:48
Speaker
ah Can we do a V2 of this project we did? We want to instead of having a pneumatic drive, we want to go servo drive with the gearbox. I'm like, sweet. I can do that. Nice. So yeah, it'll be, yeah it'll be another fun project. Oh, that's awesome.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. ah What is micro polishing brushes? So this is, um so for the longest time, like I polished the inside of all my pen tubes um and I've experimented with, ah there's a company called brush research and they make all kinds of cool, like diamond, essentially bottle hones, but really tiny bottle hones in various diamond microns. So you can,
00:38:23
Speaker
And I used them for polishing for a long time. They're pretty expensive and they wear out pretty quick, especially if you're going over like in my pens, there's a little slot where the bolt action goes through. So you have a hard edge that just kills. Yeah, it eats them.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah, it just it kind of demolishes them. um So I ended up building a ah special like polishing mandrels that work fantastically. So I've been using those now for years, and they're just so much better.
00:38:49
Speaker
But I've never been able to make a mandrel small enough to do the polishing on the inside of the pen tips. So I've just basically reamed them um as good as i can get them and that's kind of how they have to be because i can't i can't build my mandrel small enough but i found out um through mcmaster because mcmaster has a hundred billion products but sometimes getting the right combination of words to search it out properly is impossible um so i found these little micro polishing brushes and they were with the like uh the like stainless steel brushes like that your standard like kind of like um
00:39:21
Speaker
wrapped whatever stainless steel kind of yeah fibers that you could just use for general deburring. They were in that. Stainless steel toilet brush. Exactly. Stainless steel toilet brush. Exactly. And they were, they were within that category, but they were plastic, but plastic bristles infused with different abrasives.
00:39:38
Speaker
So it's an actual abrasive. yeah Yeah. And you can get them down into polishing grits and they were tiny. like you can get them to like one millimeter, two millimeter diameter. Oh, wow. Yeah, so there weren't also not cheap, but I bought a few of those. So I'm going to you use them for polishing the pen tip because honestly, on my pens, the bolt action slide, like that's people always think that's where most of the resistance comes from. But that's like it's very little. It's the tip going in and out because that tolerance is so tight. So if I could just polish that to make it super, super smooth, it just it feels better.
00:40:07
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm excited to try those. I was listening to your AMA and you were saying about tip wobble not being accepted. yeah No, and it you can feel like five tenths. Like if you overboard, like if I overream it by five tenths and you write with it, you'll hear like click, click, click, as the refills kind of contacts both sides. And it's so frustrating.
00:40:28
Speaker
I mean, first world problem. but It's like for the pen dorks out there, that's super annoying. And some people have like some and manufacturers have like 2,000 clearance. It's like, like that's gross. It makes super easy, but like, yeah, i made a pen it's somewhere around here.
00:40:44
Speaker
And I just used the draw that I had on hand. Totally. But I'm not a pen nerd, so... Yeah, and I mean, I just kind of, like, back in the day, same thing, I just, whatever drill bit I could use, that's what I did, and yeah, there was tons of tip wobble on some of my super, super early pens, but um yeah, that's the one thing people whinge about the most, so I kind of, I err on the side probably a little bit too tight, but so, yeah, polishing, polishing brushes should be nice. We'll see. um I'll know in the next week. Okay.
00:41:09
Speaker
like Yeah, once again, they're spendy, but if they, if they even if one brush lasts me a batch. Yeah, exactly. yeah Exactly. Yeah, spendy is ah proportional. Absolutely. Yeah. Like said, time is the most important. So if I can, as long as it doesn't, you know, it's not insanely expensive. If I can purchase back time, I'm i'm all for that.
00:41:28
Speaker
No, hundred percent. Yeah. I am resistant. Well, not resisting the urge. Well, yes. Resisting the urge to buy a SMD hot plate. Oh, okay. Yeah.
00:41:39
Speaker
They have such little cute ones now. Have you seen? know. I found one today for like $30. I'm just trying to be a responsible adult. like I can, I can straight up just for buying that because i buy it.
00:41:50
Speaker
I put together screw switches for the robots. I sell 20 of those. I've recouped the cost. yeah So no ah yeah it's on the it's on the list of things to do when I'm less poor is to buy a buy that. But now my, so we got a store here called Microrobotics, but now my order has swelled to like $100.
00:42:08
Speaker
um It was like $30. And then I was like, oh, let me buy parts for the imperializers. So buy the switches, add the Audrinos, add the screens. And then, oh, cool, now it's $50.
00:42:18
Speaker
Then, oh, I need timing belts for my robots. And I need this SMD solder thingy. And I need this. And I need connectors for another project. So yeah, those people get way too much of my money. Way, way too much of my money. But yeah, that I'll probably place that order this week and then get that in. Because then I can put the imperializers together. I can put together that other home assistant unit. Yeah.
00:42:40
Speaker
Nice. Oh, because that I want to taste. Keep rambling for one second. I got to. know I'm going to show you what you're the cause of. Oh, cool. I like this. ah Yeah, so um I've got a home assistant board that I've i've developed. I'm just waiting to get the S&D components.
00:42:55
Speaker
It can monitor up to three machines and track your spindle uptime. So basically doing what Chad is doing, ah but not as well. So yeah, it is effectively doing, it is telling you what your runtime percentages compared to your on time.
00:43:14
Speaker
And it's a very interesting statistic to look at. Like I've been hitting 90% this last week, 87, 92, but that's because I've been running very long cycle production work. So this little board will be able to monitor three three machines or six independent optocoupled inputs, and then also has two outputs to switch lights on and off.
00:43:34
Speaker
But yeah, let's see what I've let's see what i have caused, Kurt. So you cause so first of all, I had like a bunch of these like just generic home switches and I'm just there's nothing important on the videos. So just um but then I decided to bust it open to see exactly what made it go inside because it's not compatible with Home Assistant.
00:43:49
Speaker
And then I realized I could probably get one of these, which is just like your ESP with a single relay. Yeah. So I mean, I bought some of these locally. I have a I have a very large order that's coming in because they were very inexpensive to get overseas, but I could get them locally for like, you know, twice the price. But that's still like At least you could get them.
00:44:05
Speaker
We couldn't yeah get them locally. Like we looked at importing them and then we ended up bringing in a whole lot of D1 minis because it was cheaper to do that and put our own relay modules. Yeah, so now I have like, I have just like whole plethora of them here. And then I bought a bunch of these, which are super cute because they're all still in the strip.
00:44:24
Speaker
These are, yeah, these are just a 120 volt switch mode transformers that bring it down to five volts because these things have another little transformer that regulates volts down to 3.3. So yeah. Now I can build smart switches galore. I'm going print a little enclosure for them and yeah just make a whole bunch of i have these little extension cords that let me plug in because I have so many equipment that's right against the wall.
00:44:44
Speaker
So I'm going to splice the cord and put one of these little smart switches in between it so I can control all my lighting in here, switch it all over from you know these kind of units that aren't compatible. Yes, I've been spending. Yeah, I'm so excited. And those yeah ESPs, like you were saying that you had to better Wi-Fi.
00:44:59
Speaker
They're dirt cheap. And I have one hooked up here and I just connected to my home network. And the latency is stupid fast. Like they're crazy fast. Oh, no, they they're amazing. Crazy reliable, like way more reliable than these like smart switches I bought. So, yeah. Yeah, i've got an ESP-C3 with a solid state relay running the lamp in my lounge.
00:45:20
Speaker
It plugs into USB on the lounge computer or the Xbox ah to power it. And then it just switches the lights on and off. And it's got an automatic cycle, turns on at 20 past six in the evening, turns off at 20 past nine, or can be done from our phones.
00:45:34
Speaker
And then i've got and so I've got four light circuits set up in the workshop so that my lights can do fancy things. And I need to actually go see my neighbor and see if he found the the smart speaker. He had a white one and a black one. He's no, you can have the black one.
00:45:47
Speaker
And then he couldn't find He's like, can the white one? not a chance. That thing's not going my workshop. That thing will be black week. Like rather just find the other one and give me the other one. ag So that I can literally walk in to the door, clap my hands and say, daddy's home and the lights turn on. Like full on Iron Man style.
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah, well, and like, that's the thing people don't realize like, yeah, this is nerdy and it's fun to play with. But like the application I'm putting of for. So I'm making my doorbell smart. And then I have a camera at my front door and then I have the lighting controlled in here. So now when a delivery comes to my front door, the camera picks it up.
00:46:18
Speaker
It can pulse my lights in here to let me know someone's at the door. And then if they hit the doorbell, it can also pulse the lights. Like if I or it can announce something through a speaker like there's just you have so many options to make your life easy.
00:46:29
Speaker
yeah and if you so you can set yeah you can set up frigates on your home assistant raspberry par and then mine if i enable notifications if someone walks in my front yard my phone goes person detected in front yard at whatever time or car detected in front yard it but and yeah so there's there's so much stuff like i've got auto power down cycles set up for the lk so i can obviously detect when the lk is on and when it's running And I've got an automation setup that when it goes from running to not running for 15 seconds and auto power off is enabled, it then, ah sorry, when when the power on the LK goes off for more than 15 seconds, just in case there's any signaling issues, the machine goes off, then my isolator goes off, and then my phase converter switches off.
00:47:17
Speaker
And that's all tied in that. I enable auto power off. I hit the power off on the front of the machine, and within 10 seconds, everything's switched off. ah properly phase converters down everything. So otherwise the phase converter sits eating a kilowatt of power, just going.
00:47:31
Speaker
So I'd rather not do that. But yeah, whole assistant is, is a lot of fun. It's fantastic. And then like another thing I'm gonna do is i'm going to tie in all my smoke detectors to the system so that like if there was ever, cause I mean, I have smoke detectors in here, I have them in my compressor room, them everywhere in the house, obviously, but like if I'm sleeping and one goes off in here cause you know, something bad has happened, like the chance I've made this room soundproof so that I
Integrating Home Automation in the Workshop
00:47:53
Speaker
can't hear the machining from my house, but that also means I can't hear alarms. So like, at least then it can tie into everything and be like, oh, it can,
00:47:59
Speaker
ring my phone it can turn lights on it can ring my doorbell like you can do all kinds of weird stuff and it's just kind of a little bit of peace of mind to be like well i think i turn my compressor off like it's just well that that's the next thing i want to do like yeah that's what i want to do this week is time our compressor into home assistance so when i power off the lk i can power off the compressor as well so i can literally go to bed and not have my compressor keeping pressure all night because i do have one or two minor air leaks Yeah, I have a little air leak on my, and I usually, same thing, like in the evening, go down shut my compressor off, to worry it. But there's many times I've been laying in bed at, you know, two in the morning, and I'm like, oh, I forgot to turn the compressor off. And it's like, well, that's fine. That's why have an on sign.
00:48:40
Speaker
But like if you're not in the workshop, you don't see it. like Right, yeah. And if you're dead asleep, you're not going to hear, like I won't personally hear if my compressor blows a line in the middle of the night. And like it's probably not going to burn my house down, but it's going to like put a ton of hours on the compressor that are hard hours, like that I don't need to do, so.
00:48:56
Speaker
Yeah, i actually want to add a, um so I've got a leak on the Emco. And I think it's just a really shitty fitting. And the problem is I've got to strip the whole, but it's not a leak that won't let it run.
00:49:09
Speaker
It's a leak that just annoys me. So I don't want to strip the whole manifold off. It's a bit of a problem to get in there to do it. So I want to just put a cutoff valve that when you power the machine on, it has air. When you switch it off, it has no air because it doesn't actually have air cutoff valve. So think I'm just going to just go spend the money and buy one and put it in there as a easy solution. If the machine's not on, it doesn't need air.
00:49:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't had that on any of my other machines. But yeah, I think this is literally just a fitting that the O-ring and the fitting is not so happy because I've replaced all the pipes and just to get to the fitting, I have to strip off the machine.
00:49:46
Speaker
it's yeah Although I was getting ah i was getting ah joint limit switch error to today, which was very infuriating. But I think it's electrical noise, not actually the drive fault or anything because it was happening at kind of the similar times.
00:50:02
Speaker
So I need to just climb into that panel tomorrow and poke it with a big stick until it obeys my commands.
00:50:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that I need to redo the panel on the Emco at some point. because my solution for the turret has been changed, and, yeah, the wiring is a little messy.
00:50:20
Speaker
Well, it was a temporary solution. Also, the servo drive doesn't fit in the box it's meant to be in. The VFD fits it perfectly. The servo drive does not.
00:50:30
Speaker
So I need to make, like, a little extension on the box to fit the servo's drive. Nice. I mean, that machine... I love that little machine. It is literally, it's going to prep 500 parts between, well, it did 200 this afternoon and it's going to do 300 tomorrow morning.
00:50:49
Speaker
And then it's going to get set up to run 600 stainless parts. I'd say, is that part of your, uh, your note saying making 200 pounds of scrap? Nope. That is all aluminum scrap that is done.
00:51:01
Speaker
Oh no, that okay wolf that's just shavings. Oh, is that the camera? The camera house? Yeah, it the camera stuff. I finished that off this morning. I finished off the last big rings and now I'm back to being able to put vases in my machine again.
00:51:15
Speaker
Because it's all done off of fixture. So the work coordinates are set once and I machined 18 plates. eighteen plates wow So 18 plates, every one of them has two to three ops, depending on how I go about it.
00:51:31
Speaker
um But yeah, like some of them were two and half hours just on the finishing passes. Because surface everything, Roger, because I know you're listening, Roger. um he says I need to make him a shirt that says surface everything.
00:51:46
Speaker
Because this whole thing, like the, yeah, there's a whole lot of surfacing on two of the smaller parts. But those, there's literally like five hours in each part. between the backside and the front side of them. But yeah, machine ran, so I don't care. Push go and machine go brr and makes parts.
00:52:02
Speaker
No, exactly. That's the best thing. um Well, that's the thing with it running cycles or running multiples. and You get the first one proved out, the next two run without you looking at them.
00:52:13
Speaker
Right, yeah' yeah. You don't have to stress about it. And that is really nice to run production like that. No, absolutely. That's what I actually that was the last week or last run. Sorry, it was the first time that I didn't because the very first run I did on this was the huge run I did of pens. And I was building the fixtures as I was running that. So I didn't really get to feel the like the benefits of like oh it's all set up and this last run it was just like oh pick this program and put these in there and hit go it's like oh and well those parts are done now okay the next part so like okay those parts are done now and so i'm like well now the machine sits idle so it's like okay well this is nice yeah no that's like yeah repeat work is where it's at like yeah i've put a lot of effort i so i was chatting to what's i'm chatting to today
00:52:56
Speaker
I to jump this morning, I think, was saying, no, I've put a lot in the last year, I've put a lot of effort into making things easy. So when the repeat orders come around, it's easy. But now the repeat orders need to start coming around because it's getting a bit ah bit annoying that they're not placing the orders that they're talking about. Because, yeah, customers never place the orders they say they're going to place.
00:53:16
Speaker
But yeah if they place half of what they going a place, I'm going to be happy. Well, that's awesome. Yeah, that's where you start reaping, reaping the benefits. Well, that's put a lot of effort in upfront, like a lot of tooling ah through the whole of last year. It was just by tooling with every spare cent.
00:53:31
Speaker
um almost to the detriment of ourselves because coming into November and having a bit of a downturn, it put us on the back foot, but that's fine. I have two feet. Yeah.
00:53:43
Speaker
yeah No, well then we're Danik and I were discussing it and the plan going, going through this year is to going to be to have at least four months put away by the time November rolls around that if orders take a s slight downturn, it's, we're not going to be, we're not really going to feel it.
00:53:59
Speaker
Yeah, we know that we can absorb that and we can carry on our lives. But yeah, we are actively working on a bunch of product stuff. Like my mate, Kyle was here on Friday.
00:54:10
Speaker
We went to site to go look at a look at a job we're doing together. And he got and he's like, what's happening with with Monica? Like he's looking for stuff that he can, product lines he can spin up because he's the welder, that my welding mate.
00:54:23
Speaker
So I'm like, no, no, we'll make a model, send it to me. We build a new version, test it, and then we can go to market with it. and like ah like monniica we're going to make I think we're going to make it a bit shorter, change a few things on it. still like 160 liters of capacity, so you can suck the entire tank out no problem, um and then just a few quality of life changes we're going to make.
00:54:46
Speaker
And then we'll do some testing and then push it to market and... Yeah, basically come in. i think the plan is to the plan is to sell it, that you supply your own vacuum. We recommend vacuum cleaner to power the unit, but we're not selling it to you. That way when it breaks, it's not my problem.
00:55:03
Speaker
We're supplying you a tank and we're going to probably come in at like $1,800 on the tank with the transfer pump, like basically half the price of everyone else because I think everyone else is just pulling the piss.
00:55:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's a nice nice thing about that product is like, soon as you clean one sump, you're like, okay, I will pay pretty much anything to make this job easier. Yeah. Carl and I were were discussing it. It's like the, the, the bomb cost on the thing.
00:55:33
Speaker
If we have one that a weld fails or something, you can say to the guy, just bring it here. I have another one. Like just trade us, take the, take a new one. And we pull the pumps and stuff off. And like, it's not a huge amount of money that's tied up in a product. Yeah.
00:55:48
Speaker
Because I said to him, like, I've done stuff before where I ended up losing as much as, well, losing more. So i the job I did it was like a $2,500 job.
00:55:59
Speaker
I ended up spending $5,000 on flights to fly down to Cape Town to go and fix these machines that I had built. And because I didn't expect them to be run by morons. So like I ended up losing 50,000 Rand on that job. So I'm very hesitant to just push stuff to market now because I've burnt my fingers hard on that job.
00:56:20
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that. no Yeah. So, but yeah, doing my due diligence. And then i was assembling pallet systems and I think there needs to be a V4. Ooh, why is this?
00:56:34
Speaker
So the lovely modular base plate that I have on the bottom, I hate it. yeah I hate it with my entire body. And so- That's the one you have to indicate in or that you built that fixture for?
00:56:45
Speaker
Okay. hate it. I hate it so much. and I was thinking of making it all integral. So all your reference faces are integral to the body. Okay.
00:56:56
Speaker
So mechanically and mechanism wise, the V3 and 4 are identical. Just the body has some little tabs on it to attach, but then it becomes a case of, okay,
00:57:07
Speaker
whose standard do I match to? Do I put 92 millimeter Lang studs, stud holes on the bottom and then make toe clamps so you can toe clamp it to T slots, toe clamp it to a Saunders plate and pop it into a Lang thing? Like, is that going to be the standard? So yeah, it's got a whole set of issues.
00:57:24
Speaker
So I think for now, V3 is going to be where it stays, but yeah, V4 has been on my mind. Because V... It's always going to be forward thinking, yeah. Yeah, V4 doesn't really lend itself well to the multiple units.
00:57:39
Speaker
But gotcha it would be a lot easier to have them all super consistent hot. If it's one block of material that sets both references. Right? Yeah. So yeah, like there's, there's some serious, some serious things I need to think about on that. Like I could assemble it and just dust the top of the, um, the landing pad once it's assembled.
00:57:59
Speaker
And then I know it's true. It is the the heart it needs to be within a few microns like yeah there there's many there's many ways to skin a cat so it's i'm now mulling over that like it's a bit more machining uh it's bigger stock that i start with but i think it makes a better product so yeah i'm looking looking at what my options are there nice yeah like well i mean that's a nice thing you build you build one and then you figure out where all the uh where the annoyances are or where the tedium lies and
00:58:31
Speaker
Just
Enhancements in Production Techniques
00:58:32
Speaker
iterate off that. So that, the other option is to just put two nylon jacking screws on a plate that I can literally jack the thing square. So what happens is sits on an O-ring. So you loosen and and it comes up and then you, you tap it into square, you tighten it down and rocks and then it rocks. and Yeah.
00:58:49
Speaker
Flipping annoying. So my thought is put two jacking screws for now on my fixture that I can loosen it, nip it down again, adjust it with the jacking screws, tighten down and it's not going to be able to go anywhere.
00:59:01
Speaker
Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. And that makes it, that makes the bases interchangeable at least because then it can be compatible with whatever you want to be compatible with. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's like, the, yeah, app palette systems are, are coming together. They're all together.
00:59:18
Speaker
I forgot to put your new base on your one. I need, I just realized now I just started the base that was on there on, so now I need to go pull it off and put your special, put the Kurt special on it. my fancy pants one. Thank you. yeah you're very um I'm excited for that. so Yeah. That's a minor detail.
00:59:35
Speaker
I need to still sort out packaging for that. It's just, hasn't been front of mind. I've been making lots of shavings instead. that yeah mean That is the thing with, ah with developing it on, like I'm developing on my own down there. It's like,
00:59:50
Speaker
work comes first, pallet system comes second, but pallet system kind of needs to get out the bloody door now. It's bugging me. yeah But again, I i try to do um ah should actually get a call this week from the freight forwarders.
01:00:02
Speaker
I'm getting in contact with some freight forwarders to potentially bulk ship over like a whole pallet load of these things. Yeah, probably makes Because that's going to obviously be the most cost-effective. Especially when most of them are cost-effective.
01:00:17
Speaker
75% of them are coming to North America. so Yeah, that's the plan. Most of them to the universe. I still need to try and get hold of the person who's distributing them.
01:00:30
Speaker
He's ah been a bit swamped. yeah Yeah, I haven't noticed a lot coming from him as of late. so yeah so yeah He's been he's being swamped. He even put a thing out said, listen, if I'm all responding to messages, because I'm swamped.
01:00:41
Speaker
so I'm like, eh, it's fine. I've got his number. i can always phone him if I need to. Yeah. yeah So what printed tumbling masks are you printing?
01:00:52
Speaker
ah So for the pens, when I make them, I machine a pocket where the pocket clip sits into, and it's a fairly tight, it's ah it's a light press fit. um It's annoying to get out. And a lot of people have like messaged me and be like, Hey, I had just swapped. Like I wanted to, you know, take the clip out to modify it, to put a different finish on it. They're like, that is in there. Well, im like, well, yeah, it has like, it has to align and I don't want it wiggly. So it's, it's a light press fit. Anyways, I want to keep those edges sharp. And if I tumble it,
01:01:15
Speaker
the tumbling media will slowly kind of around those edges yeah and then it just doesn't look good and it kind of gives a place for stuff to collect and then when it's assembled those like nice razor sharp edges are butted up against something else so it's completely like it's not sharp at that point yeah um but i've always had the issues of like blocking that off for tumbling um and i had built like i would put clips like i'd be like oh let's put the clip on it and put it in there but then the tumbling media can't get to where you want it and you get like weird spots that doesn't tumble right so um all i did is that don't tumble Right, yeah, where the media just can't access. And so I just printed little masks that go over it that fill the pocket up.
01:01:50
Speaker
They're press-fit, so I just, like, I squeeze little pieces of plastic in there. I throw them in the tumbler. They get tumbled to nothing. um But then when they're done, i just, i heat them up slightly because they're just PETG.
01:02:01
Speaker
Oh, okay. I warm them. ah I would say basically take like a heat gun, warm them up and they just fall out. And then I have a nice razor sharp edge. It keeps the bottom. Actually, there's there's engravings in that pocket now. So it keeps it nice and shiny. I want the machine finish to be pretty. I don't want it to like tumble and look funny in there.
01:02:16
Speaker
But yeah, it's like just dumb little things like that. I've used tumbling masks forever now. And it's they're so nice. They're so nice because you just throw them away and they're they cost nothing to print. And yeah.
01:02:27
Speaker
yeah they've been my saving grace I made a chain of knives using cable ties so that they wouldn't stick to the wall of my tumbler and then I could just pull them out in one go but that tumbler ain't gonna work for the knives
01:02:41
Speaker
It's a little bit violent. I like it, but it's a bit violent. Like, I think for the mag bases, I'll be okay. But for the, for the masks, it's not like the mag bases come off pretty well. Debird off the machine. Right.
01:02:53
Speaker
It's just to put a uniform surface on them. Like actually, over the weekend, anodized 27 knives that went straight from tumble into anodizing. Oh, that finish. It's super nice.
01:03:03
Speaker
like And the colors are almost better than Scotch-Brite. I hate Scotch-Brite. It's the worst. ah I agree. I agree. If a Scotch-Brite loads up, it can smear kind of funny. Yeah, I agree. Tumbling can give you a nice like super matte surface that just takes anodizing. Even in titanium, it takes an anodize so cleanly.
01:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, the reason I used to Scotch-Brite is because my machine left chatter marks on everything. And it was the only way to actually get a uniform finish. But now off the machine, if the cutters aren't poked, you get really, really good finishes.
01:03:35
Speaker
So I guess that's what happens when you spend a bunch of money on a machine. Yeah, like we've talked about a million times, sometimes ah throwing money at the beast does help. Yeah, pay the problems.
01:03:46
Speaker
Yeah, pay the problems away. No, was saying, ah my wife were driving around today and i was like, yeah, a mag base, I've got 30 or 40 of them sitting on the shelf because now it's not worth me making on demand. I just buy material when I'm doing another material order.
01:04:00
Speaker
I allocate a morning to machine 50 of the things. Machine 50 of them, throw them on the shelf. When I need them, I tumble them and anodize them. Mm-hmm. ah it it's really yeah literally run 50 of them and in a morning what used to take off now and now takes like four minutes yeah that's awesome that's so awesome i love my lk like now i delivered the first batch of shadow two uh mag bases and hopefully those like the i delivered the brass ones last week i think and the guy's like no six of six of the 20 are already gone
01:04:33
Speaker
So he's probably going to to order more. And I'm like, sweet. I've got the brass because I had to buy a three meter length of brass. And I think I got 20 parts out of just over a meter. So I've got another two meters of material. I'm like, send orders.
01:04:46
Speaker
It's pure profit at this point. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lovely feeling. Even one of my customers, I'll supply them lathe inserts. It's ridiculous. ah But it is, yeah, that face says it all.
01:04:57
Speaker
It's, uh, uh, v vcgt 160412 so it's a 1.2 corner radius 1.2 millimeter corner radius so it's a big radius they're using them for wood so that's an aluminum insert we're running it wood okay dude i've seen those things with a notch worn in them from the wood but over yeah yeah literally the oak has worn a slot into the carbide It's insane.
01:05:29
Speaker
So they, they buy like 20 inserts from me every six months. So I ordered inserts off AliExpress and I charged them $7.50 an insert. Oh, nice. oh yeah Okay. Yeah. They wanted 20. So I sold them 20 and I bought myself 40.
01:05:43
Speaker
So I make no money on this order, but when they order again, it's pure profit. And that's what I normally do. It's like the time before they ordered 40 inserts. I think I bought like 120 inserts for what they paid me for the 40.
01:05:56
Speaker
And then they just sat on the shelf. And as they've ordered, I just supply. Nice. Because the shipping is the brutal part on those kinds of things. Like the inserts are cheap. Yeah, the shipping is rough. They don't want to order themselves or they're just kind of like... Well, you can't really get them anywhere locally and they don't really want to deal with importing them. So they just now sort it out. Oh, okay. I sold them. That makes sense.
01:06:17
Speaker
I sold them a bunch of holders like three or four years ago. i was there. like, what the hell is this? It's a high-speed steel thing that they're regrinding on a daily basis. And I'm like, no, no, guys, hang on. came back the next time. I'm like, here's my holder.
01:06:31
Speaker
Give this a try. Nope, we need this on all of our machines. And then sold them for four holders and a bunch of inserts and changed them into the way of carbide. Yeah. No, because they were regrinding their tools literally on a daily basis.
01:06:44
Speaker
Now they put an insert and the only time they change it is when they crash it. Yeah. Yeah. Which sometimes happens often, especially if I visit. You go hit them with a hammer so they have to use new ones. Yeah. a little bit of a savage of things like that.
01:06:59
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. But yeah, see we've managed to burn through all of our things. I think we hit all our topics. No, IBR roller. We missed one. Oh, okay. I don't know if that was the wire chopper or not.
01:07:13
Speaker
No, no. That was making roof sheeting on Tuesday. Roof sheeting? Yeah. So do you know corrugated iron roof sheeting? Oh, yeah. yeah Okay. RBR roof sheeting.
01:07:24
Speaker
These are exported machine from China. And they couldn't get it calibrated. So they're like, please, can I come to SART and help them calibrate the machine? So I got to SART and we adjusted all the rollers to have the correct spacing because they the guys who made the machine are no, no, you set the distance between the centers on the end of the shafts.
01:07:44
Speaker
I'll look at this thing. I roll the shaft. like, this shaft ain't round for shit. It's not even close round. So we ended up with the feeler gauge setting the gap on all the rollers. And then...
01:07:56
Speaker
We do set the gap, we adjusted some other stuff, and then they would run a sheet and it would put a crease in it so because the cutoff tool was the wrong size. So after like a ton of literally a ton of material that we ran through the machine trying to get it to make good parts, we were getting the size right, the width right, if we had the blade off. So it comes out 676 millimeters wide.
01:08:18
Speaker
You cut it off and it springs to 686, which is what it's meant to be. When you cut it loose, it springs bigger. It's frigging weird. But the cutoff tool is 660 millimeters.
01:08:29
Speaker
So it's literally rubbing a line. And i I ended up writing a whole report on Wednesday with pictures and everything trying to explain to the Chinese that they have sent the cutoff dies for a 670 RBR, not a 686 RBR.
01:08:42
Speaker
Like it was a whole flipping thing. But while I was there, I got the Oslo strap bender that I built, the two axis wire bender I built five years ago. but Yeah, probably started building it five years ago.
01:08:54
Speaker
um Got that running again for them. And then they realized, oh, the sample we had was the wrong size. It needs to be 20 millimeters longer. But in order for 20 millimeter longer part to fit in the machine, they had to cut a notch into the frame and move an actuator because the wire has to stick out an extra, like, 20 mils and now it's touching things.
01:09:18
Speaker
But yeah, they eventually got that sorted out. And that's running Linux CNC. And it just... You turn the switch, it runs, and it just... It shits parts out. It's great. That's cool. Yeah. like It it worked works really well. took us close on a year to get it to work properly.
01:09:32
Speaker
But it's working, and they're making their strap things again. Some mining reinforcement things. But again, they race into the bottom. Like, they probably spent...
01:09:43
Speaker
probably sorry doing maths here it's dangerous probably about fifteen thousand dollars on the whole project and the the straps cost uh they can be sold for twenty dollars it's a three meter long steel like mesh thing that they can sell for twenty dollars so they're going to sell a he lot hell of a lot of them to recoup their money Yikes. Yeah.
01:10:06
Speaker
But yeah, but that's just a small part of their business. Like they do valves and other mining related things. So that's where they make most
Balancing Business Growth and Efficiency
01:10:14
Speaker
of their money. This was just like a trying to make like, even the roof sheeting, it's just trying to set up another, another like sub business type thing in there their, their whole endeavor.
01:10:25
Speaker
you have ah You have a, you have very varied work week. You you're always jumping around. It's kind of cool to hear about. No, it's interesting, but yeah I like making parts. I like easy work, running production.
01:10:37
Speaker
Oh, yeah, fair. um like yeah Danica was making fun of me because I was complaining that I went to SOT and made $350 for the day. She's like, oh, so that $350 day was an inconvenience for you. I'm like, yes, it's stopping me from doing what I want to be doing. like But yeah, we're discussing it and like two years ago, I would have been ecstatic to be able to go there and bill them for that for the day.
01:11:00
Speaker
Now it's like, um, and I have to work late because I need to make up hours for the job that's on the machine at the moment. so Uh, yeah, it's a $350 inconvenience, but yeah, that, I mean, that just is what the scale of the business chatting to my mother-in-law today about it and saying a year and a half ago, our expenses were half of what they are, a monthly recurring expenses.
01:11:22
Speaker
right Since then, we've got a machine. We've got a generator. We've got to do a significantly more business to cover just the basics. And yeah, yeah you don't you fail to the level of your systems.
01:11:35
Speaker
And right now, that is what we are doing. We are failing to the level of our systems. And that is on the sales side because I hate selling stuff. So we are... Yeah, I'm not pushing sales as much as I probably should, but...
01:11:48
Speaker
That's because i know as soon as orders start rolling in, we're going to run out of capacity. And I'm trying to not be in that position. Yeah, I know that was one topic that came up my AMAs, which is like collaborations and whatnot. And just like some companies I deal with, and they're like, oh, like well, do you want do you want to work with us? like And some of them are pretty like well-known EDC like resellers, essentially.
01:12:11
Speaker
And like I just politely mainly declined a lot of them. It's because I'm like, I don't want another... you know i mean, it sounds crazy, but I don't want more. like I'm crushed right now. like People are angry because they can't buy what I can make right now. like The last thing I want to do is add more...
01:12:26
Speaker
like fuel to that fire. So it's like, no, let's think if you, if you like, okay, cool. I'm doing a batch of a hundred pens for this EDC reseller, then all your customers, you want to buy directly from you. You're like, oh what the hell dude?
01:12:37
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. that and that's, and that's what they said. They're like, we'll take whatever. I'm like, no matter what I give you, I'm like, I'm shooting myself in the foot to the people that have just been super, like they've, they've been with me when I was, you know, when I was dying for sales and they're like, yeah, we'll buy your product. And now it's like, I turned my back on them. It's like, yeah it's not cool. So,
01:12:56
Speaker
But I mean, it's also kind of a cool feeling. Yeah, that AMA was really interesting. For anyone interested, yeah where can they find your AMA video?
01:13:08
Speaker
a m a Thank you, Feinzer. It's on my YouTube channel. If you just go to confoundedmachine.com under media, I link everything. Actually, i'll link that AMA on the media page as the first link. yeah um Otherwise, you can search me YouTube. I think ah Kurt Van Filipowski. We'll add it to the links.
01:13:25
Speaker
Or you can read the AMA if you're just really into reading, but there was like 100 plus questions. and yeah it took me hours to answer them all, but it was kind of fun. i I really enjoy that. And that whole community, the Reddit community to me has been very helpful, very beneficial, has had massive growth. So I i like giving back to them and I give it, did a giveaway. So anyone that asked a question on that ah on that specific AMA, you're in a lottery pool and then I think the next couple days we'll announce the winner.
01:13:49
Speaker
So that's kind of fun. Moss. Yeah, it was interesting like to hear a lot of the guys like, why don't you just hire people and increase your production? And I liked your answer to that. I know. like That is not what you're in the business of doing. like Well, and I don't want to be like i don't want to be like mean to any of these people, but it's like that sometimes...
01:14:10
Speaker
I'm trying to yeah play nice words. That's also, um ah think that's also the culture of everything must always just grow infinitely, must always be growing. And right I think at certain point you need to say, no, ah don't want to grow any anymore. I want to stay where I am and get better at what I'm doing with what I have.
01:14:28
Speaker
Yeah. Like my last, both of us are in that position. Right? ah Like my last month of production where I produced, I think I made like 60 pens in a month. If I can do that every month in, like we said, 50% of the time, 75% of the time, that's yeah plenty of money to exist on.
01:14:46
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Like that's enough money to run my business, to fund everything else. Like I can probably, like my wife probably wouldn't have to work at that point. Like that's ah that's enough cash. That's more cash than most people are going to make in any kind of job.
01:14:57
Speaker
And it's like what like, yeah, sure. I could push harder and grow bigger. And like, but But why? Why? But why? like word why All it does is give you more expenses and more stress.
01:15:09
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, I've talked to a few people in this community that have just grown to have very large companies. And they said the same thing. They're like the best time, the most money I ever made. And the most fun I ever had was working in my garage when I had it optimized to be like, I was making fantastic money.
01:15:25
Speaker
And I was enjoying my life. and like And then I grew and I bought a giant commercial space and I brought you know many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of machines online. And it's like and my bills went, ah like our income went up so to insane levels, or like but my expenses went up equally. and they're like, I wasn't taking home anymore.
01:15:41
Speaker
had way more stress. And like it wasn't, it just is different. So I've had a few cautionary tests, a few big people, which kind cool. Yeah, i know of a few. I know of some of them that you're referring to. Like, yeah, growth for growth's sake is not always the best the best plan.
01:15:58
Speaker
Like, as it is, I made, last year in one month, I made an entire year's salary. Right. That's a trippy thing. That's nuts. Sorry, let me phrase that, in two weeks, because we did that whole order in two weeks.
01:16:13
Speaker
Like, yeah. ah As you put it there, you you're driving the bus and the sky's the limit. Like apparently driving the magic school bus, but yeah, the sky's the limit.
01:16:24
Speaker
like No, totally. Yeah. yeah yeah oh Yeah. You can always buy better equipment and do more work. Like that is my plan. If one of my customers starts getting above 50% of the the turnover, then I buy more equipment so that I can just do more turnover, but without having more people.
01:16:40
Speaker
Like either robots or children, one of the two. and look That was my ah when I worked for my old job. I it basically fell into a people managing role. And like yeah we spent the amount of money we spent on people, on hiring, we figured we had a 10% success rate. So out of 10 people we would hire, we would fire one nine of them because they weren't successful. And we would get one good employee.
01:17:01
Speaker
And you would just hope that they would stay with you for a long enough time that they would you'd recoup your your training costs. And like it's not it's just because... like anybody that's really good at what they do like mean my boss would talk he said anybody that's good at what they do is eventually gonna probably find something that they want to do more and move along he's like like he's like you are a perfect case in point he's like i like he's like i love working with you he's like but you have your own thing and he's like i totally understand that and he was wonderful about it but yeah it's just like people are it's not it's not the easy button hiring people is not the easy button
01:17:35
Speaker
No, no, it is not. Like it yeah just makes a whole lot more problems. I was chatting to the guys at, uh, with the wood lades and the inserts, uh, Hotlander. Um, I'm quite friendly with the, the two, well, the one guys left now, but the two main shareholders, um, and I chatting the guys like, no, when are you going to get staff and, ah grow from making things into a management role? I'm like, never.
01:17:56
Speaker
Because they used to make the furniture. They were both hands-on making furniture. And then they grew and employed people and they became management. They don't do anything fun anymore. They just manage people.
01:18:07
Speaker
And that's boring. ah yeah i agree with you. It was interesting to hear how many people actually asked that question. Yeah, a ton. Yeah, it was... ah Yeah, why don't you get help or why don't you hire people? I was like, dudes... It just shifts your problems.
01:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, it shifts your problems. It's not your jam. like Optimize the process, get some robots. but Yeah, but like, yeah, it's just... I find... I don't think people realize how much work you can actually get out...
01:18:38
Speaker
on your own in a garage. Like when you're properly optimized and properly productive, the amount of work you can actually get out the door as a one man shop is impressive.
01:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, you can you can totally make a living doing a lot of things. And it's, yeah, it's, don't know, I think people, i don't know. I don't know what the answer is. Yeah, it's definitely risky and yeah. but Oh, for sure, yeah. yeah As ah someone asked me about work for myself and I was like, there's pros and cons to it. And right now the pros way outweigh the cons. Like, yeah, more stressful and whatnot, but hey, guess what? I can, in the middle of the day, go for a walk or go fishing do what i want to do like i don't have to go to my boss oh can i go to the shop quickly like i just get in my car i go i'm the i'm the one who's got to be uh somewhat responsible uh yeah yeah it's it's its own it's its own kettle of fish
01:19:34
Speaker
Yeah, and I think if you're motivated enough to um like just keep yourself on task, i think and I think that's anybody that's that's working for themselves or like any kind of entrepreneurs, like they that's not the that's not the problem. It's not like like, well, I could just play video games all day. It's like, that's not it's not in your mind. you could, but I like not being homeless more than I like being homeless.
01:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm like... That is the gist of it. That's why I used to go to work every day because i didn't like the idea of being homeless. Yeah, exactly. I like food. yeah i want to keep eating. Capitalism is slavery. Anyone who says differently doesn't understand it. Like, you can, sure, you don't have to work. You just then don't have the nice things.
01:20:14
Speaker
well but That is what it is. Like, yeah you've got a mortgage. You've got all this stuff. You've got to pay it. You have to work or it gets taken away. So, yeah, it's – yeah But yeah, I think let's ah let's start wrapping it up there because we've got a little bit of an after show and I'm watching the clock this evening. Yeah, we're getting up
Tech Upgrades and Streaming Plans
01:20:33
Speaker
Yeah. So what have you been Googling this week?
01:20:36
Speaker
ah Googling, I did a bunch of ah kind of boring Googling on like OBS Studio just for like streaming and all that nonsense. um But the main thing I've actually been looking a ton on right now is the laptop that I'm currently using is getting up in its age and I was looking at some things, some operation I was doing. I was like, this thing is so slow. Like I think I need need a new giant computer. So I just looked at the tasks that were being run on it and I realized my hard drive is just swamped 100% of the time.
01:21:03
Speaker
So what I'm going to do is I realized in a lot of laptops, because it's kind of hard to upgrade them, but you can just replace your hard drive with a solid state drive. um So are you actually running a hard drive?
01:21:14
Speaker
I'm actually running a hard drive. That's a block to be in the 2000s. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So I'm going to join all you spacemen in the future. um say I'm going to haul this hard drive out and drop a solid state in there. And yeah, reap the benefits of much faster write speed. So anyway, that's what I've been looking up. just and for it's so yeah if It's so inexpensive nowadays. I didn't realize how cheap solid-state drives come down. No, no, they're basically free.
01:21:37
Speaker
Yeah. yeah But yeah, if you if you are looking for um hardware recommendations, just ah pop me a message. I'll send you what I've got in my workshop. It's a mini-RTX build that I did when my laptop died.
01:21:49
Speaker
It is this big, the whole PC case and about that wide. Nice. Cute. And then a power supply behind it because supply died. But ah it's rasin it's a Ryzen 5 with the integrated GPU and it runs Fusion.
01:22:03
Speaker
It runs it perfectly fine for day to day. If you've got a really large model, then I come into my gaming PC and then do that on the gaming PC inside. But um when I built it, I built it with 32 gigs of RAM and ah yeah, very few corners cut on it and it works really, really well.
01:22:21
Speaker
Yeah, my my hardware is antiquated and I didn't realize how antiquated it was. So I started looking and I'm like, oh, this is super. I mean, at the time, this was a super popular, like it's a huge gaming laptop, the best you get, but now it's it's ah it's a it's a wagon. Yeah, I've a potato of a laptop that just does the job. It opens Fusion and lets me make tool parts if I need to on site.
01:22:39
Speaker
Like that is all it does. um yeah But yeah, so yeah, I'm also Googling computer things. I'm looking for a cheap ultra wide monitor. because I've got my monitor upstairs and in my office double stacked. I've got a 24 inch monitor on the bottom and then a smaller monitor on top.
01:22:55
Speaker
But I've realized that I'm hurting my neck looking up. Oh, muffin.
01:23:02
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm gonna look for a monitor. I missed that deal on those other ones a little while ago, so I'm keeping my eyes peeled now for for deals on monitors again. Nice.
01:23:14
Speaker
Yeah, because I want an ultra wide so I can have fusion and my emails or whatever, like two windows that are full size and I'm not straining. So want to try to find a decent size monitor.
01:23:25
Speaker
But yeah, that's that's what I've been Googling, some monitors. site Trying to find good deals because they're flipping stupid expensive for the curved ultra wides. Yeah. yeah yeah I stare at my computer a lot, so I want it to be a nice experience.
01:23:37
Speaker
Yeah. I mean that's kind of why I want to build a PC too is just because looking at a laptop screen, even though I have it on like a riser, it's still like, hey, like, There's so much better tech out there nowadays. Yeah. No, well, that's, I mean, I'm running my monitor inside is a Dell from 20.
01:23:50
Speaker
Sorry, maths is hard. 2018. I bought this. My monitor and my workshop is from 2011. It's 24 inch LCD from 2011 and has helicopter marks in it because I flew a model.
01:24:05
Speaker
As one does. yeah Yeah. That was my main TV monitor, everything for many years. Yeah. like i think right up until 2015 but yeah it still it does it does the thing so don't make a waste if you don't need to like fair that's the yeah that's the thing uh sweets do you want to uh do a call to action there Sure. you want to You want to lead or, you know, I'll i'll go and then you can
Promoting Business and Podcast Support
01:24:32
Speaker
follow up. ah So yeah, you can find my wares at confoundedmachine.com. There's a media link that links you to all my different forms of media so you don't have to remember them all.
01:24:39
Speaker
If you want to look at the Reddit AMA, I'll make sure that's the first thing on the media page. um Otherwise, i think it's still pinned on the ah machined pens subreddit. um Yeah, I have a drop of pens coming out probably Friday this week. So if you want to be reminded, there's a contact link on my webpage. Just pop over there. It should be self-explanatory.
01:24:57
Speaker
How about yourself, Jamie? How can people figure out what you do? So you can hit up jspeceng.com. That's our website. It's got an online store. We've got a bunch of shirts that we've released on there this week.
01:25:09
Speaker
I believe they're all the shirts from IMTS and I think maybe one extra. So when I was at IMTS, I had a bunch of really, really classy shirts that I walked around the show with. So those are now available for ordering and fulfillment.
01:25:23
Speaker
anywhere in the world, I believe. ah Then you can also check out the loanmachinists.com. That is the website for the podcast. There's also a merch line there to support the podcast.
01:25:34
Speaker
um Basically, supporting podcast helps us pay for the running of the podcast and also helps Kurt and I get to IMTS in 2026. So any extra funds are going to go towards that so we can stay somewhere that isn't in the south of Chicago and requires a $100 Uber ride every night.
01:25:51
Speaker
and Yeah, we are planning, we are both planning to go to Chicago in 2026 for IMTS. So yeah, anyone supports us would be greatly appreciated. There's also a Patreon. ah The Patreon levels, they're all available on Patreon. You can read what they are, but you can get a shout out on our wall of fame.
01:26:07
Speaker
ah There will also be exclusive voting rights for any polls and things. And an after show. for everything from the $5 tier and up. And Kurt and I have got some things to discuss today in the after show. It's going to be like a 10 minute or so um little extra podcast that will be posted directly to Patreon.
01:26:26
Speaker
So what are your plans for today, Kurt? A bunch of final pen finishing and and, excuse me, frogging my throat, final pen finishing and then starting my box up and finish a little bit of tumbling.
01:26:38
Speaker
That's about it. Just getting this run out the door so I can start working on all the emails and whatnot for the next thing. And then, yeah, that's about me. How about you? Your day's basically winding down. ah Yeah, my day's winding down. My electricity goes off in seven minutes.
01:26:51
Speaker
Sick. yes Yeah, that's a thing we have to flip and deal with. At least we have power to the computers and the TV and whatnot, so we can at least watch some TV before we go to bed. And then tomorrow morning, going to machine another 300 Torx bits.
01:27:05
Speaker
That should be done by like two o'clock. And then I'm going to go see a customer and drive around. And then I need to start planning and finishing off the camera housing stuff because that needs to be done this week so that I can send them an invoice.
01:27:17
Speaker
So yeah, gonna be going to be a busy rest of the week. Like we got a bunch of stuff I'm pushing through for month end. I've got to make 600 stainless steel rivets on the Emco. I've got to assemble 200 tubes tomorrow night.
01:27:29
Speaker
Those have to be delivered on on Wednesday. And yeah, the rest of the week is going to be absolutely silly, but hopefully by the next time we record, all that stuff will be done. Nice.
01:27:40
Speaker
yeah Good luck. Cool. Yeah, thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for listening. ah Please give us a lovely review on your podcast player of choice and like and subscribe on on the YouTube channel if you're listening there.
01:27:53
Speaker
So yeah, are we are available on the YouTube channel and on the podcast players. And I think we may be switching to video from from next week. um Also next week, we are planning to have a guest on for our first guest episode.
01:28:07
Speaker
Every 10th episode is planned to be a guest episode. So not too many guests, but enough to hear interesting stories from interesting people. But yeah, thank you very much for listening. Take care, Al.