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#238 - Conditions are NEVER Perfect
220 Plays4 years ago
TOPICS:
- Power Surges at GK after a night of thunderstorms - Haas Tap Recovery is GREAT! - Scary Haas Software Bug on Haas - Internet Speed: Don't Overlook Your Router's Limits! - Live Stream about LEx ERP System - Grimsmo's Vacation - Grimsmo Explains 75 Hard - Power to the Willemin - The Excitement of Buying Used Machine Tools
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Transcript
Introduction to Manufacturing Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the Business and Machining episode 238. My name is John Grimsmough. And my name is John Saunders. And this is the podcast where John and John chat every week about manufacturing and business and things that are going on in the shop.
Dealing with Electrical Issues in the Shop
00:00:14
Speaker
And today seems to be electrical issues. Uh-oh. As your Zoom backup recorder was causing weird issues. This is true. But also, I'm at home today.
00:00:26
Speaker
And just now I'm getting texts from the guys at the shop saying there's huge power surges and everything in the shop is shutting off and coming back on again. And the Kern is kind of stuck with the probe out touching in weird places. And Angelo is having fun with that, let's just say. Oh my God.
00:00:49
Speaker
building specific issue or is Toronto having storms? Yesterday, we had gigantic storms last night, like lightning and everything for hours and hours. It was amazing. Tons and tons of rain. But this morning, it's beautiful blue sky now, but the power apparently at the shop is being weird.
Handling Power Outages and Recovery
00:01:09
Speaker
Funny you mentioned that. I saw a shop on, I think, LinkedIn yesterday, last week's mention that severe thunderstorms, maybe what you were saying, not normal, and they proactively just set everything down for a couple of hours, which we've never done. Yeah. We've certainly had the power go out a couple of times, and especially the Maury.
00:01:32
Speaker
When there's no spindle break to turn the spindle off, the spindle takes like five minutes to spool down from 12,000 RPM. It's kind of cool. But obviously, you don't want the machines to be mid cut and everything to shut off. That's not always a good day.
00:01:50
Speaker
I think it's wonderful. Maybe two times I can remember we lost power. Both times somebody in the shot just yelled, it wasn't tapping. Yeah, exactly.
00:02:02
Speaker
That would suck. Problems are all relative. Yep, yep, exactly. No, actually, we've talked about this before. The Haas tap recovery is, and I think other machines have it, but it is bueno. Yeah, even from a power shut, like turn off? Yep.
00:02:20
Speaker
You have to go through and update a setting to jog without zero return. Because when you turn the machine back on, you obviously cannot home it or reference it. But that's one setting. And then you go into recovery mode, choose tap, enter the pitch of the tap. It might already know it. I think you have to enter it. And then as you start jogging up in Z, it does a spindle rotation. And we've done it a couple of times, never broken a tap.
Challenges with Machine Errors and Solutions
00:02:42
Speaker
In fact, a hole was, we had to chase the hole because it didn't go in, perhaps all the way down.
00:02:47
Speaker
Good to go. That's amazing. That's cool I cut you off though. Sorry
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah. Apparently the probe tip broke. The palette got close to hitting pro body. Um, some, I'm just reading texts from Angelo. I don't know, like in the warmup routine or turn on routine or something. I don't know. But, uh, yeah, so he's, he's having fun with that. That's for sure. Uh, he just sent a text that said, apparently it's going to be rolling blockouts throughout the morning. So maybe he's just like, maybe I'm just going to leave it alone for a little bit. Yeah.
00:03:22
Speaker
Well, I wonder how would the pro body, why would power surges cause errant axis movement? I think turning the machine back on, it wanted to home it. Although I always thought the current asks you before it moves, especially feed rates at zero. But I don't know, I'm not there.
00:03:44
Speaker
On that note, PSA, we had noticed a very peculiar and frankly scary issue on our Haas machines where you would start to jog it and say X and the Z would move not a small amount like one, two inches or more down, which is
00:04:06
Speaker
I have not seen this personally, Ed and Grant were talking about it. So you're kind of like, okay, hold on. First steps, can we get this on video? Somebody else see it. Are you accidentally not hitting? You just start thinking about how this happened because frankly, modern CNC machines don't do this. Well, it happened in enough where I thought, let me do some digging. So I have a friend or guy I know who works at the factory. I thought, well, I could just log it as a
00:04:28
Speaker
service ticket, but I want to know what's going on here is this like a known issue. So I called him and he was like, yeah. So only, only as a software bug, I apparently on like the machine startup. So it's your Z is probably already up. So it's not likely to happen when you're down lower with the spindle, but I mean, still totally unacceptable, getting fixed, et
Troubleshooting Internet Slowdowns
00:04:50
Speaker
cetera. But I only mentioned it not to in any way rag on Haas, but rather
00:04:56
Speaker
I feel way better knowing it's not just us. So any other hot users out there that have seen that, there's a software fix coming. Weird.
00:05:05
Speaker
I don't know what causes it either, but yeah. Yeah, I had it once where I was doing, on the current, I was doing simultaneous five-axis toolpath. So everything was kind of slaved together. And then I stopped it because it was doing something wrong. But it stayed in that mode. So I tried to jog up in Z and X moved sideways. And I was like, whoa, hold on. What's going on here? It was moving to 45 degree. And I almost broke the tool at first because I went the wrong way.
00:05:33
Speaker
but I saved it just in time. It's awesome. It's crazy.
00:05:38
Speaker
Well, speaking of utilities, we got the call from our Time Warner Spectrum internet folks a month or two ago. That's like, Hey, your plan is out of date. You know, for a few bucks more, we get you way better service. Everyone knows that kind of dog and pony show and the path of least resistance is just go ahead and do it. And so we did it and our internet wasn't really any better. And I started looking closer into it and it had been bothering me in general, but you know, you kind of as a.
00:06:05
Speaker
you know, entrepreneur, you kind of sometimes worry about real problems, and it wasn't a real problem. But on a related topic, we are going to do a live stream
ERP Systems: Planning and Benefits
00:06:13
Speaker
today. And when I'm thinking about doing more of those, you can see the new background here. The new photo you have on the wall of a fixture plate. It's gorgeous. So I thought, no, let's figure out this internet issue, because we were paying now for 600 megabits down, and I believe 35 up.
00:06:33
Speaker
We were getting 40 or 50 down, which is livable. It's not molasses, but we were getting between one and five up. You can't livestream on that. You can sort of livestream on five or six, but anyway. I won't bore you with all the process that we went through, but we troubleshooted our switches and
00:06:56
Speaker
and so forth, and it ends up that it's my fault. We have a pretty solid, ubiquity, unify dream machine. I think I got that name right. But it's, I think, kind of like the best in class entry level ubiquity. Their higher end stuff, I think, is more complicated to where you really need to have a lot of network credential skills to even set it up. This one is more plug and play at really good levels. So it helped give us network security, some controller stuff, and so forth.
00:07:26
Speaker
Well, ends up there's an arbitrary throttle setting in it that was for over two years. We were paying for, I don't know what we were before, but 20 up and I had it unintentionally throttled back to like five.
00:07:41
Speaker
So, horrible news because it's embarrassing, but good news is PSA to check things like that. And the other thing that was really good is we happened to have a switch. One of our switches in our shop didn't even realize it was a hundred megabit switch. So for 80 bucks, replace that with a gigabit switch. And we do file transfers for video files and stuff. And even getting that fixed was game changer.
00:08:07
Speaker
Two days ago, today versus two days ago, I'm like, oh, man, this is awesome. We have got solid internet now, and our inter shop network is cooking. That's fantastic. Yeah. And I should have thought about, hey, what's going on here? Yeah. I mean, there's so many variables, and it's so easy just to blame the biggest ticket item. It's like our internet's not fast enough.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yup. Yup. Last year we had a guy, a friend come in and kind of set up our network, like he's a network specialist.
00:08:39
Speaker
And he put access points throughout both shops, one internet system for the whole thing. It's much faster and it's great. Yeah, that's awesome. So on that note, we are starting today with a live stream on – I've got a bunch of different topics I want to talk about over the course of the coming weeks or months.
00:09:01
Speaker
Things like the basics of what we do at Saunders Machine Works from a business standpoint and preparing for a downturn, stuff like that. Kind of rekindling that chip break idea of manufacturing entrepreneurship stuff. But I want to do it on a live format to keep it a little bit more candid and be able to kind of field questions from folks. And we're kicking it off today, which is Wednesday, so two days before this podcast is airing.
00:09:26
Speaker
with a live stream talking about the process of why we built Lex and what it does for us and things you should think about if you're thinking about an ERP system or just even building system processes like software and so forth.
00:09:44
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. I saw your little Instagram teaser for it yesterday. I'm like, that's going to be cool. Right. We don't have all the answers, but we've learned a lot and whole man, you know, I, uh, John Saunders today would tell John Saunders a year or two ago.
00:10:01
Speaker
to have even more conviction about how important this is to build processes, period. I think back to digging through old emails and old Notepad files and Excel files to find material ordering specs with the material type and how the tolerances are and how it's delivered
Work-Life Balance and Personal Growth
00:10:21
Speaker
and stacked. I thought I was decent at that and, oh my gosh, Lex has left us in that process in the dust.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah. Cause so many times I'm reordering something and I searched through my old emails and I'm like, well, I just want to do it like I did last time. But let me see the email that I sent to the supplier last time and just copy and paste it again. Um, but, but having your own ERP system where that is central and updated, um, for, for notes like that, do you keep a date file like last updated such and such?
00:10:51
Speaker
Um, I will often try to do that, but it kind of speaks to the futility of that because you'll all have updated here, but it won't match an email that was newer or, um, it just doesn't work for me. I've tried it.
00:11:07
Speaker
It seems like the right idea. I mean, if Lex is supposed to be your gold standard, it's supposed to be the rule book for the company. I like the idea of having a last updated, even just a text base, like you write it in kind of thing in your process notes and everything.
00:11:27
Speaker
I mean, yes, except it's not sustainable. It's not scalable that has a single person failure point. Like if I don't do it, it doesn't happen. And it's so prone to bad information. And what Lex does, which is, I mean, this is very simple work for any sort of a relational database is, is source all of that history. So rather than just showing me what the current thing is, it gives me what we did in the past. How? Oh, when I look through
00:11:53
Speaker
ordering material for Lex. It gives me every last order, the amount, the size. So if I'm buying aluminum for Modify soft jaws and I paid $2, I'm making up a number for thing or whatever. Actually, I think we buy $20 sticks and cut them down. I want to know how much I paid for that material, but I also need to know was that order part of a bigger order? Because let's say I bought 1,000 pounds and only 200 pounds was that one product that affects your pricing. Right.
00:12:24
Speaker
So you can, are you searching through purchase orders to see that? I can't wait to see, you got to explain it all. Anytime I pull up a product. Oh man, John, you're going to go nuts. When I pull up a product right now, it gives me the order history of the raw material, the sub assemblies, current amount on stock. It gives me trailing 90 sales that integrates with our Shopify API. It gives me a contribution margin, which is a approximation of what our, um,
00:12:48
Speaker
contribution margin is just an accounting term for basically what we sell it for retail minus the hard cost of goods sold. So that's basically a rough number and I'll tell you, I love it. I absolutely love it. It's awesome. Yeah. What's going on with you? I, except for this hour that we're doing this podcast, I am taking the week off.
00:13:12
Speaker
The week off? Yeah. It was insisted by my wife and even the guys at the shop, they're like, yes, you need to take time off. Just do it. Okay. So no big plans, no big activities or anything, just lots of time at home with the family, taking the kids to the beach a lot and getting the house projects done. But it's like the goal is don't go to work. Yeah, yeah.
00:13:36
Speaker
So it's weird. I feel kind of lost at certain points throughout the day. I'm still accomplishing a lot, but I feel like there's something in my life that's missing, just forcing myself to be home. But it's good. It's good. Is it hard to let go? I feel like... Yes. Okay. Is it?
00:13:57
Speaker
I would feel a little guilty, I think, and then I don't know. I don't have the answers. I love working and I love that culture of, hey, we get stuff done, but then it's like life is not about working every day. No, exactly. And I agree with that. I just, I enjoy it and it gives me a huge sense of purpose.
00:14:16
Speaker
But today's Wednesday. So I've been off Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So today's day five. It just feels like the weekend is dragging on. The weekend, you take your time off. You spend time with your family. You do your relaxing, whatever. And it just feels like that's continuing. Yeah. So it's awkward. It's weird. If I was going away, if I was doing something, if we had big plans, that would be different. My mind would be elsewhere. But my mind is still here. Well, enjoy it.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah, I am enjoying it. And I think I'm getting past the weirdness and as of kind of later yesterday, I'm starting to get into the groove of enjoying the time off. You know what?
00:14:57
Speaker
There's a reason I'm doing this, and let's maximize it. The guys at the shop got it all taken care of. Even today with the electrical problems, they'll figure it out. Yeah, and I can still do tons of my own work on the computer as necessary. Makes me feel productive, but not consuming me the entire day kind of thing.
00:15:21
Speaker
And look, it's a good reminder, you are who you want to be. I think both of us are predisposed to being like, Oh, man, I should be a little bit guilty and self conscious and not let myself enjoy this time off because there's a voice in your head saying that that makes you a better person by or better business or whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's like, no, just just smile. It's okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I
00:15:44
Speaker
Last year, we took a week, most of the week off to go up to, we rented an RV and went up north. But I don't take time off. I just don't. I don't need to, I don't want to. But it's good.
00:16:00
Speaker
I've had a huge sense of rejuvenation on just energy and passion in the last few weeks, which itself is wonderful. It's like the frog boiling water. You don't necessarily know that it's gone, but when you get it back, you're like,
00:16:19
Speaker
Rock and roll. That's what's gotten me fired up about. We've done way too much work on Lex to not share the lessons that we've learned and help other people make decisions on what to do here. Let's go. Yep, absolutely. Like you were saying before, the John two years ago that was kind of himming and hawing. We talked about on the podcast years ago many times.
00:16:40
Speaker
you now have the perspective both before and after the long implementation process. So as you will, you'll be able to speak very well to other shops like us that are on the fence that are questioning that are whether they need it or not, whether it's a one man shop or
00:17:00
Speaker
100 man shop. Organizational data is the most important. That's what I love about Lex is it grew out of this organic. I don't want to spoil the YouTube, which will be available for rewatch even though it's live, but it was not meant to happen. We just did it as a proof of concept, as a kind of a material ordering thing, and before you know it, it works. I love it. That's awesome.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah. I think we talked about it last week, but when you establish a system that you can no longer live without, like if you lost it, it would be detrimental. You know, you're really onto something, you know? Oh yeah. Totally. Yeah. Cause I've had systems like that, that come and go and like we kind of get lazy and stop using them and we don't really miss them. So it makes me realize either we're doing it wrong or it's not valuable, you know?
00:17:49
Speaker
No, that's a great, actually a phenomenal way to put it is like, holy cow, if it's taken away and you get by with it, then take it away.
Hiring and Training New Employees
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah. And what was the benefit? We're doing the opposite now. We have a couple of residual Google Sheets things and we're all of a sudden like, wait, this can just go into Lex. And then you see these other benefits you didn't realize of it. And yeah, it's awesome.
00:18:13
Speaker
We have a new guy starting working, working, I kind of call it second shift, but just a couple of days a week working, starting around when we all leave. He was looking for some extra work and it's great because he just looks at Lex and Lex tells, kind of tells him what to do. Nice. Like what needs to happen. So is there going to be any overlap time where he's kind of there with everybody else?
00:18:41
Speaker
We made a little bit of that as a force effort to get him up to speed on stuff. I think you do what anybody would do, which is at first, he was assembling mod vices. We had him do 10 and leave them out with the boxlets open and we checked them the next morning just to make sure. Little things like he had put some rust preventative on some aluminum parts, which you don't need to do, but not the end of the world.
00:19:04
Speaker
So going through some of the just onboarding training type stuff, but, um, otherwise no, I mean, he, he tends to arrive a few minutes before we leave. So there is coincidentally a little bit of overlap, but there, there need not be interesting. Yeah. That's awesome. And this is, this is somebody new, not somebody I knew him anecdotally. And, uh, I actually, um,
00:19:31
Speaker
talk to him about coming on board a while back. And he likes where he's at, but he reached out and said, Hey, I'm looking for some extra cool side work, which hey, you're talking, you're speaking my language, like somebody who wants to hustle, pick up some extra time. You know, new is new is work quality, if you will, for product.
00:19:49
Speaker
And I'm very upfront. I said, hey, let's try it out. We'll have you come in for three or four days. See how you work out. Make sure you've got the right attention to detail. Some of this work, you've got to be willing to use the computer. And you've got to be willing to wipe things. There's a huge sense of cleanliness on how we assemble stuff. We put some never sees on it. And you've got to be careful about never sees correctly on the part or threads.
00:20:16
Speaker
If there's one thing I've learned as an entrepreneur, if that doesn't work out, shut it down right away. Do not kid yourself about ... There's a difference between course correction and training and giving them the resources to say how to do stuff, and then like, nope, this person's not the right fit. Move on. Can you talk about something I noticed on your Instagram from your birthday, which is 75 heart
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So 75 Heart is a, they call it a mental toughness program started by Andy Frisella, typically viewed as a fitness program, although that's only one of the benefits. The biggest one is cultivating a level of discipline in yourself. And basically make, he basically says, you know, confidence is being able to keep promises you make to yourself consistently on a daily basis. And I'm like, yeah, I like that. I could use, I could definitely use more confidence.
00:21:14
Speaker
It's never been one of my strongest suits either personally or outwardly. Which, by the way, is ridiculous. I know exactly what you mean, but John, you're a solid guy. I don't need to puff you up for that reason, but you should be proud. Yeah, well, a huge part of that is two and a half years of doing 75 hard. Wait, have you done it that long? Yeah. Holy nuts. I started just before we went to Germany together.
00:21:42
Speaker
Oh my God. I did it in Germany too. So I kind of, I looked up a little bit of try to find some details on it, but I think, well, let me just have John explain it. Do you mind explaining? Yeah. Yeah. So the, the basics of it, the starter is do these six things for 75 days straight without, you know, BSing yourself without, um, screwing up. If you do screw up, you start over at zero and you, you recount again, which is no big deal, but you know, it's, you make a promise to yourself. I'm going to do these things for seven days, six, 75 days in a row.
00:22:12
Speaker
And they are a 45 minute workout indoors. And then later in the day, do another 45 minute workout outdoors, whether it's a run or a walk or a bike ride or something, but it has to be outdoors. I got soaked to the bone in the thunderstorm last night because I went out for my walk. It was amazing. Like my shoes are slopping because I got soaked and actually walking in the rain at night is my favorite thing to do. And,
00:22:41
Speaker
One of the side benefits of that, of doing the outdoor workout, especially in weather that sucks, is you're the only guy out there and you're like, nobody else is hard enough or dumb enough to be out here, but I am. Obviously, don't get struck by lightning. Are you ponchoing it or are you just one with nature? Oh, one with nature, yeah. T-shirt and shorts. Hilarious. It was amazing.
00:23:06
Speaker
actually Claire, I got a new rain jacket yesterday to get ready for school. And she came out with a little 10 minute walk for me to start out in, she was wearing the rain jacket and we both got soaked and it was great. But yeah, so I do my basically wake up and if I can start my workout within 15 minutes after waking up, then that's, that's a really good day. Um, 30 minutes is typical, but, uh, yeah, so 45 minute workout. Um,
00:23:35
Speaker
I don't even think of the list anymore. I just do all of the things, but basically follow a diet, no cheat meals, no alcohol, which I don't drink anyway, so that's easy. Um, read 10 pages of a business book or a personal development book. So I've been chewing through books the past few years and I read them properly cover to cover, um, some amazing stuff.
00:23:57
Speaker
And I can't remember, there's probably one more thing. Okay. But consistently do those every day. And then after the 75 days, he translates it into a year long program called the live hard program, which is kind of doing the same thing, but in different chunks and adding a couple little features to make it harder as you progress. And because I've been doing it for so long, I've kind of stopped following his
00:24:24
Speaker
staged routine and I've just gotten into a flow of like, this is what works best for me. So two of the things that I've really kept on was a cold shower, five minute cold shower right after my workout and as cold, cold, like stone cold. Ram under flow, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With my, my no shower head. Um, and the other one is doing the, um, the power list. He calls it the, I keep a journal in my pocket and I write down eight critical tasks that I have to do every single day.
00:24:53
Speaker
And I track that on a daily basis, probably more importantly than everything else. So today I'm on day 174 or something of 174 days in a row of accomplishing all eight things on my list. I saw that. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. And that's that's been huge.
00:25:12
Speaker
And they could be big things, they could be little things, but they have to be important things that move me forward in life or business or personal or family or something, but making sure they get done. And a big part of that is like in the morning as you're filling it out or throughout the day, like I make an intention to send that email or design that part or work on that toolpath or make that thing and I'm going to do it no matter what, you know?
00:25:40
Speaker
Is it harder to come up with eight things or harder to get it done? Okay. Both. Sometimes it's painful to come up like you got four things on the list and you're like, I don't know what else to accomplish today. What else can I accomplish today? Some days it's like 8 PM and I've only filled out three things and I still have to do more.
00:25:56
Speaker
Sometimes you rush through a couple things, but it's an intention kind of thing. You just do it and you get it done. All of these things consistently, daily, on a daily basis, it's become my routine, it's become my schedule.
Overcoming Mental Barriers in Work and Life
00:26:12
Speaker
I'm like a robot with just accomplishing it and I love it. It suits me so well. It might not suit everybody, but it's
00:26:19
Speaker
It's been amazing. So you haven't missed 45 minutes twice a day for 174 straight days? The 174 is my list, my eight critical tasks. Ah, okay. But as far as the workouts, every single day in 2020, I did everything perfectly. 2021. Oh my God. Yeah.
00:26:45
Speaker
Oh my God 365 days. I did two workouts. I did my reading, did my diet, did the exercise, did the cold showers, did the list.
00:26:56
Speaker
2021, I've been skipping the evening walks sometimes in exchange for time with the family or work or whatever. It sort of becomes this realization of like, I know I can do it. I've proven that I can do it. I can stay up till 4 AM and get my walk in, but come on. Sleep is very important too. It's this constant balancing act of like,
00:27:19
Speaker
knowing you can accomplish your goals, but also realizing what is important in life. I don't want to diminish my family time with the kids, whatever, because I have to go work out. What's the summary of the diet?
00:27:35
Speaker
It's pretty loose as far as the requirements for 75 hard, but it's, I mean, his rule is follow a diet. Oh, okay. It doesn't mean no candy or no carbs or whatever. Yeah. It's your version of that. And for me, it's pretty much almost no sugar. Um, eat really well, higher in protein, eggs and meat and things. And just, I mean, my rule to myself is cut out the crap, like stop, stop eating junk food and garbage. And, you know, I'm a skinny guy. You're a skinny guy. We don't, we don't need to lose weight.
00:28:05
Speaker
but I want to be as healthy as possible. So it's just watching what I eat, you know? Good for you. Yeah. That's awesome. That's a 75% nutshell. That's impressive.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think like most people, I see that guy and I'm like, who are you? Like, are you famous for being famous and dropping language bombs and all that? But then I saw the little bit on 75Heart and the first thing I think we do as humans is we come up with excuses. Well, I couldn't do that because I don't have enough time or whatever. And then you're like, well, okay, but that's exactly what that program is doing is it's like... Yeah. And legit two 40 minute workouts is a lot of time asked. It is.
00:28:45
Speaker
But it reminds me a lot of what I'm now realizing it was the best takeaway from the book Relentless was stop thinking. Because if I want to go for a run, I hate running. I don't like running. I'd have started to run because it's something I need to do. It takes me, I can run about a 7, 6, 30, 7 minute mile. I hate it. I hate every second of it. But to use the excuse that I don't have time is categorically absurd.
00:29:12
Speaker
Right. But so the trick is to not think about it, just do it. Exactly. And that's what helps with having a program that you commit yourself to following is one of the best phrases from the whole program is conditions are never perfect.
00:29:27
Speaker
in anything, whether it's raining or snowing or dark or light or whatever. The conditions are never perfect for your outdoor workout. Do it. Do it anyway. Conditions are never perfect to send that email or to hire that person or to grow your business or to pull back on something.
00:29:47
Speaker
Conditions are never perfect. But you have to realize what's important to you, and you have to just get off your butt and do it anyway. We're all tired and lazy sometimes of the day. That's not perfect. But especially in manufacturing, we try to make everything perfect. You want to nail that toolpath. You want to get the right end mill. You want the business to run as smoothly as possible. You want everything perfect. So it's like this constant battle between, I know conditions are never perfect, but it's my job to make them perfect.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. The 75 days thing is interesting, too, because anybody can do anything for a certain amount of time. Sometimes it is a long time. But I even think about it. We've had a couple of shipping goofs. And again, they're very much the minority. But man, when it happens, it bothers us. And so we've started thinking about how we check stuff and double check stuff. And certainly over things that go overseas, we want to make sure we get right. And there's further complication of like, hey,
00:30:45
Speaker
If it's overseas, making sure if they ordered a metric diamond pin or a fixturing pin, we get the correct metric version and so forth. But that's a good idea of being like, hey, can we go 75 days with perfect orders? Yes. This facility has gone 300 days without an accident.
00:31:05
Speaker
That is different. It's tracking something. What gets measured gets managed. That's a good phrase. I've heard that for a long time. It's a really good phrase. If you track your workouts, you're going to do them more. If you track your days of perfect shipping results, you're going to watch it better. I'm putting that in the live stream today. That's a great way of thinking about what an ERP system can do. Exactly. Because otherwise, you're just assuming everything in the business is happening normally.
00:31:34
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. But yeah, been doing pretty much 75 hard for two and a half years, over 900 days, you know, almost perfect. From a program that's supposed to be 75 days, but I just kept doing it. Yeah.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's been great. And I've gained, you know, what is it, 15 pounds of muscle and I feel awesome and I look awesome. And I have, I don't know if I have more energy, I have different amounts of energy. I certainly have more determination and more stick-to-it-iveness, like by a hundred times. You know, I've always worked hard, but now it's like a totally different level of focus and mental acuity.
00:32:15
Speaker
Yeah, I give you a lot of credit and I have a lot of respect for anybody who's willing to simply put in the time period. Yep. That's all it is. And there's no shortcuts. Like I'm not doing anything fancy routine, like workout routine wise. I just do the same thing every single day. At home? Yep. At home. It's a grind. Like I was, I sweat buckets. Like there's puddles on the ground here after I do it. And, uh, and it sucks, but you just do it.
00:32:45
Speaker
switching topics, but keeping with mental toughness. Remember I mentioned the DHL frustration last week. I kind of did a hard stop. I said, look, who cares? Trying to bang on DHL is ridiculous. I know better. It's a ridiculous effort. And they were going through fraud departments and re-issuing accounts. They basically form you to death.
00:33:09
Speaker
And it makes, you know, I think anybody would feel like you're getting robbed. It's like, this isn't fair. You can use lots of scenarios like that. And I basically just let it go. I paid the invoice myself that wasn't ours. Who cares? $140. The company, we got lucky, the company that
00:33:26
Speaker
use our account, send it from themselves in Colorado to themselves in the Middle East. So I called the company up and I just pled my case. And I was like, look, I'd really appreciate if you guys could figure out what happened. If DHL wants to treat it like a fraud, they want to shut down our accounts. I'm probably just going to ignore that. But I kind of wanted to just start a dialogue with them. The guy actually finally called me back. He's like, look, we see it as well. That wasn't even the number we used. So it's kind of funny because DHL's
00:33:51
Speaker
claiming it was fraud when reality, somebody probably just fat fingered, maybe on DHL's side, ironically, but I just wasn't letting it go. I'm going to see if they'll reimburse us because I feel like I'd like that, but move on. It's good you heard from the offending company that they're like, oops, we didn't, oops.
00:34:14
Speaker
But in fairness, it wasn't even their oops. That's what I'm saying. But they were cool about it. They were actually communicative. Yes.
00:34:21
Speaker
Um, but it's, it's, I mentioned it on to you and on this podcast, cause it's counterintuitive. I don't like it. And you know, you kind of want to fight for yourself, but you also realize, wait, I'm spending good grief. Like your, your mentor that talks about $600 an hour of his time for his time. I mean, yeah, my time is not worth that much, but good grief. I've already spent way too much time and frankly, mental focus, uh, chasing down $140 invoice. So, so there you go.
Future Plans with New Machinery
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:51
Speaker
Well, I'd ask what you're up to today, but... Yeah. Today, kids are in school, so I'll go pick them up later. But yeah, as far as Ork things, the Willimon has power. Awesome. So the guys this week, they're going to level it and they're going to install the hydraulic oil system. So they got to put oil in it and plumb up the hydraulic pump, whatever.
00:35:11
Speaker
Yep. And then we're not going to turn it on until those are plumbed up. But then it should just turn on and check the phase, make sure everything rotates the right direction. And last night, CJ sent me a full CAD file of the machine.
00:35:27
Speaker
with all parts moving and everything. So I did some as built joints and you like the Z to the X axis and you slide it around, make a sliding joint or a rotating joint for the B axis. And I'm like, okay, this is, this is getting real. This is getting cool. Like I can see how the machine's going to move around.
00:35:43
Speaker
It's pretty awesome. Yes. Okay. So your vice pivots 90 degrees down, right? So it's oriented like a normal machine vice where it's kind of like it's laying flat on the ground, but obviously up in the middle. And then it tips 90 degrees down so it's pointed toward the sky, right? Yep. But that's not just a 90 degree pivot. It also can move
00:36:07
Speaker
what is effectively in Z, meaning it can move closer and further away from the spindle, right? I'm pretty sure. I just haven't seen it yet, but I'm pretty sure. Yeah. As far as the 90 degree rotation, it's not incremental. It's zero or 90 on or off, I think. Okay. I don't think you can do it at an angle, but the head moves at an angle so you don't care. Yeah. I don't see why you would stop it like 45 or 30. Yeah. Okay. It's really cool.
00:36:33
Speaker
John, I kind of alluded to this a while back, but seeing you get that, looking more at what CJ is doing on it, having looked at Swiss machines and just knowing that it wasn't the right fit for us, I'm totally hooked on... I'm kind of copying you. I'd love to find a used machine. We cannot justify that a new machine, but there's a couple, actually quite a few products that I would move on to, and it's checking all the boxes.
00:37:02
Speaker
I know it's 30,000 RPM HSK 40 spindle. There's 48 tools. Yeah, like milling tools and you can do turning tools in there to bar fed with device. It's like, we bought it to make the pen clip for our saga pen. But there's a fixture pen that I want to make.
00:37:22
Speaker
that I was going to send out, but I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's, that's a perfect Willimon part. So I might make that my first Willimon project because I'm like, I'll need four tools and it's cakewalk. There's some milling and some other stuff. And I'm like, that'd be a great, like get your feet wet project. That's not a kind of heavy duty product, you know, like, uh, I'm excited.
00:37:43
Speaker
Well, so I took William over to the Air Force Museum in Dayton a month ago and the Reynolds machinery, I know the guy there, they happened to be the Chiron dealer. I've seen Chiron's before there. And I said, hey, do you guys have anything in your showroom? Like I just, I'm learning more. And they said, no, but there's a shop next door that has them. So we stopped by and took a look in person. And it looks like
00:38:11
Speaker
at a somewhat high level. Charones and Willamans are, at least on this, like, what do you have an eight? Oh, not eight, four. It's not a four, oh, eight. Four, oh, eight, thank you. And there's an equivalent size Charon, basically the same machine with the same functionality in the layout, with the one exception that the Charon, instead of the vice for Optu, instead of it pivoting 90 degrees toward the ground, it rotates 180 degrees behind. Right, I've seen a video of that.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah. And I started to think about, okay, what's the pros and cons there? But what was cool was we started talking to them about a couple of our products and how we would do it. And like, there's some really creative things on how you can use that vice to hold
00:38:55
Speaker
to support as like a tail stock in op one to support for op one still, but in a different position to transition into op two. Like I'm just, oh, it's, it's like, I'm, I'm kind of thinking now, like someone had like, how do we get to a point where we can get one of those machines or, or find a used one? Right, right, right. Yep.
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah, as I'm about to use it, I mean, like I said, we only bought it for the clip, and now I have this other product on it. I don't have a lot of other work for it. But once I get my feet wet, and once I know what it can do, I feel like we'll be putting more stuff on it. Like, it's just going to be amazing. Yes. Even weird things that aren't lathe parts. Because I mean, some of the stuff CJ is making is like a guitar pick shaped item. It's like flat and milled. And like, what?
00:39:43
Speaker
Now, I think of it as an automation mill that happens to have some turning capabilities, which is perfect for what we want. Absolutely. Yeah. Basically, it's like five-axis mill from bar stock.
00:39:57
Speaker
Yes. It reminds me of my New York days. I cannot fathom that I would ever own a Haas. I can't tell you how I would get there in every which way, shop-wise, financially, work-wise, justification-wise, knowledge-wise. That's how I feel about that now. I can't paint you a picture right now, but darn it if I'm not going to get one somehow one day, hopefully sooner.
00:40:22
Speaker
Cool. Well, I'll try to document the journey and get you excited as I start making stuff. Yeah, I appreciate it. Oh, hey, enjoy your week off. I'll see you next week. Yeah, sounds good. All right, take care, bud. Okay, see you. Bye.