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Business of Machining - Episode 51
200 Plays7 years ago
The business of the business of machining podcast (you read that right) Although the podcast is first and foremost a conversation, the Johns realize its potential to evolve.
Saunders gushes over his MHUB Chicago experience. To be clear, MHUB isn't JUST a maker's space. MHUB provides framework for businesses to succeed as well as make products!
This year, in lieu of a traditional open house, NYC CNC and MHUB present the Manufacturing Entrepreneurship Summit (MES) a day before IMTS (America's Largest Trade Show). MES will be Sunday, September 9th, 2018 and it's FREE!
"I want to earn enough to justify the lifestyle I want to live--that is, farting around a machine shop!" - Saunders
Grimsmo determines that constant improvement does NOT equal progress. There's always room for improvement but does it get you closer to your goal? Sometimes Tie Fighters get in the way and other times, they are exactly what you need.
Boxes, Bubble Wrap and Tape: A Medium for Messages? Unfortunately, your product isn't the only thing that speaks to your reputation. Speaking of tape, find out WHY a gummy tape dispenser leaves Saunders wanting to crawl into a hole.
Coming Soon: GK's newest employee and SMW's BOSS Laser Cutter.
Click HERE to become a Business of Machining Patron!
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Transcript
Podcast Logistics and Process Development
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode number 51. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders.
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey, good morning. Good morning. So we were talking about our logistics of our podcast and I still feel very green and very new to what we do. But we were, was it, you were a guest. One of us was guest, sorry, on another podcast. And we were like, oh no, we use Zencaster with this mic and we do it this way and we coordinate this way. And I realized we've actually done a pretty good job of developing a process around this.
00:00:37
Speaker
Yep. Well, we're such process-oriented kind of people now that it's like, even for the podcast, there is an order of events. And I don't know if it's really written down, but we certainly have it in our heads that's like, do this, do this, do this, and we're good to go. But remember, when we first tried to do this, I didn't have, sorry, I shouldn't say that way, Julie didn't work here, and Aaron certainly wasn't at Crimson Eyes. We both had our Zooms, or maybe you bought a Zoom.
00:01:04
Speaker
I was using, go ahead. Yeah, I had my zoom and I just used my, you know, the headphones that come with your cell phone kind of thing. And it was fine. It's just how we start. I mean, you and I were chatting for at least six months. Oh yeah, totally. Before that, doing the same thing. Those were the pre-lockwood days. Exactly.
00:01:22
Speaker
We found this life hacker article that was kind of like how to do podcasts. We were bootstrapper. So we didn't want to pay. I mean, I didn't know anybody would listen to this. And I didn't. So we didn't want to pay for these fee services. So you would like dropbox me your way file. And I had to figure out how to try to sink them in audacity, which actually it's just hard to learn new software like that. Yeah. Like a new cam software. You're just like, where are all the buttons that I want?
00:01:51
Speaker
And it was perfect timing, because I realized I'll just edit them in Final Cut, and then Julie came on board, and then we quickly switched to... Zencaster is relatively new, but it's pretty cool. We just go, go, go. Yep. And now we can turn around an episode in two days or less, and it's live, and it's sweet. It's fun. Yeah. And that was the debate John and I were having this morning, was we want...
00:02:19
Speaker
a good description, but is it worth, you know, three or four or five hours of somebody's work going through to write an awesome description? I love the descriptions, but I realized I consume podcasts. I listen to podcasts. I've never read another description, though. Yeah. The titles are super important, but the description, you know, it's I don't know how how in-depth does it actually
Reflecting on Growth and Audience Impact
00:02:44
Speaker
need to be? Right. Right. That's the debate. Yeah.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, but good times. I think that's another one of those entrepreneurial struggles for me is that, again, a quote from a guy I really look up to is, you know, there's a reason that the windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror. You know, you look forward in life. But if you don't look back a little, sometimes it's hard to appreciate where you've come. You know, if you don't look back and think, God, we were terrible at doing that. Yeah.
00:03:16
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. Interesting. That's actually a really cool quote. I've never heard that one before. Oh, really? I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That guy is on my list of like, I think it's up to like 11 people, but it's in my life Excel file of, we talked about this a few episodes ago, and he's just a really solid guy. It works in the construction industry, self-made, down to earth. Awesome. Yeah.
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny because we were talking about the business of the business of machining. Yes, that is funny. We were right. Well, so on that note, we have some plans for some very what should we call it? Light swag or light merchandise. We have no formal news yet, but stay tuned for that. Yeah. And then we are going to continue doing the Patreon. We have not made any big announcements beyond the fact that we have a Patreon
00:04:12
Speaker
But the idea or thought would be for folks that want to do something hopefully more value added or maybe more interactive or maybe it's something where John and I take questions. We don't know yet, so we don't want to misrepresent what it becomes.
00:04:26
Speaker
We are ultimately over the next year or two thinking, hey, if this grows, it seems to have a big audience. Honestly, I don't pay attention to the stats. I do this because it's the talk with you, but hey, can we justify more of our time and effort into this and turn it into something that becomes a little part of our story more than just the talk?
00:04:45
Speaker
I think it already is. It's starting to become a part of our story and legacy. I like where it's headed. You and I both hear about it often enough that it's like, really? You listen to it? That's cool. Somebody emailed me yesterday and said, I really appreciate all of your positivity in the podcast relative to what we see in the rest of the world. It struck me, caught me off guard because I thought,
00:05:15
Speaker
Gosh, John and I love what we do, but if anything, I feel like there's an element of, what do you call it? Realism or negativity in the sense that this isn't one of these puff pieces where we just pat each other on the back. I've had some low moments and struggles and I don't ever want this to change. I mean,
00:05:34
Speaker
I wanted to keep being an honest reflection of what we're actually dealing with. Yes, that's a good way to put it because there's good times, there's bad times. And, you know, you don't exactly want to publicly share the worst of the worst. But, you know, for you and I to be able to discuss it is immensely helpful. And I've heard from, you know, friends and colleagues that it's helpful for them to listen to it, be like, oh, good, I'm not the only one that's going through that same problem. Right. And yeah, so that's that's awesome. So on that note,
00:06:01
Speaker
How was your week? Great. You've been all over.
Manufacturing Insights from mHub and MariTool
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I realized I needed to go to Chicago, which is only an hour flight away, to meet up with the folks at mHub, where we're doing our manufacturing entrepreneurship summit in lieu of an open house. So we're going to start alternating our open houses one year in Zanesville, one year on the road.
00:06:25
Speaker
It'll be in the Sunday in September before IMTS. Super excited. Had many phone calls, but wanted to fly up there, meet the fellow who is the genesis, you know, an originator behind M Hub, who, John, I can't wait for you to meet this guy. Yes.
00:06:41
Speaker
Next to his desk, he built a Arduino powered Red Bull conduction cooler that he drops a Red Bull down an acrylic tube. It uses coils with an Arduino to cool it. And then there's a foot pedal that pneumatically launches it into the air where from his desk, he can then catch it in the air.
00:06:59
Speaker
to consume Red Bull at the degree of temperature that he likes it. It's laser fed acrylic, it's machined parts, it's Arduino, it's project execution. It is everything I love about life. But what I love about this story is it's not just a makerspace, it's a proper entrepreneurial
00:07:19
Speaker
endeavor where they're helping people learn, succeed, and make, whether they're incubating companies. So if you're actually locating your office or space there, or you're just leveraging the network. Great example, they have
00:07:33
Speaker
a separate room for UL, which is Underwriters Laboratory, which is like the US way of getting your product tested in certain, like you can't sell a circuit breaker without it being UL approved. So they have UL people coming in on a regular basis for office hours to meet with entrepreneurs to make sure they're proceeding down the right path. Like it's those sorts of framework and tools. So it's not just, hey, we got a laser printer or laser cutter. It's that stuff, which is super cool.
00:08:03
Speaker
Wow. Talk about kick-starting a business and doing it properly and teaching them. That's amazing. I can't wait to go. Yeah, it's super cool. We haven't released it yet because we've got to do some editing, but we filmed our little open house announcement. We filmed a tour. Then I hopped over to Mari tool.
00:08:23
Speaker
and saw Frank and Tom's operations at Maritul, which was just so cool because it reminds me of some of the other smaller factory tours that we've done of these companies that are putting out a product that competes with the, quote unquote, big boys. Maritul started in 2007. Really? Yeah. It's not that long ago, and it's not a huge facility. It's not some mega conglomerate
00:08:48
Speaker
you know, receiving is the other building. It's sort of two rows of machines in a 10,000 square foot facility and they have
00:08:58
Speaker
Some pretty cool, I mean, there is a lot of work to making a tool holder. They let us film, so we'll put a video out, but you've got to buy material, you've got to turn it, you've got to send it out for heat treat, you've got to anodize it, you've got to come back, you've got to hard turn it, you've got to grind it, you've got to balance it, you've got to QC it. It's a lot of work. And you use their stuff, I use their stuff. I think I had one problem once where internal ER call it,
00:09:24
Speaker
Groove was accidentally goofed and they fixed it within an hour of an email, they had a replacement ship. I mean, they're awesome company. That's fantastic. Yeah, I've dealt with them a little bit. And even, I'm surprised to hear that they're only that old, which is funny to say, cause that's like 10 years ago. But like, I remember one of the first times I heard about them was through the forums, practical machinists or whatever. And like Frank posts on there with excellent replies. And I don't cruise the forums, but when I'm searching for an answer for something,
00:09:53
Speaker
you know, the forums come up because that's where all the answers are. And then I see this, these answers from like Frank and Mary tool or Eric at orange place and all these like kind of top dog guys giving like a real answer. And I'm like, that's so cool. And then you find out about their business and all that. And I'm happy to support them now. Right? Yep. Isn't that cool? It's a good anecdote. We've gotten some inquiries from people saying, Hey, this is my idea. Should I do it? And I'm kind of like, you know,
00:10:21
Speaker
If you don't have enough passion and drive and a little element of insanity to pursue it, asking me isn't going to be... Yeah, it's not for you to decide. Right. Now, I will give people a lot of respect. We're actually working on an article on minimum product viability. In other words, don't build a business thinking that you're going to be able to sell thousands of $100 speed vice handles. That's not a real opportunity, right?
00:10:50
Speaker
But otherwise you've got to have this belief that in yourself, uh, to do it. And it doesn't take decades to build a business up. You know, it's Mari tools now 10 years old, but, but I mean, we were well aware of them, what, five years ago as a formidable thing. So, um, you can do it.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah. And it depends on what sort of thing. Are you producing just one little niche thing? Or like them, they probably set out to make a decent-sized business. They need a lot of machines. They want to make tool holders. It's serious. It's not just starting in your basement making tool holders. Exactly.
Entrepreneurial Passion and Business Planning
00:11:28
Speaker
It's an advanced product that requires a significant amount of investment, but can still be done by anybody, really, if you're smart.
00:11:39
Speaker
There were, yeah, there were very much elements of bootstrapping there. You know, they have a really, really amazing Toyota CNC grinding machine to grind the taper shank. Obviously that's a really important part. There's like no unimportant parts of the tool. But that one's really important. But they didn't always do it that way. They had a pretty scrappy bootstrapper way that, you know what? It's the end result that worked. And they've made that work. And then they are able to improve the process over time. Yep.
00:12:10
Speaker
I think that was the takeaway. You don't have to, improving your product insane and telling people that you're improving it doesn't always say that your older version was bad. That's something I've struggled with lately. We've made some good tweaks to our products, but that doesn't mean if you have the old one, it's not good. Sometimes they're just internal processes or methods.
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I'm far over that because we're always constantly improving. I mean, the Norseman now has probably gone through 100 revisions at least in its lifetime. And I still compare a new one next to an old one, and they're pretty close. But you'd look closer, and there's a lot of visible things that are different.
00:12:57
Speaker
But something that I was thinking about just yesterday or the day before was there is a big difference between constant improvement and progress. So I was thinking about that because I'm very constant improvement minded like this could be better, that could be better, that could be better.
00:13:14
Speaker
But does it actually get me closer to my goal, you know, whatever the goal ends up being, but, you know, say the goal is to make a lot of money or to sell X many or to, you know, create an impact in the world, whatever it does this constant improvement.
00:13:28
Speaker
get you there? Or is there something else that could be more importantly done first? Because me internally, I just like changing things. I just like making it better. And it almost doesn't matter what it is. I could make a laptop stand here for the office, for the shop. And I could give my full focus to that, even though it's not super duper important. And something else could be way more get me closer to my goal.
00:13:54
Speaker
So how did, but that's, uh, I mean, we've all kind of known that about you, John, but that's, that's, that's like the key. Uh, there's all these like great tidbits about being a great entrepreneur. And one of the cores is knowing what you're good at and being able to admit what you're not good at and find the people that are good at that and get them on your team. And this is just, you and I have the same problem here. I think maybe a little bit different circumstances, but I,
00:14:21
Speaker
I will always bounce around to the new, shiniest idea or object. I'm like, literally yesterday, I was watching the old Star Wars, and I'm like, a TIE fighter could make a really good Wednesday widget. So I've got all this stuff on my to-do list that I really need to do. And I'm sitting here modeling a TIE fighter, thinking about, hey, there's actually a pretty cool way that I could use a lathe tool to do this in one op. And I think we are going to do it. But that's not always. No, I get it. Right? Yep.
00:14:51
Speaker
But there's no real answer. But that's also what I want to do. I want to build this business. I don't know. I need to do more.
00:15:02
Speaker
I need to end 2018 with more conviction about the direction. And we are focusing our products down for sure, doing a really good job of making excellent fixture plates and a world of things around it. Our Modvice, I will tell you, our Modvice system is awesome. The fixture plate covers huge quality of life improvements using your machine, really are. Now the trick is, we're passionate about those, they also help us
00:15:29
Speaker
justify our business to use those to help us have fun, the creative stuff on the more fun stuff. Right. Um, that's your goal that, you know, that becomes a big part of your goal. So making a tie fighter, it's fun. It's cool. It's interesting. It's going to make an awesome video. You get to learn new techniques and technologies cause it's going to challenge you like all things. As long as you don't go broke doing it, you know, like, like there's, there's benefits and
00:15:56
Speaker
But it's like, all I want to do is earn enough money to justify the lifestyle I want to live. And that lifestyle is having, is farting around in a machine shop. Seriously. That's really all it is. John and I were joking about
00:16:13
Speaker
scheduling guests if we end up doing guests on the podcast, which I think we're going to try to. And it was kind of like, hey, when do we schedule guests and time zones and timing and our, we have our own lives to live and machine shops and noise and all that. And we were joking because we're like, we don't really go out at night. Like I, I'm at home. Like last night I was like, my wife's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm shopping online. She's like, what are you shopping online for? I'm like, Oh, you line.
00:16:38
Speaker
It's super important. It's exciting stuff. You can buy a dress. I'll buy boxes. This is silly, but Uline is like 60 bucks. We always get freight Uline now because we buy enough boxes. So it's like 60 bucks, which is not a huge deal, but the worst feeling in the world, the worst feeling in the world is when the Uline palette arrives and the next day you realize you needed something because that ain't happening.
Opportunities in Manufacturing and Business Systems
00:17:08
Speaker
Good problems to have. Yeah, absolutely. That's the fun part. And look, the TIE Fighter thing is funny to me because I want to keep inspiring people. And I was in Dayton yesterday meeting with a vendor. I was in Chicago last week. There is so much opportunity in the manufacturing world, in the machining world. I don't know how to
00:17:32
Speaker
respond to people who are like, isn't that a dying art or how do you make any money? Or we're getting, I'm like, I don't know anybody who says we have too many machine shops that do good work on time. They don't even, price isn't even really the part that people complain about. I think about that when I think about
00:17:55
Speaker
The last thing I would want to do would be mislead people into thinking that there's a rewarding career here when in reality it's a dead end, right? It has to be a labor of love. You can't just go into advanced manufacturing
00:18:11
Speaker
from a clinical business standpoint, I don't know, maybe you can, but as much as you and I, because, and all of our friends basically are super passionate about this, and that justifies and lets us
00:18:25
Speaker
you know, sail through all the crap that we have to deal with in business and running, you know, because it's fun. And I love it. And I really wouldn't do anything else. Yeah, right. Right. It goes back to what would we do if our we you and I have a friend who may be pulling the trigger on a pretty awesome machine. And it's like, that's all I would want to do if I had more money. I wouldn't really I was spending time yesterday shipping orders. And I'm like, I need
00:18:54
Speaker
to spend more time improving the process here because we're close. Actually, the Maritool tour, we talked about this how Tom was really grateful that Frank, and Frank is not what you think of as like a Harvard trained MBA. I know all the answers. He's a machinist by trade.
00:19:15
Speaker
They were really grateful that they had spent the time early on to invest in processes and inventory systems because they have 6,000 SKUs or something. You think about all the gauge links and tools and accessories and holders and cutting tools and all that.
00:19:33
Speaker
You can't do that in your head. You can't be like, oh, I think we're running low on two and a half inch gauge link cat 40s. We should make some more. You have to have, you almost have to let go. You are a bystander in your own business. Really? Yeah. And I think about that as we grow and as we progress, like in that case, a Pearson board is antique because you can't put 6,000 SKUs on a Pearson board kind of thing. Like you need dedicated software to be able to-
00:20:03
Speaker
No, the Pearson board could still be the front end for your system tells you. Yeah. And then that's what like the Pearson board could be. Hey, here's what's going on on these. We have six machines. Here's the board for those all that your to do list kind of thing. In fact, we didn't shoot. We forgot to take a closer look at that. Marito has their own. I don't think they'd ever heard of Pearson boards, but they have a board that gets updated with just that kind of information. Nice. And my first question was, does it get updated because
00:20:32
Speaker
If it becomes stale, then all of a sudden it becomes ... Of course. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, any system works as long as you use it. Right. And if you don't, then it's garbage. Yeah. And we go in and out of our Pearson boards, too. I use it sometimes, then I don't use it, and then I need to be more on it.
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, actually, tonight, I'm going to get a tour of an aerospace machine shop. Sweet. Which most of the time, they're like, no, you can't come in. But when you know someone who knows someone who knows someone, then it actually, you can sneak in. And I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. That's super cool. I love doing our shop tour videos, because I think it helps. I love bringing that to other people, and I love seeing them myself.
00:21:22
Speaker
I can't emphasize this enough for folks that want to learn about machining, get into machining, improve their skills. You have to go figure out any opportunity to meet and see other people outside of your typical things like a trade show because it's just so enriching to see. Oh, absolutely. You ready for this? Sure.
00:21:43
Speaker
We have been using our gummy tape dispenser wrong for almost a year for packing your packages. Yep. Oh, it is. You may think I have a single digit IQ. I put it together. I even watch the YouTube video and you have to put pressure on the tape so that the water brushes from underneath the tape get water on to activate the gum.
00:22:09
Speaker
It didn't seem, it seemed like it would only lightly touch it or maybe skip off of it. So we were putting our fingers over the tape as it came out and like walking our fingers along the tape to apply pressure. I can't believe I'm saying this. This is the most embarrassing things
Learning from Shop Tours and Production Successes
00:22:23
Speaker
in my life. When I was at Mari tool, they had the exact same tape dispenser and I saw, I saw it and I just clicked and I wanted to like crawl into a corner. There's a like steel bar.
00:22:35
Speaker
that was, when it's shipped, it's pivoted inside the machine. You lift up the cover, you pivot that bar out, and guess what that bar does? It applies weight to the tape, so you don't have to sit there with your fingers and do the walking game along the tape. That's so funny. But John, I'm not a... Oh, yeah. No, I'm not teasing you for it. Oh, my God. It's hilarious.
00:22:59
Speaker
Yeah. That's proof that you're never perfect. You think you've got a good system and it could be twice as good. You just never know. So you've got to keep an open mind. And like you said, visiting a shop tour and you get to see how they do it. The first time I saw somebody use their digital calipers,
00:23:20
Speaker
from the tip to the measuring part to measure a bar. And I was like, Oh my goodness, what is that? I have to explain that to Aaron just yesterday. And then we went back and we watched my video with it. And it was like those little things. Like sometimes you get excited and you share your new found enthusiasm with your host or guests. Sometimes like on Maritul, I just kind of quietly, I need to use a restroom and go email myself a reminder to yeah. Yeah.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's so funny. The other thing that Frank brought up, which is a great point was consistency and packaging. They package things very well. We've never had a problem with it, but this is a funny one. We used to feel like we were doing the right thing for the environment by resaving old packaging material. So you have bubble wrap and newspaper and brown paper.
00:24:07
Speaker
And we were like, Hey, that's kind of good. You're recycling it before he didn't negate that. He was just like, Hey, we have a very methodical process so that anybody at any point in time, whether you're a small customer, big customer, new or old, you always get.
00:24:22
Speaker
the box that's well packed that has the brown paper in it. And you know what? He's right because when you open a box and it has what we had sent out in the past, which is this recycled hodgepodge of stuff, it looks like packaging was an afterthought. It looks like it just doesn't look good. Yeah, it's like they don't take it seriously. And does it matter? Does it not matter? But like everything matters, you know? And that's the funny thing. And we've gone through that too. Like I used to use newspaper because I'm being good for the environment.
00:24:52
Speaker
I'll throw it out otherwise, and you'll just throw it out when you get it. But then there's this perception of cheapness and just lack of professionalism and all that. And now Barry's in charge of our shipping now, and he's got a super regimented system. And I tried to do exactly what you said. We had some brown paper from Amazon, and I smoothed it out. And I'm like, hey, you want to use this for the next package? And he's like, no, I'm good. I'm good. I got a good system now. Yeah, right. So what are you up to this week?
00:25:23
Speaker
Not to sound cliche, but crushing it. Dude, we need to keep like a crushing it tally chart because I think that's like the fifth podcast in a row where it's been. It's been so last week, today's Wednesday. So last Monday to Friday was our biggest production week ever by a factor of 25 percent. Oh, my gosh.
00:25:42
Speaker
So and we're looking at each other going, yeah, we can do this. And this isn't the end. We can do better than this. And our machinist comes on in a week and a bit. Wow. February 1st. So that's super exciting. And it's probably going to slow us down at first, maybe, because we're training and stuff like that. But I think his benefit is going to very quickly become apparent in our output. Oh, yeah. In your life.
00:26:12
Speaker
Yeah, in our life and we're just super looking looking forward to that. Yeah, so that's awesome. Continually
00:26:22
Speaker
trying to improve the process. I'm developing this engraving fixture for engraving the serial numbers on our knives, which we do after heat treating. So we're engraving at 60 Rockwell with a little one 30 second ball, two flute ball end mill. Regular from Lake Shore, it's like an $8 end mill or something. Is it one end mill per knife? No, I get about 15 knives per end mill. Are you serious?
00:26:51
Speaker
Wow. And then the ball turns into a flat bullnose end mill by the end of it. That's funny. John knows this because he has a microscope. Exactly. Oh my goodness. I use this microscope every single day. It's awesome. I'll start doing some videos with it. We should build an Arduino pay system where John Grimso isn't allowed to use his microscope unless he does five minutes worth of lean improvements in the shop.
00:27:20
Speaker
of actual work. Right. Right. Because otherwise you just sit there all the time. I mean, it's like my goat, like a tooling rep comes in. The first thing we do is look at something under the microscope. Boom. Yep. Yep. It's funny. Yeah. So we've been, uh,
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, just trying to streamline. The more we add to this big Norseman fixture that we've been working on, we added the clips last week, and it's life-changing. Because now there's this whole setup, this whole 15-minute teardown of the machine and the vices and all that that doesn't happen anymore. And it's not just the teardown. It's the downtime in between. The machine's waiting, and you're like, OK, time to run clips. And then, oh, let's have lunch. Or, oh, somebody comes to the door. And then there's an hour where it's not even running. Now the clips happen.
00:28:03
Speaker
with the blades, with the handles, with everything else. And it's like 15 minutes of cycle that happens automatically. You don't notice an extra 15 minutes of a two hour cycle. Yep. And then you're done. And then it's like, Oh my goodness, like, like we can run, you know, six knives in a day now pretty easily. Whereas before it was very much a struggle. And John time.
00:28:26
Speaker
money and actually real estate. Those are all constraints. So these people that buy, and look, I'm guilty of this mindset, but thinking, oh, I need to hire people or buy more machines, which take up money and real estate. No, like your machine, the trick is how do you get your machine to run? I get it now. Five years ago, it didn't make sense when people would be like, your average job shop, the vertical machining center spindle is running like 40% of the day or something. Yeah, like so low.
00:28:56
Speaker
Yeah. Good for you. Yeah. And when Angelo comes on, he's a process engineer and he will be tracking all kinds of crazy stuff. So he'll probably give us a spindle utilization, like print out at the end of the month or something like that, which will just be super interesting. I wonder if he could be a guest. It would be interesting to see. He obviously has a very strong background.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we'll be doing YouTube videos like with him and I already like during our contract, you know, signing phases. I'm like, just so you know, you're going to be on camera and he's like, Ooh, that's, I'm nervous, but okay, fine. Right. It's so that's, yeah, that, that concept is funny. I don't. Right. Yeah. I was like, it's like, it's like part of the job. You're going to have to share your knowledge, not all of it, but yeah, sure. Yeah. That's awesome. Good dude. Good for you. Um,
00:29:50
Speaker
It's so, when I think about what I want, it's being proud of the product. And the product is not just the Norseman in my pocket. The product is how you got there. That's what's cool. Yep, yep. That's really cool. Or have you heard of If This Then That?
Future Projects and Managing Growth
00:30:08
Speaker
Yes, a little app for your phone. So that has been, I've always loved it. I've known about it. I used it once on a,
00:30:17
Speaker
project back in the New York days where I had We were we bought one of the pebble watches from Kickstarter back in the day. Okay And so we had it Yes. Yeah a year later or whatever But we used an Arduino with a photocell on the LED light inside the tormach enclosure because I love the
00:30:42
Speaker
building devices that don't actually require you to like tap into the electronics or mechanical systems of a machine. Like I don't want to mess with my tormach, but we just put a photocell over an LED and that LED always turned on when the spindle turned off. And the spindle would turn off either when it needed a tool change or there was an alarm condition, which is exactly what I wanted to know. Hey, the machine needs my attention. So I'd be upstairs playing with
00:31:10
Speaker
I didn't have kids, I guess the dog or my wife or dinner or whatever. And I would get a pebble text message when I needed to do a tool change. Perfect. And if this then that is what let us do that. So that was an old YouTube video. We have been using it a ton. We've got three different projects right now. They'll become YouTube videos, but they're like legit shop improvements.
00:31:30
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, the only thing I've used it is like, like mute my cell phone ringer at 8pm so that it's off all night and then start it up again at 6am. Super cool. And then since I got my Samsung smartwatch, it's just always on mute now. Like my phone is always on mute. That's nice. It's fine. It's really nice. Do you actually hurt?
00:31:53
Speaker
I do like having the smartwatch. It's super distracting when you guys keep texting me. You Saunders, not the listeners, which is fine. But I've actually muted that WhatsApp conversation just so I don't get updates. But I do like having the watch.
00:32:12
Speaker
I can hands-free see what that message, email, whatever was, and then quickly choose if I'm going to ignore it or take care of it. It's a little invasive, but I like it. It's fun. That is, if there's one thing I'm struggling with, that is I struggle whether I want this as a goal, but I see, I absolutely do want it as a goal. There's actually no question. It's a goal where there's a trade-off, which is that,
00:32:41
Speaker
First of all, it sounds very impersonal and it sounds very greedy executive, I guess, but I would actually love to have somebody in front of me for all my communications. The first line of response on all of our emails, on all of our, not the WhatsApp conversation or not text messages from you, but
00:33:05
Speaker
just I think for me to, you know, I was trying to think about how to incentivize myself and inspire other people. And you're the quote that I got from you from somebody else about, you know, think about what you want to do in 10 years and do it in six months. Yep. I think about, let's say you only had six months left to live, not in a sad terminal way, but in a, Hey, you've only got six months left. Like what do you want to do? I think I would just sort of realize, okay, I don't want to sit here and, um,
00:33:34
Speaker
I pride ourselves on our relatively quick response time. I pride ourselves on the fact that we do respond. That's such a key and easy way to succeed. It just is because nobody does it. But that stops me from being my best self. That stops me from thinking through that second level iteration of a code I'm trying to do or that can process because you just get distracted and it's whack-a-mole. Because you're running admin, basically. Yeah. Right.
00:34:03
Speaker
I had that same thought yesterday. I'm like, okay, hypothetically, if the business grows significantly and we're making say, flashlights where we can probably do a much higher volume of products, a lot more customers, a lot more shipping, a lot more interaction with people, a lot more just emails, orders coming in, there will be a point in time when I cannot handle that.
00:34:25
Speaker
I cannot be the main email contact for the company and it's kind of worried me and kind of, I don't know, inspired me like, what would that be? Would I need like an office clerk or admin or whatever you call that person, office manager?
00:34:41
Speaker
to handle all of that. It'd just be weird like to hand that off. Cause it's such a personality trait. Like I'm the one that answers the emails. The company email is my email and I need to change that. And I think for me, it's that I'm not, I'm not better than that. Uh, like I'm never above doing that. Uh, I don't want to be above doing that. I don't want to be sitting on a beach drinking pina coladas with a bunch of guys while other people run my business. But, but.
00:35:11
Speaker
I said something to be in this conversation that kind of rehashed that thought of like, what do you do to get the best out of yourself? Like that's what you owe it to yourself. We have this opportunity. You got to do that. You just do. Yeah, you just do. It's like I tease you about it. But I remember when you moved into your shop and you started renovating and you moved in and everything and started working there.
00:35:33
Speaker
And your office was empty for like a year, the office that you're sitting in right now. And I remember you telling me like, I don't want to be that stuffy executive that's like sitting in his office and hiding away and people have to knock before they come in. But now you have this private zone where you can, you can do the podcast. Yeah. And you can, you can work, you know, properly and it's, it's, it's a good thing. So I'm actually thinking about,
00:35:58
Speaker
moving out and at the shop floor. I need a place to do phone calls or podcast type stuff that's quiet, but a laptop in a conference room should solve that. I don't know. It's something I think about.
00:36:13
Speaker
I spend all of my day at my desk now, basically, and I'd almost rather that be out on the floor. That's funny. I'm the same. I spend all of my day at my computer, which is standing between my two machines. So I'm right here, but the majority of my work is on the computer. Do you wish you had a quiet, quote unquote, private office? I wish I had a quiet place to be. I don't know if I'd want to be there eight hours a day. Right. But then it seems gluttonous to have two offices.
00:36:42
Speaker
And part of us is we're kind of, once they were out of space, but I would probably just switch my office into a, you know, we could have two or three people working in here doing so. Like that's to me, that's a no brainer. Like if I all of a sudden had three really, really awesome people that came on board that wanted to build awesome things and that was what had to happen. Done. Sure. No question. No question.
00:37:04
Speaker
It's funny because every time I fill out a credit application, I get mad because I'm like, I am accounts receivable. I know that people have dedicated accounting departments, but I always felt like that was the other people and the other companies. You do, you would put Barry on that. That's crazy. That's awesome. That's funny. I actually got to get some stuff done. What are you up to today? Today?
00:37:33
Speaker
Same old, like Groundhog Day. Actually, if I can, I'm going to work on that engraving fixture, which is going to actually tilt the blades at a 20 degree angle. So I'm using the side of the ball mill, not the tip where there's zero surface feet. And then when you buy a five-axis, you'll be able to get rid of that fixture. Of course. But for now, it'll allow me to finally use the Pearson Mini Palette that I got, but I haven't actually used it yet.
00:37:59
Speaker
But yeah, so that's a genius. Super exciting. So and that will also let us do six blades at once because it'll be a six piece fixture with six angled blades on it instead of one at a time like we're doing now. And it's like a four minute cycle to hard engrave these blades. You can't do anything in four minutes. You're just kind of standing around waiting for the next one. And.
00:38:19
Speaker
Doing six at a time, it'll run for whatever four times six is. OK, so you're going to tip the blade up at an angle. That gets better surface footage, chip evacuation, stronger part of the tool, right? Yep, yep, totally. You have to have some more stick out because the blade's at an angle, so there's got to be a little bit. But I think my standard stick out, everything sticks out 0.45 inch. It'll clear. Oh, OK, that's not too much. 0.45 inches on a 1.30 second tool? On anything, anything basically.
00:38:47
Speaker
No, but you said you engraved it at 1.32. So that's 32,000. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. It's an eighth-inch shank. Ah, it steps down. OK, got it. The shank doesn't matter. So yeah, I made a bunch of clamps over the past few days to be able to hold that and some other things. And if I can make progress on that today, I'll be happy. I bought metal for it yesterday, aluminum fixture stuff. So that's awesome. And then see if we can do our three pallets of machining today.
00:39:16
Speaker
Awesome. Just keep it going. We finally bought the laser. Did I share that? Not publicly.
00:39:26
Speaker
So we bought a boss laser. I'll save that for next week because I am beyond excited for, I think that's going to be used an insane amount of time. Got to do some process work. I have this list that's bothering me of videos I'm behind on, like videos I want to do, videos that I kind of told myself I would do, maybe told other people I would do. And it's like, why aren't you doing those? It's because of the TIE fighters. So I need to think about,
00:39:55
Speaker
I tend to think of myself as reliable. So it's kind of like, hey, why are just quit putting them on a to-do list and just start filming them? Yep. So that kind of thing. Yeah, that's all. Nice. Same old? Yeah, when I put a two-minute job on my to-do list, I feel really stupid. And I'm like, no, just do it right now. Yeah. Awesome. Crush it, bud. Sweet. Sounds great. Have an awesome day. I'll see you. OK, take care. Bye.