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#285 - Getting Things Back To Normal
231 Plays3 years ago
TOPCIS:
- Grimsmo is having massive power problems that caused some awkward solutions.
- The boys talk about the value of business insurance.
- Willemin and Speedio updates!
- Saunders goes into a deep dive with their LEX erp software.
- 3D printing with magnets!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Business Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 285. My name is John Grimsmell. My name is John Saunders. And this is the manufacturing podcast where John and John have been talking for five, six years now about the journey of our businesses and how they're growing and all the fun ups and downs of running your own machine shop. The
Power Outages and Transformer Issues
00:00:20
Speaker
business of CNC machining. Yes, we should change the name. Well, I'd ask how are you, but
00:00:29
Speaker
I have not gotten the true story here other than I'm feeling for you. So we have some updates. For the past four business days, we've been down without power or with power coming on and off in weird ways. And I tell you, you don't realize how much you take it for granted and how much you appreciate steady power that just always works. The lights always turn on, the machines always run.
00:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, we've had Thursday, Friday last week. The guys came in for the morning for half day because power was in and out. It was working sometimes and it wasn't sometimes. And then by the afternoon, we're like, okay, everybody go home. Monday and Tuesday this week, nobody came in. I was in both days because the power was just dead.
00:01:18
Speaker
Long story short, the Transformers at the road, I think the first one exploded due to possibly a lightning strike. It was an older one. It's probably 20 years old. This stuff happens. It's rare, but it does happen.
00:01:36
Speaker
Friday, Thursday, they put a new can up, a new transformer. Actually, they put three up because they were all kind of toast. The pole was on fire. The fire truck came. They replaced the pole Thursday. And then Thursday night, flick on the power. I came back to the shop and checked. Everything seemed good. So I'm like, sweet. Let me just run the curtain.
00:02:03
Speaker
So I got a good six hours of run or more before.
00:02:08
Speaker
been nine by the time Friday morning came in. Friday morning, we got this video delivered. Oh, yeah. Get into that later. And Kern's running. Everything's running. And then around 9, 10 o'clock, everything shuts off. And the lights start flickering. And everything starts going crazy, disco party, because one of the phases of the three phase broke because the transformer exploded again. That was transformer number two.
00:02:36
Speaker
We're sitting there literally forklifting and skating a speedio around and the power is all weird. We're like, can't focus on that right now. Let's just get this in place. Deal with that later. Then they shut the power off hard. We're talking with the guys on the road. They don't know what's going on. They're going to put another transformer up.
00:03:00
Speaker
So Friday at noon, we all had a team meeting. I'm like, this is probably not going to come on for the rest of the day, but I'll let you guys know. Everybody might as well just go home. And so that was that. And then we all took the weekend off. No, actually, power was restored Friday night.
00:03:17
Speaker
And then I came in on Saturday to get the current running again. Um, got it running. It ran for 24 hours from Saturday night to Sunday night at around six. Oh wow. Yeah, which is awesome. And then I logged in from home and I'm like, I can't log into the current. And then I'm like, I think the power's out again. Uh, a third transformer had exploded on Sunday night and, uh,
00:03:46
Speaker
And then so I come in Sunday night at 11 PM. The road is closed. There's service trucks everywhere. There's people, there's hazmat people. There's all kinds of stuff. So I talked to them at 11 PM and I'm like, this is my business here. Like just looking for an update to what, do I have the guys come in tomorrow? Um, and they said, we don't know exactly what's going on. We're at the point where,
00:04:11
Speaker
tomorrow morning, Monday, every business is going to have to get their own electrician to do a full sweep of every business. There's six businesses affected, two of which are ours because we have two buildings and they're each on their own meter. So we're two of the six.
00:04:27
Speaker
Anyway, so I immediately text my local electrician. His shop is four blocks away and he services a couple of us. He's the guy for sure. I texted him at 11.30 at night and he got right back to me and he's like, interesting. Call me in the morning. He showed up. We show up Monday morning. The new pole is up. New transformers are up. They've done everything again.
00:04:53
Speaker
What was it? And then, so electrician's here. He goes through, he checks everything. He's looking for a ground fault in somebody's business. Can't really find anything. They turn on the power.
00:05:05
Speaker
And I had lights, but I'm like, I'm not going to run anything because this is going to be weird. So I had lights for like 10 minutes and then I'm
Financial Impact and Insurance Considerations
00:05:12
Speaker
in the bathroom and I hear a pop. I thought it was from my shop. It was the third transformer exploding. Fourth? You think you're in fourth, John? Yeah. I've lost count. I know there were four in total.
00:05:24
Speaker
So yeah, the fourth one exploded Monday morning. And when these things, they're like a trash can full of oil with a metal lid, 30 feet in the air. And one of the guys across the street said he watched one explode, I think on Friday. And the oil inside boils and it gets so hot that he said he saw it shoot the lid and oil and sparks 100 feet in the air. And he watched the lid land on a truck.
00:06:15
Speaker
in the middle of
00:06:16
Speaker
I spent all Monday and most of Tuesday walking around with the electricians to several of the businesses, chatting, talking with the power company, trying to figure it out. It's like something's wrong here. Either they're doing something wrong or one of our businesses, could be mine, has something seriously wrong. It worked up until last Thursday, up until the alleged lightning strike.
00:06:41
Speaker
And I haven't gotten any new equipment and everybody else says they haven't gotten any new equipment like wired in in that time. So eventually we found figured out. I haven't gotten any new equipment. Yeah. Okay. Speedio gets delivered. It says that I unloading a machine. It's not wired up yet though. So it doesn't count. And I had to tell that to the electricians. They're like, that looks new. I'm like, yeah, yeah, but it doesn't matter. So like it turns out.
00:07:11
Speaker
that there's two ways, probably more, but I'm no electrician, full disclaimer here. I've only absorbed what I know here. But there's two general ways to wire a business here. You can have a Y set up like WYE, which is three wires and a ground. And we have 600 volt service here.
00:07:31
Speaker
So you got your three wires and a ground wire. That's the classic way to do it. You look at every business here from the outside and you see three wires in the ground going to every business. The more old school way to do it was a Delta wiring, which is only three wires, no ground whatsoever. And this can work and it can be totally normal and big industry used to do it back in the day, but it sort of, it ties your power to the guy across the street to like some other people that are also Delta wired in this weird like,
00:08:01
Speaker
cloud, like high of mind kind of way. I don't know. I don't really understand it. But what they should be doing now if you are wired Delta is to put a ground fault indicator on your meter with a light bulb that says if you have a problem that goes off and it stops and it doesn't go whatever. But they were saying if you have the problem, the guy across the streets light bulb might go off.
00:08:24
Speaker
which is kind of weird. Whatever. I don't know. So it turns out that all six businesses look like they're wired with the Y set up because all of them have a ground wire clearly going into the building, but into our meter box, the ground is not connected on three of our businesses.
00:08:41
Speaker
Including Crimson Eyes? Including our front shop. Our back shop is wired properly. Our front shop has the fake ground wire. So it's actually a Delta wiring setup. And they basically said, none of this is really wrong. But the theory is that originally the transformer at the road
00:09:04
Speaker
had a floating ground wire. So all the neutrals from the Delta systems were just not hooked up or floating or whatever that means. And then they put the new cans in and they plug it in. So now these Delta systems are fake ground. I don't really understand, but I think that was the source of the issue. And so they converted the three businesses, including our front shop to the Y setup. They properly put in the ground. They put new meters on everybody. And then now the problem is solved as of 5 PM yesterday. Dude.
00:09:33
Speaker
So we were down for four days of almost no production. 100 hours. Yeah, all of our staff hours and machine hours and everything. Same for across the street. We're all losing many, many, many, many, many thousands of dollars a day of potential revenue. And that starts to hurt after a few days. The first two days, I was like, yeah, whatever. And then our accountant texted me. He's like, so how much do you think we lost in those two days?
00:10:03
Speaker
And he throws out a number and I almost threw up. I was like, no way. Yeah, I guess so. Oh man. And it was four days of that. So anyway, we are back up and running as of 5 p.m. last night. I got the current running, loaded a bunch of pallets. It should have ran till seven, eight o'clock this morning when the guys come in and can keep it going. But yeah, so we're full board today. And our electrician is here wiring up the speedio today.
00:10:29
Speaker
So,
Equipment Damage and Repairs
00:10:30
Speaker
but like when those cans explode, I mean, they're full of oil. And because of this whole grounding issue, the theory is that it was boiling the oil inside. It's not that there was a short, it's that it just boiled itself and exploded. And if it makes a hundred foot radius oil spot on the ground, and they have to have like, environmental cleanup people come in and clean it up before the electricians can fix it again. So they did this four times.
00:10:55
Speaker
What? Yeah. Anybody get hurt or damage? No, I don't think so. That's great. It didn't go on boiling oil on your car. I can't imagine that helps. Yeah, exactly.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah. The motor on our air conditioner fried because it tried to run on single phase. Yeah. And it got real hot. Like we were smelling smoke in the shop and it came from the air conditioner and it's still kind of functioned. So I removed the motor. It's just not a warranty. I removed the motor. Our electrician measured it and he said, yeah, it's probably fried. And then looking around trying to find
00:11:34
Speaker
an off the shelf replacement for this carrier air conditioner. It's like two years old. And he says, yeah, we have stock in the US should be four to six weeks to get a new one in. No, call all around doesn't exist. It's a weird, weird winding, you know, specs and everything. There's no comparables with a different brand.
00:11:53
Speaker
So there is a local shop just around the corner from us a couple blocks away that rewinds motors, electrical motors, big ones, little ones, cranes, everything. And so I brought it in. It's like, can you check this? Make sure it's dead. And he goes, it's, it would still probably work, but it's dead. And then he's like, normally we don't rewire these small ones because it's cheaper to just buy one. Um, but if you can't find it, then we'd be happy to rewire for you two day turnaround.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so I looked around a little bit more, couldn't find anything, brought it back, and I was like, let's do it. And so that should be done tomorrow.
00:12:29
Speaker
Is that hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars? Under a thousand. Okay. I don't know. Carrying on your comment, I'm not an electrician. I'm also not a motor guy, but I know enough about brush lists. I'm assuming this is an AC motor. It has a stator that turns in a rotor and a coin. I'll place a copper wire around it.
00:12:52
Speaker
What what makes them burn up or fry like when they rewind it? Is it like adding the new copper when copper doesn't go bad? What's it's the insulation around the copper and the guy was saying that the factories nowadays really cheap out and use crappy insulation or poor wire thin wire whatever and if that insulation It needs to insulate from the other winding or whatever and if it burns up or shorts or whatever and this motor got hot hot and
00:13:19
Speaker
So that makes sense. And there's little strings that tie all the windings together and those were clearly burned up and fried. Yeah. Right. And, uh, that kind of stuff. So, okay. That makes sense. Like he put his, I don't know, multimeter or whatever on two of the leads and saw homage continuity, right? Yeah. Um, so he was able to tell, and he had this like little device he plugged in and he spins it up with a hand wheel and like an old school pencil sharpener.
00:13:46
Speaker
And, uh, like a generator, I guess a generator. I don't know what he was doing, but his, um, we did that. You should get current. You should get, cause any AC motor can be a generator in backwards. He didn't spend the motor itself. He spun this device and I don't know. I don't know. Okay. Interesting. But, but it was cool. That's great.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, so I learned kind of how motors are put together. The rotor and the inside is relatively solid. All the windings are in the case on the outside, so the windings don't spin, just the solid shaft does. And he said there used to be rotor shafts that had windings on them, but it's super rare nowadays, like most people don't.
00:14:28
Speaker
But it's cool. So yeah, under $1,000. Two-day turnaround, it'll be back up. I can put it in myself. Problem solved. And it's pretty sweltering here now. Yeah. Especially with all the currents pumping out heat, all the machines.
00:14:42
Speaker
It's getting hot. Well, a trivial complaint compared to your last five days. Exactly. It's been hot here in Ohio and we have a new Fioc 10 horsepower compressor, a second one, and it puts off what seems like a
00:14:58
Speaker
huge increase in heat compared to the smaller compressor that we moved next door to the training classroom. And so it was sort of ironic. The old Atlas Copco that we had over here, I had it ducted up. We didn't have it going out, but we at least had it ducted up so the heat went.
00:15:15
Speaker
toward the ceiling. That went away when we saw the compressors last minute. And so the new one is also not ducted at all. And it is like an oven next to it. So I think for that reason and the fact that it's been hot and we just have so many machines now, our air conditioner has not really been able to keep up, which stinks. Yeah. Yeah. Our air conditioner, on the hottest days, we gain about five degrees. And it struggles. And you feel five degrees. Yeah.
00:15:44
Speaker
but it's fine. So are you, I mean, I give you kudos. I don't know if you're putting on your game pace, but, um, that's a, that's a really tough and frankly, unexpected. Like one thing, it's one thing if you did something yourself or, you know, you crashed a machine or, or, you know, you would cost it, but man, this is like no fault of your own. Exactly. And it's, yeah, it's, it's weird. So me and the other businesses were chatting and we're like,
00:16:11
Speaker
We're all really feeling the pinch on this and we didn't do anything wrong. I'm taking it now that it's fixed and I'm happy and the solution was found and everything's good. I'm just moving forward.
00:16:23
Speaker
game face on and get it done. Come together as a team, catch up. The guys lost hours too. I said, anybody want to work 10 hours or Saturdays or Sundays or whatever to catch up hours in productivity? I'm all in, let's go. We do have some catching up to do. I think by the end of the month, we can get back to where we were.
00:16:44
Speaker
I assume, I know this is now a podcast, so it doesn't always make sense to share everything, but I assume this is an annoyance, not more of a, hey, we're really in trouble for only four days. Yes and no. You lose a surprising amount of money in only four days. Yeah. Okay. The piggy bank is only so big, and it can take a massive hit out of that piggy bank, the cash on hand kind of thing. Yeah.
00:17:13
Speaker
So we're fine, but we're definitely snugger than we should have been. Yeah, it's a good way to call. It's a really good perspective too. It's one thing to run lean and tight and stuff, but weird stuff happens all the time. You could have a flood, you could have a tornado rip you apart, you can have anything. And there's insurance for that for sure. And we did actually look into loss of business interruption insurance. That's the one.
00:17:43
Speaker
We looked into it. There's a point, a tipping point, however many days or dollars or whatever of loss before it's worth it. And like four days is not quite there yet because they up your premiums and everything changes. And it probably takes a long time to process and all that stuff. So it's just a kind of PSA for all businesses out there. Like cash on hand is a wonderful thing.
00:18:10
Speaker
I'll tell you, I wish insurance was different. Do you really want to spend what's probably going to cost you thousands of dollars a year to insure against maybe tens of thousands of dollars of potential downtime from totally freak? You and I collectively have been running
00:18:32
Speaker
We've been running shops with vertical machining centers and three-phase power for each six or seven years at least so 14 years between the two of us This is the only time I've ever heard of something like that happening. Yeah, so if you think about let's make it up Let's say it was a $2,000 a year in premium. I mean across two of us Seven years each 14 years two thousand twenty thousand dollars Would we be happy sitting here having this conversation if you and I collectively spent twenty eight thousand dollars to insure against? Four days of downtime. I mean you don't need to respond to this you probably
00:19:02
Speaker
You probably lost $20,000, but it's also like, but it doesn't. It becomes a numbers game, right? Yeah. Yeah. We're chatting about it and trying to figure it out. Yeah. So it might be worth, sorry, go ahead. We're just going to move on. Only thing I would encourage is you might talk to an insurance agent about like an outlier policy where it's less, I don't know if they'll do this or not. That's where I feel like insurance has gotten less interesting, but
00:19:30
Speaker
You can only get paid if you're starting to claim a higher amount. So in other words, we're not going to claim this for $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000. But let's say your business is down for seven weeks, John. Yeah. But the problem is that the more they're on the hook, the more the premium is going to cost. So I'm not sure you're going to get anywhere with that. Yeah. Man.
00:19:55
Speaker
alternative source of power. Could you get a cat generator? The power company dropped off a generator Monday afternoon to power the six businesses or whatever, and it was a 600 volt 200 amp generator, which is essentially the same power as I have coming into my machine shop, but I don't use all of it.
00:20:18
Speaker
But so they actually wired that up to the pole so that the six of us could have power. And whether or not that's allowed or not, I'm not sure. But they did. So I had lights and stuff. But I'm like, I'm not going to run any machines because I kind of don't trust it. It's probably fine. But more specifically, I know they're just going to shut it off in a couple hours anyway.
00:20:40
Speaker
Once they fix everything, switch all the meters. While they were switching the meter in our front shop, I had power in the back shop. I was on Fusion. I was doing some things I had to do. I had lights, but I'm like, I know they're going to be done in a couple hours and switching back to main power and whatever. Some of our office guys came in and got some product up, got some work done. That was good. The generator works.
00:21:05
Speaker
When I saw the guy across the street get one delivered, I walked right over and I was like, So what's the story with that? Like, should I be getting one of those? And he said, No, it's the power company that put it here. They're gonna hook us up. Yeah. So I
00:21:19
Speaker
When I ever talked to Dennis Rathy, I find that he just thinks in a different way than I do. And that's usually big. And when he was trying to figure out how long it was going to take, I may be misquoting this, but how long it was going to take his new shop in Idaho to get the additional power, there was a question of a delay. And he just immediately fired off a request for a quote to some company to deliver to those truckload generators that you would see at like a 30,000 attendee concert or something.
00:21:49
Speaker
It's just funny because that's not my go-to thought, but you probably could have done that. Some of those things may not be as expensive as you think. Compared to the downtime, the down revenue and things like that, if it's a couple of thousand dollars a day and you're making much more than that, it could totally be worth it.
00:22:13
Speaker
But every day, every new transformer, it was like, Oh, this is going to work. This is going to work. Oh, they're going to take care of it. No problem. It's going to be done soon. And I mean, they don't want to blow up for transformers, like obviously, but we found it. It's everything's running. Everything's good now. So those transformers are, I understand is they're very expensive as well. I can imagine. Yeah. They don't, the power company hasn't alluded to like putting any of that bill onto you guys, have they? No. Um, and actually when our electrician,
00:22:40
Speaker
Our local guy came by and kind of did all the work for everybody. He asked the power company, and he's like, so am I charging the businesses? And they're like, no, no, charge us. This is on us. Oh, even for the work inside your shop? Yeah. Oh, that's a solid. So that's good. That's good. Yeah, that's great. Wire up that brother while you're at it. Exactly. And I told our electrician on Monday, I was like, whatever you got to do for billing, just bill us. Take care of it. We'll hook you up, I know.
00:23:09
Speaker
I was taking the responsibility there, but I'm really glad that the power company stood up. Is
Setting Up New Machinery
00:23:15
Speaker
it nationalized or private? Private. Okay. Yeah, wow. I mean, I truly am sorry. You can't live your life worrying about what's going to get thrown at you, but that's a tough one, John. Yeah, and you would never see this coming, but it was a fun experience. What are the other businesses in your little area? There's a powder coating shop across the street.
00:23:38
Speaker
an architectural outside panel manufacturer and some other little stuff.
00:23:48
Speaker
Well, I'd ask you how the Willamans going, but I don't know if you want to talk about that. I do. I'll talk about that, and then we'll talk about this video, and then I'll let you talk for a little bit. But I was all set with the Willaman. I made these two gorgeous vise jaws for the vise on the Willaman, and just finished them right before all this junk happened on Thursday. And that was one of my next things, was to put the jaws on the Willaman, to finish programming this one part I got to make,
00:24:16
Speaker
make a part and I'm there right now, I'm ready. So that'll be this week's project is to get that running. But now that I have the jaws, all I have to do is a couple of toolpaths to make this alignment pin that I need to make. Fairly simple part like simple turning, bore a hole, transfer to the vise, face the backside off, done. And that'll teach me how the vise works and how the U-axis aligns and all that stuff.
00:24:43
Speaker
So I'm really looking forward to that. And once I have that, then I have the kind of the whole picture of the Wilhelmin, you know, I have, I have the vice figured out now, and then I'll move on to the, doing the saga pocket clip. Yeah. That's awesome. That's great. Good for you. Okay. Tell me about, uh, the brother. I was getting it smooth, super good. So it came on Friday. We had power and then we didn't have power. Um,
00:25:13
Speaker
But yeah, it's a tiny little thing, forklifted off the machine. We had them put it directly onto our skates. Your advice, I forget if we said it on the podcast, I think we did last week, was incredibly helpful. Because it's a four-foot machine and four skates, and we definitely lost skates, lost traction, over the slightly uneven floors. Our floors look amazing, and they look flat, but they're clearly not super flat.
00:25:40
Speaker
So we're going along. We had five, six guys pushing and helping and everything. And every now and then one of the guys would be like, oh, skate, skate. It's losing. We did find rubber pads, kind of thin, like eighth inch thick hard rubber pads. Um, that helped a lot too. So the skates aren't, you know, sliding away. Um, but yeah, it is kind of nerve wracking, like having to follow a skate until it gains traction again.
00:26:03
Speaker
and very doable to push, but it certainly takes some effort to push it and stop it. It weighs probably just under 5,000 pounds, but it was good. I thought I could push it behind the kern. It's through a little gap to where it's going to live, not even close to going to fit there. We went around the kern fully and that was smooth, easy.
00:26:27
Speaker
push it right into place. It's still on the skates about a week later. Hasn't moved. We wrapped some shop towels around the wheels so that they don't move. It seems fine.
00:26:42
Speaker
Other electrician is here wiring up right now. It should have power today. And then the distributor's coming by tomorrow and Friday, so the next two days to install it properly. So we'll probably have to take it off the skates for now, rough level it, knowing we're going to have to move it again once the auto door goes in and the aroa gets hooked up. That's fine. No big deal. Another guy I know who has one is literally pallet jacking it around. Yeah, no big deal, right?
00:27:11
Speaker
And then yeah, so tomorrow and Thursday and Friday are installing it and.
00:27:15
Speaker
light training on this video. And then early next week, Bloom is coming to install the probes. Sweet. And do all that. And I actually have to make an adapter for the laser toolsetter, because the way I want to mount it with the thing on its side and off in the corner of the table, and it has to be up so many inches off the table, I have to create a spacer adapter to be able to mount it where I want to. So I'll be doing that before Monday.
00:27:43
Speaker
Fun. Yeah, it will be fun. I'm starting to think like, should I make it from aluminum or is thermal changes of the laser toolsetter growth aluminum? You know what I'm saying? I do. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. The thing is, the laser is made from aluminum and the brackets that they sent are aluminum. Yeah. But mine's going to be significantly taller.
00:28:09
Speaker
So, I don't know. I'll figure it out. Trying to recollect back to why Kern used aluminum in the build videos of the machine. So, it's number one, it's less weight, so it's easier to move around. Yeah. Kern said aluminum is very stiff and very good, and they thermally control everything.
00:28:26
Speaker
There's something about it as well. Is it thermally predictable or dissipates? It dissipates fast for sure. It radiates through more, I think. Look, if you're going to move, get up to speed, get up to temperature as quick as you can across the whole, quote, unquote, casting, and then we can regulate it versus a cast iron that kind of slowly warms up over. I'm making this up. You have to go watch the video again.
00:28:52
Speaker
With current keeping the whole machine at 20 degrees Celsius, it literally doesn't matter that it's aluminum or steel because there's no thermal growth. I don't think that's true. You get lots of hot spots. Yeah, maybe, yeah. But they've obviously FEA planned all this and thermal, blah, blah, blah. But on a machine that's not liquid cooled, the difference between aluminum and steel as far as growth per degree of temperature is like, I think it was 25 millionths per degree.
00:29:21
Speaker
So like four degrees and you're up a tenth in growth, which is, it gets to be somewhere.
00:29:29
Speaker
So anyway. Your shop's climate controlled. Yeah, it's pretty good. The Adam Demith tip of putting the fish tank bowl heater in your coolant, especially if it gets cold at night. Let's say your coolant would get as cold as 55 degrees. Well, this could keep it, I'm making this up, 62 degrees. It really helps take the chill off and it's cheap. They're cheap to buy, they're cheap to operate. So I would say solve it.
00:29:54
Speaker
kind of with your own version of thermal stability of like, look, warm them. And I don't know how much you're grinding, right? So is that diameter matter more than length? Oh, good question. Now the bloom probe so that the critical dimension is not the one that is going to flex. I have to think about that. Yeah, it's probably splitting atoms here at this point, but yeah.
00:30:23
Speaker
Any machine damage or tool damage because of mid-cycle power failures that put forward transformer explosions? Yeah. Three of the circuit breakers on the current tripped, so that was fun to find the source of all of those because I had to look in all the control panels of the chiller, of the machine, of the coolant tank chiller and all that stuff.
00:30:45
Speaker
It's just like a rotate clockwise little 90 degree flip switch that were tripped on a couple of them. The Kern gave warnings. They're like, chiller unit, not powered or whatever. It kind of put me in the right direction. There were three on the Kern. One of the main fuses for our big air compressor popped
00:31:09
Speaker
So yesterday I found that out, had another one put it in, little things like that. And the AC motor on the air conditioning. That's the biggest annoyance.
00:31:19
Speaker
I would probably take this as a teaching moment, learning moment with your insurance to say, to talk to your insurance agent and say, hey, I'm not sure if we're going to have machine damage yet. I hope you'll know soon. And what's it look like? Because that's where, boy, you could talk about five or six figures of damage, Shawn. And that's where you really want to know, do I have the right? Because ultimately, you do want the right coverage.
00:31:48
Speaker
Well, ideally, that's why everything is fused and everything is isolated and blah, blah, blah. It should just be popping fuses, not doing all this stuff. But weird stuff happens all the time. Yeah, I hear you. So that's my update.
Software and Operational Improvements
00:32:03
Speaker
Cool. Good. I've been meaning to talk a little bit about Lex, just how it's gotten to the next level over the last few months. We haven't talked about it much.
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah, so the progress has been partly because we now know what we need it to do. And it's because Alex has been back full time during the summer. And so he's been here to work more on it more intimately with the team. But really, it's because, you know, we built it to this point where we create
00:32:36
Speaker
work orders and those work orders would be created either manually because of a Kanban or a visual inventory sort of like, hey, we need it for because there were some products or instances where we were using Lex to correctly update
00:32:51
Speaker
inventory levels. So the sort of intelligent side that when somebody, when a Shopify sale occurs, it reduces the inventory quantities, that flows through everything. And that architecture exists, Shopify and Lex talk to each other on a regular schedule of some things it's every minute or two, some things it's every hour. But we basically have abandoned temporarily any true quantity stuff. Now we're going to probably come back to that, but
00:33:19
Speaker
You end up with a lot of noise where incorrect quantities create incorrect work orders or worse incorrect POs, and it was a little bit more work to audit those POs to make sure they were real. But what was happening was Julie was creating Google Sheets that updated the team of this combination of, hey, here's what Shopify says.
00:33:41
Speaker
Lex says, here's what I know our inventory is. Here's the priority. And they were, you know, anyone who's done the Excel work will know that says like, okay, you know, green is inventory. Orange is rush order. Purple is regular order where we have seven to 10 days. Like it was kind of one of those systems and is now gone and back into Lex. Yes, we have a work orders dashboard that screen can be customized per machine or per operator. It gives them priority.
00:34:08
Speaker
And it's helped us make really key decisions. They sound obvious, but they weren't intuitive at the time, which is, again, let's say we need to make product A, five of product A, five of product B for order as well. It's better to make eight or nine of product A
00:34:27
Speaker
while you're set up for it before you switch to product B. But the things you need to know about that are, what if trailing 90 salesmen for product A? Well, Lex tells us right there now. And when is product B due to be shipped? And so if I have six more business days, no big deal. But if product B needs to go to the customer tomorrow, then obviously you've got to make that decision. That all exists. Yes. Yeah.
00:34:49
Speaker
It gives you and your whole team the ability to make decisions with the right data in front of them and enough logic and approval from you guys to do that. Yeah. The only other lesson that we learned, this is kind of like third level is
00:35:05
Speaker
Let's say we had seven to 10 business days as a coded lead time on an out of stock product that somebody then purchased. So hey, we have seven to 10 business days. It's wonderful to ship that sooner, but we actually don't need to, especially if it makes more sense to keep producing another product. But we still want a little bit of a buffer on that lead time. Where we almost got bit was then if
00:35:31
Speaker
Um, more, how did this happen? If more stuff came in, can't think it wasn't, we don't really do rush or expedites because it's just, we have done them, but it's not really fair that it then puts stress on other orders. If you will, can't think of what it was, but you basically don't want to be planning to the max.
00:35:50
Speaker
You don't want to plan on a production schedule that uses up all 10 of 10 business days because if something happens, you're too far away. So we're kind of like, hey, let's make sure we don't over produce inventory when there could be a reason we need to make sure we have that.
00:36:04
Speaker
That was that. And then the Lex has an order queue, so it really doesn't automatically push any POs. It could, but we haven't done that for years now. And geez, I think Lex is up on its 600th PO and 1000th RFQ or something. Nice.
00:36:21
Speaker
So each of us kind of maintains our own responsibility around the order queue. So if I'm putting stuff in it, I'll leave it there. And then I'll be the one to push it similarly with other folks in the shop. But what was confusing was, take, for example, end mills. Well, I may have added some end mills in there. And then Garrett may have added some end mills. They might be the same supplier, different SKUs or
00:36:46
Speaker
whatever you call it, what do they call it, EDPs? Or it may have been, coincidentally, it may have been the same tool from the same supplier, but we have different Lex IDs because one Lex ID is for the VF2, one Lex ID is for the horizontal. It's easier for us to do it that way. Well, then it gets confusing as to who ordered what and if we need to ask somebody or figure out what it is.
00:37:09
Speaker
We added comment fields next to the order queue. This is inspired by McMaster-Carr that allows you to add your own comments, which could be your own part number, note to yourself who is for. I've been using that a lot. Oh my gosh. Having it in Lex is wonderful. This morning came up with the acronym HUM, H-U-M, which is hold until more.
00:37:33
Speaker
Nice. Because a lot of times Grant just added Tormach 440, 70, 75 aluminum in our aluminum RFQ order queue. Well, we don't need that for like two months. So we'll hold that until there's more material in there to get better pricing. And Hum tells us what we need to know. Nice. Yeah, I recently added a similar shopping cart to our group system or shopping list where
00:38:00
Speaker
You can add an item to it either from our current inventory of things that are in GURP or just a quick order item, like something that's not in there. It sorts it by vendor and what priority you needed, 1-5, the date you logged it, whatever.
00:38:19
Speaker
Shopping list. I've got some stuff from Canadian Tire, just our hardware store. Next time I order from 3D printing Canada, I want to get these filaments. Three things from Willamyn, I want a 375 call it, a half inch call it, and an extra door interlock key. I don't need those things now, but the next time I'm ordering from those places, I want the list that I can reference. That's been up for a couple days and already I've got 10 things in it. I'm like, this is so sick.
00:38:45
Speaker
Next time I'm in the hardware store, I'm like, didn't I need something? And I look at that and it's there.
00:38:50
Speaker
Yvonne does a lot of our bookkeeping now and she, in a very fun way, kind of got on me. She's like, you know how much money you're spending on McMaster cars shipping? And we don't have a policy around this, but I did kind of say, hey, let's order McMaster every Thursday unless if you need a good Greek order. But we were spending a lot of money. They just make it so easy. And really, nobody thinks about that until the accountant's looking at it or somebody's looking at the balances and typing in all the shipping fees.
00:39:21
Speaker
You mentioned 3D printing, two totally random PSAs. Garrett figured out, and both of these may be well-known to everybody out there, but either way, you can now buy filament without the roll or the spool. Okay. So he's printing some Thingiverse spool that saves you money. But honestly, I'm not the greenest person out there, but it does feel silly to be throwing away the smart plastic piece every time you go through a kilogram of filament. So we're going to try that out. Cool. I didn't know that.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah, not the worst thing in the world if you save...
00:39:54
Speaker
couple bucks on the filament. And some of them have cardboard, which feels a little bit better. Yeah, I just learned that there's a manufacturer in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, like right where Phil moved that makes manufacturers their own filament in Canada right there. And they use cardboard spools and their performance PLA supposed to be better. And the pricing is pretty much what everybody else charges. So that's in my card is like next time I need filament, I want to try those ones because they sound great and like support Canada and
00:40:24
Speaker
I
3D Printing Innovations
00:40:24
Speaker
don't know where other filaments are made, but probably not here. Yeah, right? The other thing is Prusa has a option where you can program a dwell or a pause in the middle of a print.
00:40:37
Speaker
For color change, I've seen that. Okay, sorry. I didn't know about this. It's been around for a long time, but you don't know about it really. What we use it for now is we're printing more inserts for chip evacuation by giving us better sheet metal geometry. You have 3D printed parts. By programming a pause, you can put a magnet in and then it gets 3D printed over. Does it not get sucked up to the nozzle or something? I know the nozzle is usually brass, but the housing is not?
00:41:06
Speaker
It works. Not my department, John. Sorry. I'm just playing messenger here. No, I guess they're usually aluminum, like hot heat block. And I don't know. I've just never done it. Every time I see somebody do it, I'm like, doesn't it get stuck to something? In the spirit of being very wholesome, if it is a massive fail, I will report back. Not next week, but the week thereafter.
00:41:27
Speaker
But yeah, Pearson was just talking about that too last week. Oh, yeah, about 3d printing magnets in place. That's amazing. Like you could even add a drop of superglue to keep it stuck if you're really concerned about that. Oh, good call. Right over it. So I love it. Well, I agree printing over that means you don't have to secure the magnet with a screw, which is great. And the best thing you can then use a
00:41:47
Speaker
your hand if you're brave or a putty knife to clean the thing off, because that's the thing I hate about magnets in a shop. I have noticed that 3D printing and magnets, if the interference layer of 3D print is too thick, you lose a lot of magnetism. For sure. Even if it's an inch thick, you're going to lose a ton of magnetism. You're going to do a layer or two. Whatever.
00:42:15
Speaker
I want to start adding rubber O-rings to the contact surface of a magnetic 3D print part to add traction. Say that more, Tim? You know how at McMaster you can buy those encapsulated magnets with a thread on the back?
00:42:32
Speaker
Yeah. I've been buying tons of those, but they're kind of expensive. And it's like it's rubber encapsulated things. So it's got super good traction. Yes. Because it's solid rubber and very strong magnet. So in a 3D print, when you put a magnet in place and it's just a flat 3D print, it's super slippery on the metal surface. Like it'll slide all over the place. Sure, sure. But I want to 3D print an O-ring groove. So you slap an O-ring in there for traction, for grip. Oh, OK. I see.
00:43:02
Speaker
So FYI,
00:43:05
Speaker
If we're talking about the same things, because McMaster does sell these rubber-coated magnets, you can actually buy them direct from kjmagnetics.com. K as in kale, that's a terrible word, sorry, K as in kindergarten, J as in John, magnetics.com. The product that we buy is RMD-B-X8, I can probably put it in the description, and they are under six bucks a piece for quantity one.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the same one. Yeah, those are bigger. But yeah, and they're fantastic. They're like... They are great. So good. At McMaster, they're like nine bucks each or something.
00:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, but your wife will get on you if you ever spend a McMaster. Let me tell you. I don't know.
Episode Wrap-up and Future Plans
00:43:52
Speaker
Part of me brought that up mostly because I got so, magnets are like the one thing that we order from all over the place. We order some from eBay, some from Amazon, some from like specialty magnet websites. So I had to create a magnet Excel file that lists all the magnets that we buy and why we use them and from which source we get those. How come that's not in Lex yet?
00:44:14
Speaker
Uh, for a good reason, Lex needs to be for, uh, purchasing, not procurement. We don't, we don't noise up Lex with stuff. It's just like MRO or just doesn't need to be in there. What's MRO mean? Maintenance or parent operations. Like I didn't know that.
00:44:34
Speaker
Um, you know, me or Ed or somebody can order magnets once, twice a year. Now, what we are going to start doing is getting better about shared assets within Saunders machine works for, for like overall resources. Um, and this could be something that gets moved into there because it's my Excel file right now for no good reason, but, um, you know, Asana is decent for now about sure team, or we do have a lot of Google sheets, although that's probably getting to be a cluttered mess at this point with all the different sheets. But, um, anyway, yeah. Nice.
00:45:02
Speaker
I'm a stickler for, I know I've kind of gotten on my soapbox about this before, but I care a lot about Lex having what we need but not what we don't need. If I were to add every little soap dispenser and screwdriver and flyer and other stuff. I get it and I'm there too.
00:45:25
Speaker
I would want GURP to have everything or almost everything and display it well. Sort and organize in a way that's not cluttering. Not every paper towel roll. You could though. Excellent. Well, I'm going to go check on my speedio and how the power is coming along. Awesome. Put those jaws on the Willyman and maybe make something today. I'm taking next week off. Perfect.
00:45:54
Speaker
I'll see you in two weeks. Sounds good. Yeah. So we'll skip next week. Skip next week. Sorry, everybody. Sounds great. Sorry. See you, bud. Okay. Take care. All right.