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The Ultimate Person To Tell you You're Right Or Wrong Is Failure
224 Plays6 years ago
John & John slowly start getting back to "normal". Grimsmo knives are starting to get back to full operations again after a 7 week shut down. The boys take this time to reflect about organizing and managing their time. Saunders' also dabbles in "S tools" for organizing tools.
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Transcript
Introduction to Passion for Manufacturing
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 171. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And this is the podcast where two friends have a, you know, intimate and somewhat private conversation about the industry that they're completely obsessed with manufacturing. How are you? I'm excellent. I'm feeling great today. Good. Awesome. I am the same. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:00:30
Speaker
We are back to work. Awesome. Yeah. We're easing into it this week, but the next week will be full bore. But for the most part, I mean, most of the guys are in this week, which is cool. That's kind of feel great. It's weird.
00:00:46
Speaker
I wasn't in yesterday. Yesterday was the first day. So today's the first day that I'm going to feel it and see everybody, which I haven't yet because I just ran up to my office and started this podcast. But yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Obviously, we're being careful and new procedures and stuff. But yeah, it's feeling good. It's time. I think we were off for seven weeks.
00:01:09
Speaker
Wow.
Travel Inspiration and Daily Work Challenges
00:01:10
Speaker
It's nuts. Yeah. Blur. Yeah. No, I mean, I loved my quarantine time and I got a lot of like me stuff done here in the shop. That was actually fantastic. So I'm glad I got to utilize that time and, you know, learn the current really, really well and complete. And, um, I still have so much to learn, but, uh, it was, that was pleasant for, from a selfish perspective. Yeah.
00:01:36
Speaker
That's the question. It very much reminds me of something I know I've talked to you about, which is when I return from a trip, and the trips that come to mind tend to be when I go to a place like California, where there's just a different energy and activity buzz, and also Europe, partly because you become, I think, much more open to listening and seeing different ways and absorbing stuff.
00:02:04
Speaker
And I love that. But you and you have this inspiration and this different perspective and certainly in some sense, a change of pace, which is so key to the human nature. We need some variety is the spice of life. But the question is not whether that happens or not. It's how do you then perpetuate that? How do you keep that as some part of the of the future of the new normal?
Michael Jordan's Mindset and Personal Productivity
00:02:27
Speaker
You're absolutely right because I feel that too. After I go on a trip or see a different shop or different country or whatever, you do come back with this renewed sense of vision or even just go to IMTS and you come back and your eyes are open. You're like, whoa, but then what do you do? It's so easy to just fall back into normal. And in normal day to day, we're all more or less on autopilot. You come in, you do your stuff, even if it's new projects.
00:02:52
Speaker
Steady and then you go and you get this other perspective And how do you apply that to what you do? You just start
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, there's no magic answer. And if there's anything I would be super candid about, it's just the countless ways I've failed in that recense. And I think of to-do lists, and I used to have this PowerPoint thing, and I used to have morning huddles with myself, with my wife.
00:03:22
Speaker
I used to go to Panera or Starbucks and think, and like none of these, going back to it, were sustainable or scalable. Scalable is not really the best word there, but scalable in the sense that they, it works as a system that helps me be the, be a better person implies that you're, it's not that I want to be better, it's that I don't want to be complacent, right? Of course you want to be better. I get it. Yeah, but it's interesting. You gotta grow.
00:03:50
Speaker
Yes. But man, I finished that Michael Jordan documentary last night.
Evolving Task Management Strategies
00:03:57
Speaker
And I'll tell you, man, that guy is just an absolute inspiration to me in a way that's so odd because I don't, you know, it's about as far from my sports and culture and all that stuff, NBA, basketball.
00:04:13
Speaker
They talk about being present, and it's a really powerful thing that Michael Jordan, if you had to make a pressure shot, but so many people would think, oh man, what are the odds I'm going to make that shot? Or have I made that shot before? Can I make that shot? Michael Jordan
00:04:35
Speaker
just lived in the present and he knew he could make that shot. He knew he was incredibly good. And again, recognizing that he was involved in the production, although I've already heard that he never asked for anything to be cut or refilmed to portray him differently. So it seems quite candid. He has that wonderful balance of confidence, but not cockiness.
00:05:00
Speaker
But that's incredibly meaningful. Like live in the present. Don't criticize yourself and live in your past mistakes, but then also don't think in the future, I'll be different. No, be different now. Yeah. Cause now, like I've heard people say now is the only moment that we can control because the past already happened. The future is not here yet. Like it's the live in the now mentality. Um, and it's not easy. It takes, it takes effort and thought and, uh, focus.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, I've done a few things I have kind of changed over the past two months. I've done less to-do list stuff. I still do keep a notepad of a to-do list. It does work well for me. It's a task type to-do list more so than a goal to-do list though. So like right now on it, I've got to take a look at a real estate issue lease here. I've got an email, a customer on a part. I've got a, um,
00:05:56
Speaker
or pay somebody, I want to look at a teachables thing, stuff like that. What I've stopped doing is adding to-do list items that I can just go do. And I don't know if I've struck the right balance, but if I need to, if I remembered that there's a letter F drill in the UMC and I wanted to pull it out, that doesn't go on my to-do list. I just go do it right now.
00:06:19
Speaker
And I'm still figuring that out, but I tend to like it because at the end of the day, I got it done. I didn't write, take the time to write it. I didn't take the time to read it and decide if I'm going to do it, which happens like count numerous times. And you're wasting that energy. I'm thinking, well, should I go remove that letter after all this time or this second? No, I got something. I can check my email. I can check Instagram likes as stupid.
00:06:43
Speaker
And at the end of the day, I've still gotten the big stuff I wanted to get done, and then I've also found that I do a better job of getting through the little stuff.
Balancing Big Projects and Small Tasks
00:06:53
Speaker
That's awesome. And I'm glad that you're constantly evolving this process over the past few years. I mean, me too. And I'm never satisfied with the process right now, because I have some prioritizing flaws that I'm realizing more and more over time.
00:07:11
Speaker
The thing that I have trouble with is I write down big things and I write down little things. A lot of times the little things can't be done in the moment. If I'm at home and I want to remove that letter after ill,
00:07:24
Speaker
I need a way to remember that, otherwise it'll be gone until the moment when it needs to be done, you know? And sometimes that's okay. So sometimes I'll write down big things, sometimes I'll write down little things, except the problem is you just get this massive to-do list of fluff and some are important and some are not, but they're all important in the moment because you're writing them down and you're excited about them.
00:07:49
Speaker
But then how do you then tackle that list and chew through it? And like, I'm not good at analyzing that list and being like, well, clearly, if I do this, then everything else falls into place. So I'm always trying to work on that. Don't you use Trello? I haven't so much the past few months, but in general, I do. I have a lot in Trello. OK. Well, having a lot in Trello is different than using it. Look, my
00:08:18
Speaker
I would push you to be uncomfortable in the sense of find what works. So what I have found is if I write something on my to-do list, that's fine. I'm kind of allowed to do that. This is semi-subconscious, by the way, but you're forcing me to enumerate it.
00:08:36
Speaker
What I would do if I were you, especially if it's the case where stuff that gets written out at home, when you go into the shop, don't do anything else. Go look at that to-do list. And let's say you've got to do three things. Now, sure, sometimes it's inconvenient to take the tool out of the current. You've got to boot the current up. I get it. But generally speaking, I think you'll be better off not
00:08:57
Speaker
over-complicating it, not delaying it, procrastinating on it, or outsource it. If it's that, email Sky or Angelo and say, hey, pull out tool 27 and then let me know when you're done and I'll then do the rest of it. Or I'll go put it in the PG Rego machine and then do what I need to do on the tool. That's okay. You're allowed to do that.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yep, yep, for sure. And sometimes, like, as I've
Delegation and Time Management
00:09:22
Speaker
been coming in for my own solo quarantine time, I've been in the past week or so, I've been trying to write down, you know, three to five things, tasks that I want to accomplish, whether they're big or small. If I can crush this five list, then I'm super happy, then the days will win. But some of them are tiny, take me minutes, some of them are like,
00:09:40
Speaker
I've had days where I took a big one on and it took me the whole day and that's all I accomplished. It was like, make this part on the Swiss. Oh, that was the day and I get to the end of the day and I'm like, I didn't even look at the rest of the list because this just consumed my day. And that's not a bad thing either. But I sometimes I'd rather tackle the big things and make progress on them than like have a day full of little things that maybe don't matter as much.
00:10:03
Speaker
But if the little thing turns into a big thing, number one, I think that's hopefully less common and you'll learn, you know, you'll turn yourself into artificial intelligence, but real intelligence where you'll realize you'll get a better sense of what's not so small. But then also, that's not a valid excuse to never then go tackle the little things. If it's switching into a big thing, quit it.
00:10:27
Speaker
I can't do that. I get sucked into my own projects. Sometimes they're very important and sometimes I falsely tell myself that they're very important until I get to 80-90% done and I realize, man, that was stupid. Why did I just spend all day working on that? Do you ever have that?
00:10:50
Speaker
I think that's probably where you and I are a little different. I have a funny short story to share, which is very much in the same vein, which is that we're getting some water in our airlines. Fast forward, short version. We thought our air dryer was broken. There's one thing I don't know that much about because it just
00:11:09
Speaker
I just don't is refrigeration systems because is it, you know, frozen over? Is it some oil pressure by fast valve refrigerant? You know, just the stuff doesn't make sense to me like mechanical parts do. So I was kind of like, oh, boy, I had to deal with it. So I grabbed my multimeter and I start reading the diagram and the book and thinking, hey, how can I let this things figure this thing out? And I really geared up for it to be something that I'm going to focus. I'm not going to multitask it. I'm going to go focus. I'm capable of at least figuring out if I need to.
00:11:39
Speaker
replace it or call for proper service, which would be probably quite expensive.
Role of Failure in Business Systems
00:11:44
Speaker
Long story short, we are opening up that dividing wall between the two shops to move machines back and forth more easily, and they had shut the breaker off.
00:11:55
Speaker
And what's stupid is that I knew they were doing that. I knew breakers were off. I foolishly thought that I remembered that the dryer was on the same circuit as the compressor. And had I gotten out of my own way and just thought to go back to the absolute basics. So if you're listening to this right now and you're screaming at me, continue to scream, please. Just go check the basics. NPI, not plugged in. Nice.
00:12:24
Speaker
Yeah, I often overcomplicate projects and tasks and things like that, problem solving. I often default to a more complicated version until I go through it a bit and then I realize the simpler version. And I've found
00:12:40
Speaker
I'm not happy with it but i found that that's my method that i have to do that to find the simple version like i was designing a fixture the other day and i spent hours on it and i was going for i was trying to keep it simple but it ended up being kind of complex.
00:12:56
Speaker
And then it didn't work for a couple reasons for manufacturability, like I couldn't reach a tool in there. And then I was like, you know what, let's just go back to the other design, the simple design, and kill the last like four hours of work. And I'm happier with it. And it's way, way easier to make. And I'm like, man, why did I just waste all that time? But I kind of had to scratch that issue. And I kind of had to, I don't know, had to get through it to find to see the light.
00:13:21
Speaker
I actually think that's awesome, John. That's hard press to criticize. I mean, in some respects, you were willing to cut bait. You were willing to recognize it was at some cost, time to move on. That's actually pretty sweet. Yeah. And that recognition is getting stronger in me, which is good. I'm glad to see that actually growing, realizing that I'm wasting my time. And I just read yesterday, treat time as if it's your money.
00:13:49
Speaker
As if it's an asset, a finite resource. If you have $24,000 or $24,000 hours, whatever, you're going to treat it differently. I read that yesterday. I might try to keep that in mind a little bit throughout the next few days.
00:14:05
Speaker
It's honestly far, far more valuable than money because. Yeah, for sure. Look, I know you well enough to know, and I will absolutely say this with true honesty that I don't care about money. I have food. I have a happy family, happy marriage. I have a shop of CNC machines. I love what I do. Adding dollars to my bank account isn't going to change. We've had this conversation before, and I had a date to talk about it because sometimes it sounds
00:14:31
Speaker
It comes off as odd. But no, I would much rather have more time than more money. And so what you're saying, it's interesting because I always hear these things about minimum viability analysis and a fail-fast, fail-cheap, which I've even said. But sometimes you
ERP Systems and Effective Solutions
00:14:47
Speaker
just got to go down that rabbit hole. Yep. Sometimes I find myself living in that rabbit hole. And it comes at the expense of getting tasks done.
00:14:59
Speaker
which is the pain point of it. I love that rabbit hole, but if I haven't ordered end mills in a week and I've had to, it's been on my list and I just keep putting it off because the rabbit hole is more fun or whatever, that's a bad thing. Those little things that might take five minutes or even 40 minutes to organize and figure out what you need to get and all that, sometimes I brush those off too far and it causes problems down the road.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think the lesson that somebody would try to impart is that you can live in the rabbit hole so long as you're willing to pay other people to mow the grass or let somebody else drive the lawn mower. Look, you're the business leader. You got to come to this decision on your own, but you just got to do a better job of getting that stuff off your plate, period. Agreed. Agreed. 100%.
00:15:53
Speaker
Yep, that this problem and this is where leadership changes when you're in the leadership position is that the ultimate
00:16:04
Speaker
The ultimate person to tell you whether you're right or wrong is failure and potentially failure of the business in that sense. Right. That's there's no other adult or supervisor that's going to tell you you are doing this incorrectly. And, you know, if you want to be the I always think of Steve Jobs when I think about your stories on these things about how he could just pour himself into those details. But he had a framework of team of people around him to take care of everything else. And he did so in a profitable enough
00:16:34
Speaker
product line and business scheme where the numbers worked. And I think that's your potential. You just got to do a better job of executing on it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, everything.
00:16:49
Speaker
I actually wrote down that quote, the ultimate person to tell you you're right or wrong is failure. I love that. Oh, no, don't love that. That's scary as heck. Heck is not the word I would have said if this was a podcast. Because that's what I'm still concerned about is the last 10 years plus have been a pretty good run for most of
00:17:10
Speaker
earth and you want to be able to be nimble and and pivot and recognize things may not and things shouldn't always be this good and I I want you to be able to live in those rabbit holes but have those other systems in place and boy now's the time like I don't I don't even want to talk about this anymore because because talk is cheap gotta do it yeah yeah exactly
00:17:36
Speaker
And look, just to be clear, I'm in the same boat too. We need to figure out ERP or you know, we're now ordering material every day and there's no like we're ordering the same material in different days because we don't realize we need it.
00:17:51
Speaker
by no means am I in a position where I can actually speak with, I know, I know what we need to do, but I also need to own up on this. Well, and that's the fun thing about this, you and I, when we do, when we go on our little rants, a lot of times we're talking to ourselves, you know, it sounds like we're, you know, yelling at each other, but a lot of times it's, it's coming from a place of goodness. Yeah. Well, the latest thing I'm chewing on is abandoning my, uh,
00:18:16
Speaker
a rash or my goal of an ERP system truly being comprehensive because yeah it might help you it stops it's stopping it from happening I like I like zero for our accounting it works and I like Shopify is actually working out great for us I want to come back to that so an ERP system
00:18:38
Speaker
Good. It's like Rob was saying in the WhatsApp chat the other day. He's like, any company who says they have an all-in-one system is completely full of it. It's like they're always going to use Google Sheets for this little task and QuickBooks for this little... I think you wrapping your head around the fact that two or three systems or website accounting are separate, and then you have your management software. That would get it done. Yeah.
00:19:04
Speaker
We can argue about that, but my breath would be better spent just doing it. Let's say you get Odoo, and I think they have a free open source version, which doesn't come with support, but maybe it's simple. What we need is actually quite simple. We just need a simple order inventory tag.
00:19:24
Speaker
procurement, it's not that complicated. If I can't implement that, who am I to... That's what business is. That's the difference between being a machinist and owning a machine shop is the difference between being good at making parts and being good at setting up systems that help you make parts. Exactly. Stepping it back, running the business, looking at the bigger picture. That's what
Inventory Tracking and Productivity Integration
00:19:47
Speaker
we're shooting for too. We're shooting for
00:19:49
Speaker
inventory of materials, inventory and flow of parts throughout the shop, you know, costing and not so much costing, but the cost of an anvil and the cost of materials that when you're ordering more, all the information is there, you know, you know, all your suppliers, you know, where it comes from, you know, how much you usually order, things like that. And then I also really want to tie in process details, what do you call it like, like,
00:20:15
Speaker
Instruction sheets, setup sheets, how to do something. All the information, even for each endmill, I want to start adding notes to that page on the endmill. Be like, well, if we're running it in steel, it's happy at these settings. On the mori, it's good like this. On the current, it's good like this. And just to have a text box where I can word vomit some helpful information per tool, per machine, per setup, per job, per part that we're making. And we've been working on that with my dad for the past
00:20:41
Speaker
a little while. We kind of took a break the past four or five months, but I want to get back into it now. I'm really excited about that. Yeah, I hear you. I got to mention too, the part of our stress of ordering is tying back to the bundles that we pushed out through Shopify. I think I mentioned this to you or on the podcast.
00:21:05
Speaker
At some point, if you now go to any of our fixture plates, we have different tiers of bundles, but the way we program them is awesome because when you add the bundle, part of the bundle package may be the plugs. Well, the bundles are smart enough to know that it adds the correct quantity of plugs for the fixture plate that you're starting from.
00:21:27
Speaker
Um, but we didn't have to do it by adding like dozens of different plug skews. There's one plug skew. Uh, actually there's two because we sell them in different quantity presets, but like it's smart enough to know, okay, 1100 plate, you need, I think 600 plugs, but a VF two plate, you need 1100 plugs or whatever. And so it takes the onus off the user to figure that out. It's just turnkey quick and, uh,
00:21:50
Speaker
For our packing slips and for the customer's shopping cart, it puts it all in there individually, which means they can adjust the quantities as they see fit. We see it on a line by line basis, which means we're picking order inventory as we store inventory, meaning we're not going to create bundles on our inventory rack and store them for each plate.
00:22:12
Speaker
No. So incredibly pleased with that, which ties back to not only what I was talking about with not worrying about the or getting better job at handling sales increases, but then also Shopify is crushing it there. And I'm now not worried or interested in switching our whole e-commerce over to the integrated ERP style solution because the Shopify thing is just working.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah, you get into these semi-custom solutions and you just realize how well they work. Like how we've got our Maker's Choice system with a spreadsheet and Shopify tied together and emails get picked and scripts run in the background.
00:22:53
Speaker
It took us years to fine tune this, and it just works. I'm very hesitant to change that up. So let's build around it for now, anyway, until maybe a point in the future when we can step back and redesign the whole thing and make an integrated package from the start. But for now, it's just we have other fish to fry. We got other much more important things to tackle down and organize and do better at.
00:23:20
Speaker
The ultimate lesson, though, that I think ties this whole thing together is bundles were just one of the many kind of, quote unquote, tasks on my to do list. And we got them done. And I wouldn't say we procrastinated or delayed. But had I realized how helpful that they would be, what a great sales tool that they would be, marketing tool,
00:23:42
Speaker
bringing in revenue. Revenue is the oxygen of business. It is absolutely addictive to see you're succeeding, to see that what you're doing is working. It just fires you up. And boy, had I realized that, I would have further prioritized bundles on my list.
00:24:02
Speaker
And so think about that, you know, interesting. It's great that you want to be grimsmo and spend four hours on a clamp. Like I love you for that. But you can afford to do that when you launch whatever your equivalent of bundles type of thing is, which helps you keep the business going, especially as a process outside of you that lets you then do that.
Wireless Camera System for Shop Monitoring
00:24:24
Speaker
Yeah. It gives you the confidence to know that big things are happening, um, either in the background by other people or, or you've put in the groundwork first, and then you can step back and play and visionize and, and, you know, grow things like that. But yeah, the critical things happening, especially the growth things like your bundles example, um, that drives everything. Yeah. Yeah. This is good.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah. Love it. Can I change the subject? Yeah, please. I wanted to say thank you to everybody. We had so many people send in suggestions. The leading two suggestions for remote cameras systems or easy to use camera systems were drum roll backup cameras for vehicles, aftermarket backup cameras, and baby monitors.
00:25:16
Speaker
ends up that aftermarket backup camera is excellent. We bought one, which I'll throw the link into the description, which is wireless, like 100 bucks, works phenomenal. Literally, you turn it on, and as soon as you push the on button, you have a live image. So next, I'll hook it up to an Arduino or maybe even just a
00:25:35
Speaker
like a 555 delay with a Prox or motion sensor. Basically when you walk anywhere near it, it turns on for 10 seconds and then it turns itself back off. It is instantaneous. It is cheap and it's wireless and it plugs in like I love it. So thank you to everybody. That's amazing. So what, what again, where are you going to put it? Why do you want that again?
00:25:58
Speaker
For now, we're putting one on the ball valve in the far corner of our shop that is our extra air tank. Now, the potentially better option would be to automate that ball valve, and there's electronic electromechanical inline ball valves, or you can actually buy aftermarket bolt-on things that will open and close ball valves externally.
00:26:21
Speaker
I'm not necessarily against that, but you quickly go down the rabbit hole of introducing more complexity or things that can break or run risk when we do a decent job of shutting it off manually, and I'm okay with that. I want to know if it's off without having to walk over to it.
00:26:40
Speaker
And then I took that one and moved it over to the Haas this morning just to test it out. But it looks like it's also going to do a great job of giving us a, and this is a little bit more of the backup camera use, if you will. But I have it pointed at our tool changer, which just gives you a live feed view of the ATC from the control panel. Love it.
00:27:04
Speaker
Yeah, so when you want to pull up that empty pocket, you just see which one's empty, or it might help identifying other tools. I'm not sure, because the resolution and the angle of it, and frankly, our S-Tool system is better at that and works great. John, this morning I came in. We're done with that Datron longboard truck project, so I had a bunch of tools in the UMC to pull out. And literally, I just went down the S-Tools list. I was like, oh, don't want that tool in there anymore. Don't want that tool.
00:27:32
Speaker
end mills and taps and drills. I just pull out, throw the tag back on it because the tags comes out of the plastic machine rack, put it on the cat 40 collar, goes back in the rack. Everything is organized, labeled. I cleaned out the UMC like it just is awesome. Nice. And you left all the tools set up in their holders?
00:27:52
Speaker
with the exception of one metric tap that we won't use likely in the next year. And there were two super long relieved shank helical end mills that I love, but those I'm willing to set back up again later. Right, of course. So I forget, is S-Tools the end mill itself or is it the end mill holder assembly or is it both? To quote Rob Lockwood, it is a, actually I don't even know if this is his phrase, it's a rotating tool assembly.
00:28:22
Speaker
Yeah. So it's the holder and the Dan Mill and everything. Yeah. With a approximate stick out value.
00:28:29
Speaker
Do you have something for just loose tools? Like you buy 10-minute end mills, they go in the drawer as an S tool or what? Yep. So I'm going to answer your question differently. We have a separate system called Alex, which is a tool library of super weird tools that we don't use very often that don't deserve to really ever be left set up. But we want to know where they are. Lollipop end mills, as an example, or corner radius tools.
00:28:54
Speaker
S tools though, we currently have bins for I think 200 and some. Not everyone has to be set up. I may not, I don't, but they still have an S number and so that's where they go. And I could get you any tool out of the S system in 10 seconds, 30 seconds.
00:29:20
Speaker
Okay, so you have, let's say you have a quarter inch end mill in an S100, and that quarter inch end mill has its own bin with like five more end mills, and that's S100 bin. Yep, correct. Okay, so those end mills are now dedicated for that RTA, that holder. That's correct. And what if you use that end mill on a different machine?
00:29:44
Speaker
S-Tools is not machine specific. S-Tools is RTA's period. It could be used in theory in any machine now. It tends to be more for the machines that were swapping stuff out. So like the VM3 has its own dedicated set of tools. The VF2 has its own dedicated set of tools, et cetera. Nice. Yeah, I was thinking about that the other day in the shop and I was like, I got to take that on. I'm going to call it G-Tools or something. Yeah, no, sure.
00:30:12
Speaker
And it's just a great way. It gives you your own naming convention just to store and organize and manage more stuff. And I love it. Yeah. We have a video on the NYC page and information twice. I need to do a more like full blown. I was going to say it's a private video and there's like 197 views on it.
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah, I wanted to I wanted to polish it out and then coming back full circle to the beginning of this podcast. There are so many things I have failed at or rather have implemented with with passion and then realize they don't work. This this works.
00:30:50
Speaker
So now I'm ready to kind of put my stamp on it. And like you said, you've been putting months into this, like three or six months developing your system. And in a year you'll be more happy with it. But the progress you made so far is it's simple, but it's so effective and most guys aren't doing it, myself included, you know?
00:31:12
Speaker
I have another change of subject, which is a question for you. How do you transfer stuff like pictures or videos from your phone to your computer?
File Transfer Methods: Phone to Computer
00:31:24
Speaker
For my phone, I use a program called Feme. Spell it. It's just an F-E-E-M. OK. It's an app, just an app for your phone. It works OK. And especially with the video editor, whether it was Aaron or Fraser now,
00:31:41
Speaker
No, I don't even use that anymore. I use Google Drive. OK. Because I used to use FiM more because it could send pictures directly to another device on your Wi-Fi system. So I would just send pictures or videos directly to Erin's computer, and then she'd have them already. But now, especially through quarantine or whatever, anything I film on my phone or our Canon camera, actually, I set up a Google Drive folder called Vlog26, and then
00:32:09
Speaker
Everything from the Canon, I dump in there in the end of the day, load it up, Fraser can edit from home. Anything from my phone, I dump it onto the Google Drive 2. And as long as your Wi-Fi is decently fast, then it's a fine system. So that's how I do it right now.
00:32:24
Speaker
My issue with Google Drive is twofold. Number one, it still requires it to be uploaded to the cloud and then downloaded to the device, which takes more time than if it were to directly be transferred, like the Apple AirDrop, which only works between Mac devices, which is kind of what I want. My issue with Google Drive, which is really just, I'm not really surprised given how good Google is at most things, there are way too many clicks required. If I want to upload a picture, I've got to find it.
00:32:50
Speaker
I've got to expand the three dots. I've got to click send a copy. I'm doing this right now. I've got to say, I've got to say, oh, it's already, sorry. I'm gonna do it from the wrong perspective here. Upload it, drive, wait for that to open, click the account, click upload. And I feel like there's some- Oh, it's way faster on my phone. Okay, maybe that's because you have a Google phone. I have a Samsung phone.
00:33:19
Speaker
Does it use Google iOS, though? No, it's Android, whatever. Yeah, Google is Android, though. Yeah, you're right, actually. So maybe there's better integration. So I'm looking at a picture of a trashed end mill that I took the other day. There's the three dots, not the three dots up and down, but the triangle one. OK. The share symbol. So I click on that, and it tends to remember my last folder.
00:33:44
Speaker
that I click, or I can click Save to Drive, which also remembers my last folder. And either I have to go back one level of folder and then choose the right one. And then I just click Save, and it's done. So in a few clicks, I'm usually set pretty easily. And I'm so used to doing it, because I do it almost every day now. Yeah. And would the theme app, did it go through the cloud, or did it go direct over Wi-Fi direct to the device locally? It was a Wi-Fi direct, so there was no doubling up
00:34:13
Speaker
It only works for devices on your Wi-Fi system. It works okay, like try it. And it was fairly fast. So you have to install theme on the host PC as well? Yeah, you got the PC version. Well, but you've got it on your phone and on the desktop or what? Yes. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, and it has to be open on the desktop to receive the files, which is annoying. That sounds like what I want though. Yeah, try it. It's free. And then we spent a couple bucks to get the upgraded version after the Y.
00:34:41
Speaker
Like if Julie's uploading a big file, Google Drive takes longer. And I've also just had problems with Google Drive. Like if somebody calls me, sometimes I feel like it stops uploading or if I want to keep using my phone for other stuff, I don't have a lot of confidence in it. Yeah. Anyway, thank you. That was very helpful. Yeah, great. And the only thing is,
00:35:05
Speaker
Like my wifi at home is not nearly that great. So if I don't upload the vlog from work, cause I film like five gigs of footage a day now. Um, if I don't upload it from work and I have to bring it home, it takes like a day to upload. Yeah. If I do it at work, especially wired, it takes minutes. Yeah.
00:35:27
Speaker
Okay, last, oh, this was not a question, but rather an interesting insight that I think is worth sharing in the, especially in context of today's discussion. I was talking to Ryan Wenner from Senate Code Woodworking about this sort of same topic of stuff, and he has an interesting system that I thought was worth sharing. Every year, he creates a new Word file, Google Sheet, whatever you want to use, and
00:35:54
Speaker
I'm putting my own flavor spin on this, but I think it's in the spirit of what he does, which would be like the 2020 list of phone calls and interactions. And it's a really interesting way of handling. So everything from, hey, I had to call a guy about repairing my lawnmower to I had a call with Time Warner and they gave me a service ticket to I'm waiting on a refund from this company. And it's all in one file.
00:36:19
Speaker
Keeping it batch by the year means, OK, it's pretty easy to know where I put all that stuff. And frankly, most of it could probably be deleted at the end of the year. But I like it. The way we handle that is I've got a running Word file for everything related to my Haas machines and the same thing for my Tormach or for the building.
Organizing Personal and Business Interactions
00:36:40
Speaker
And that's OK because those are more specific
00:36:43
Speaker
rifle shot topics that deserve their own list that will last into perpetuity. But this is a much more interesting way of kind of organizing the daily happenings of your life. That's cool.
00:36:58
Speaker
That's kind of what I want in my ERP system. But I guess the way he set it up is it's one document that holds all of the interactions as opposed to vendor specific. Like if I'm calling Lakeshore Carbide or whatever, I could have a running note of like
00:37:15
Speaker
personal details about him or, you know, like, like interaction things, you know, he tells me about his wife or whatever his or her name, and then I can remember her name in the thing. That's like marketing hacks from back in the day. But even just, you know, we had a problem with this so and so vendor, let's put that detail in in the note for that vendor page. But then it breaks it down to be vendor specific, which I think is good. But I also like the way that he does it where it's just kind of you can glance over all of them in one one look, right?
00:37:45
Speaker
Well, it's also like, let's say you're getting a garage door fix at your new shop. Like you don't need to create a whole vendor account in your ERP for somebody like that. And this is a place that you can just dump that info. Like, Hey, you told me to look at this genie model. It was Jim. This is his cell phone. Um, like just all that just minutia that you want to know. And it feels great as an entrepreneur to know, no, you told me on August 27th that this would hold with this spring would work and whatever. Just
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, I like it. That's exactly because, yeah, exactly what you said. On August 27th, you told me this. Not in a combative way. That's not the wrong answer. For sure. But sometimes, sometimes that can save you. Right. Yeah, it's being organized. Just a thought.
00:38:35
Speaker
In ProShop, they had excellent vendor databases, and you could put all this information in there too. That's what got me sold on this idea of tracking vendor-specific information.
00:38:49
Speaker
I like it. I haven't been using it lately, but I want to set that back up because you forget this stuff. It's like a business card. I don't store business cards anymore. We used to rack them up on the wall, stuff them behind the air piping, but I never looked back at them. Whereas I feel like if I had a digital system that was organized of all of our vendors, which I do now through Google Sheets,
00:39:14
Speaker
It just makes it that much easier to like jump in there and be like, Oh yeah, that one. Yeah. I need to talk to this guy at Sandvik that, that I had his contact for. And cause I need to, I need to have a question about this torque wrench or something. Just be careful. Um,
00:39:28
Speaker
because you don't want to go create, let's say it's a tooling company that you may not do more work with. Sumitomo picking somebody random. Well, I don't necessarily want to clutter my ERP and I don't want to have to go through the input process. This is classic like data mistakes.
00:39:46
Speaker
You just want to know who you talked to, what they were going to do, the conversation. And that's what I like about it's kind of like a dump file of the year. And it could be also, you know, your kid's school stuff or like a dentist thing, whatever in the same like it's a Grimsmo personal 2020 dump list.
00:40:01
Speaker
I also would add, uh, it is worth key. I want some business cards. I do not keep, but, um, there's like $3 on Amazon or eBay, the business card binders. And I will just make a note of when and where and why I met the person. I'll just slide it in there. It takes no time, no effort. And then I actually do that once a month. I'm like, Hey, I wanted to find that. And I do flip through it. And because it's, it's inevitably chronological, it makes it relatively easy to find the card.
00:40:26
Speaker
And I don't have to see it because man, in your head, you're like, six months, a year ago, something like that. I remember that guy. Or if it's five years. Yeah. And that's awesome because you now have a system, good, bad, or otherwise, you have a system that works, that you can rely on, that you know. So if you know that Jeff from OSG gave you a business card, what's his email again? That's actually creepy because it is Jeff from OSG. That's perfect. There's always a Jeff at OSG. Right.
00:40:55
Speaker
No, but like I don't, there's scanning tools and there's digital business cards and that's all great, but I'm sure I don't have access to this when I'm traveling, but it's also, it's, sometimes you just keep it simple. Yeah. Yeah. I mean.
00:41:10
Speaker
There's many different ways to skin the same cat. A system that you're comfortable with is probably more important than most than not having one. So don't be afraid to try, I think is the key here. Like what Seneca did is a simple dump file, just like, okay, all phone calls, all interactions going in this file. I mean, you've had a dump file for decades on various stuff, right? And that's kind of what I use Trello for sometimes, I've got a dump list.
00:41:37
Speaker
that I haven't been using lately, but theoretically, this is the David Allen getting things done book theory. It's like your brain sucks at remembering information. Use a system to remember information. Your brain is awesome for coming up with ideas.
00:41:55
Speaker
you know, inspired things like that. So use the dump file to write down literally everything. And then once a day or once a week, go through it and organize and sort and separate. And I like it ish. I forget to do the second part.
00:42:10
Speaker
That's my whole issue with it. It doesn't, okay, it's fine if you need to, but there's a little bit of training around anxiety of not feeling like if you don't get the information written down that you're gonna go nuts. You gotta, and I'm talking to myself here, but like not talking at you, like you gotta relax around that because too many folks think what you just said, oh, I'm gonna write it all down. Well, you never process it and maybe you shouldn't process it, but don't kid yourself by thinking,
00:42:39
Speaker
Like it's so much ties back to the ERP
Parting Tools on Lathes: Challenges and Solutions
00:42:41
Speaker
thing. And I've been watching some videos on on competitive long range shooting stuff. And these guys who will track barometric pressure and temperature and altitude and atmosphere. It's like, bro, are you like, are you actually using that data for anything? Like we're just out here to have fun. It's overanalyzed. Yeah, right.
00:43:02
Speaker
But some people, especially in a precision industry like that, just love the data. They just get super excited. Well, if you're using it, awesome. And I give a little bit of credit towards the option value of I might use it in the future. That's OK. But too often, it becomes paralyzing. Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:30
Speaker
Good. What are you up to today? Today, go to the metal store, pick up our order of metal clamps and fixture stuff for the current. Um, why isn't that just delivered to you? I don't know. Cause I've never taken that step. The metal store is like four minutes away. I don't care. But still, but still. Yeah. No, yeah. You're not going to the middle. No, you're not going to the metal store anymore, John.
00:43:56
Speaker
I actually haven't asked if there's a delivery cost or a minimum or anything. I know they do deliver. I just haven't. Okay. I'll ask. Good. Because it's stupid. Well, you're allowed to. It's actually fun sometimes, but no. Oh, especially nowadays, like get things delivered. That's the point. Yeah.
00:44:16
Speaker
OK, yeah, I'll ask. I'll call and ask because it's like, not only are they close to me, I'm close to them. So for them to deliver to Formula Drive, right? Right. And they're out and about all the time anyway, delivering to other people. I think I.
00:44:30
Speaker
I tell myself it's such a small order because it's literally like it'll be a small cardboard box of stuff. Um, and I haven't paid yet. I don't have a payment system. I always pay there, but I just need to give my credit card and like go on file or whatever. No, no, no. Barry's going to do that. In fact, have Barry handle the whole thing. Have Barry call them, set up the account, have Barry set up the delivery, uh, all that. I love it. I got so much other stuff to do. You're right. You're right.
00:45:01
Speaker
Okay, I'll do that. Good. Do that today. So that's what I'm up to today. Awesome. And then working on the Swiss, I've got to, I'm having a problem.
00:45:13
Speaker
Like, you know, when you sub spindle comes in and grabs the part and the parting blade can just barely fit in there. Oh, I'm very familiar. I'm having that problem right now. Okay. And I haven't really had that much problem on a Swiss, but I'm grabbing the part all the way and I'm leaving like, like just a few thou of face sticking out and the, the sub call, it's actually rubbing the parting blade and on a Swiss with heat and fire and sparks and stuff. Like I hear it rub and I'm East stop immediately.
00:45:41
Speaker
And I can't even get in there to see the clearance, or I might be able to shim it and feel and stuff, but it's weird. And you can't just set the offsets and jog the sub-spindle there and see it. You have to actually run the program for all the macros to calculate the lengths and everything, and then stop it or slow it at the right point, or single block it, I guess.
00:46:06
Speaker
So I had that problem the other day and I kind of, I ran out of time and gave up on it. Um, but now I gotta pick that up and finish that out today. But is the issue of the actual parting blade or is it the holder that holds the blade? I don't know yet. Okay. I don't think I've chucked apart up this close before. Um, I've had like 10,000 stick out, but now I've got like 2,000. Got it.
00:46:32
Speaker
It's very funny you mentioned it because in the June chip ride, we were going to put out a question of if anybody's actually using the Y-axis parting from Sandvik because we're crushing it, making these mod vice washers on the late dual spindle. The one-inch square collar is working great. I should have probably closed the loop on that whole saga. Good. Oh, good. Yeah.
00:46:54
Speaker
But it's a part that's only about six millimeters thick in Z. So when I hold on to it with the sub-spindle, I'm holding on to about half of it. So about 0.1 inches or two, three millimeters sticking out. And I've got these two relatively large QG65. Somebody trolled me for saying GQ65. I have zero tolerance for that these days. If you name your product GQ or QG, that's your own fault.
00:47:20
Speaker
And so I basically have to extend my parting blade out to the maximum 60 millimeters to make it work, which is less than ideal. But it does it does work. But then we created a process workflow on the post or on the cam to where it reminds you to make sure that is the case, because otherwise the holder of the parting blade will crash into the subject of acceptable.
Reflection and Gratitude in Machining Community
00:47:47
Speaker
Right.
00:47:47
Speaker
And ideally you're setting the parting blade up for worst case scenario for everything. So you never have to touch it. No, because I want it. I want it way more rigid.
00:47:57
Speaker
Well, on our Nakamura, we never touch it. But we don't have changing collet sizes. We have the Royal 5Cs on both sides. And it sticks out fairly long, but you literally never think about it. That's the one PSA I would probably throw out to anybody who's looking at, in this case, a sort of 8 to 10-inch dual spindle lathe. The Dusand, we have the Haas, your Nakamura is the same sort of size. I would have probably, in hindsight, purchased a 5C on the Sub. Yeah.
00:48:26
Speaker
smaller ones and the size of your parts. Yeah. But once you put them into the sub, I don't. I would have rather been in a situation where I needed to also buy the larger Chuck, I think, or you could get creative, a little sketchy, but you could put a fine. You can use a five seat, a whole larger, larger Chuck anyway. Yeah.
00:48:50
Speaker
But yeah, it's, it's looking at the whole system of like, well, tell me what parts you're going to make. If you're a job shop, I don't know the answer to that. But for us, especially the biggest part we make is, I don't know, half inch, five hates the odd one inch part. I've never even tried to make anything round bigger than the one inch. Cause I can't right now with the five C's, but we just make small stuff and I'm happy with that. Yeah.
00:49:15
Speaker
We should wrap up. I do want to mention that in today's description, we are also going to put the probably the Instagram links to some of the folks that John and I are proud to count as both good friends and all really talented machinists. They're the folks like Lawrence, Rob Amish, Ken, whom I now figure for getting to mention this. Who else is in our WhatsApp? Rob Phil. Rob Phil. Did I say Phil? Was that the one?
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think you missed Phil. Phil's still driving around the parking lot right now, so that's okay. No, it is. They're all really good guys, and I know we mention them a lot, and we had somebody email us and say, hey, who the heck are all these guys? And so I think they're all pretty active on Instagram, and all really good machinists, and again, folks that we're proud to be friends with. Yes, absolutely. And it's really fun having that WhatsApp chat, and it's just our personal
00:50:11
Speaker
I don't know. There's a lot of, a lot of fluff, a lot of personal stuff, but a lot of like manufacturing stuff too. Like, Oh, I'm totally stuck. Why does this finish suck? And then you got two or three people that have been through that before and, uh, and can answer the questions. Uh, have a good day, but I'll see you next week. All right. Take care.