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The Subtleties Of Marketing & Business Growth
191 Plays5 years ago
It is so easy to overlook the aspect of marketing your business. The fact of that matter is that if you can bring the consumer as close as you can to the business, than they have a special attachment. Look at what Saunders' & Grimsmo are both doing on YouTube as an example. They are breaking down that barrier and creating a consumer attachment like no other. That is valuable no matter what type of business you run. This episode is all about the strategies of marketing yourself and business.
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Transcript
Introduction to Business of Machining
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 181. My name is John Grimsmough and my name is John Saunders and this is the podcast where John and I talk about what we've been up to running our Lays three-axis mills five-axis mills and a lot of times what we've been dealing doing to handle how we are Staffing the shop and working in labor culture and HR and ERP systems organization and the likes Yeah, basically
00:00:28
Speaker
everything that's going on in a business. Yeah. And I
Balancing Stress and Success
00:00:32
Speaker
love it. I mean, it's, it's, it's stressful and it's busy and it's active. And I love it. And I, it's not that I like feed off of the, you know, the heaviness of it, but it's worth it. You know, it's like the, the fun balances with the hard and the results are there. And, uh, I just like it. Yeah. That's the key. The results are there. Yeah. That's, that's what's awesome.
00:00:58
Speaker
And by design too, I mean, you know, me like four years ago, the results weren't necessarily there. You know, we were kind of losing money and had to dig ourselves out of a pretty big hole to get those results. But then we did, we buckled up, came through it, and now it's up and up from there.
00:01:18
Speaker
But that's the thing I'll never forget about your story was it's that, what is it? That blue ocean, red ocean, you knowingly swam into a red ocean, that business analogy of it's a competitive marketplace. It's an existing product line. And frankly, a industry that is known to want to spend money on stuff that's incredibly well made.
00:01:47
Speaker
And you did that, right? And we did. Yeah. It's so much, you executed on that incredibly well.
Content Marketing Strategies
00:01:56
Speaker
It's funny how you think about Instagram being a fun thing to share the story, but it's arguably it and YouTube are, for both of us, huge parts of
00:02:07
Speaker
of how we have gotten to be where we are. Yeah, I still joke that we don't spend any money on marketing and advertising yet for the past two and a half years we've had a full-time media person. That's like a salary towards marketing.
00:02:23
Speaker
But other than that, we don't pay ads or any of that stuff. Yeah. And that is funny. Somebody said, no, John, that's content marketing. That's OK. It's actually one of the best forms. I was like, oh, I don't really think. I mean, we've started to be a little bit more, we'll reshare users that have fixture plates or mod devices. Which is great.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah. I always want to strike that balance because, especially on YouTube, we will mention it and I will proudly sell it, but we're not making the video about a subtle sale. That makes sense? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We don't make sales pitches. We just make content. Right.
00:03:09
Speaker
The more interesting we can make it, the more educational, the more helpful, the more engaging, the better. And I mean, certainly lately, a lot of my videos have just been like, literally life in the shop, just like, this is what I'm up to today.
Improving Workflow Efficiency
00:03:22
Speaker
And, and yeah, and sometimes I wonder, like, should we be, you know, telling people to buy this stuff, like reminding them that there's stuff here and, you know,
00:03:32
Speaker
little bits. We got t-shirts we just launched the other day. We're going to pump that a little bit just to get them in people's hands basically. Yeah, you don't know what you don't mention like that. I'm trying to figure out a way to talk about living in the moment. It's a perpetual days off at the shop in a great way, but it's been strange.
00:03:55
Speaker
We could not be doing what we're doing right now without fixture plates. The ability to switch between work holding, between setups, between jobs without the stress. It just has to be this way. We're still playing catch up. I had hoped we'd be a little further along, but we'll get there within maybe a week.
00:04:22
Speaker
know what we would be doing without Al at this point, which is now what we're trying to call Alex, by the way. Ooh, Al. It's shorter. But we'll see if it sticks. So it's so key now. We're already using it for reordering it. We're using it for tracking. We're using it as a common repository to share information that we need to share about parts, productions, net setups, and notes. But like an example, we are
00:04:49
Speaker
backordered on mod vice, what we call the jaw. So it's the top part of the mod vice that would hold like the talent grip or the rail that we made machine. It's about the size of a deck of playing cards. We had enough pieces of stock probably to fill most of the back orders, but not quite all of them. And so
00:05:10
Speaker
We have new stock arriving Friday, which is awesome. Our vendor hooked us up on getting us some saw cut stuff pretty quick. But I'll finish running those in the next probably two hours, today's Wednesday. So this afternoon, we will switch over with almost no effort to running the fixed side of the mod vice, which we also need to get. It basically lets us juggle switching between the stuff as we need to
00:05:36
Speaker
I don't think of it like batching, and that's certainly not the intent. We're still playing catch-up, but as soon as maybe next week, we will start transitioning from catch-up to actually being able to build inventory, and that's where it's amazing. People have already been using AL to trigger reorders, which triggers a reorder for something way before it ever becomes a stress point, because every time that has happened, I have smiled.
00:06:03
Speaker
There's so many good things in what you just said. Batching doesn't have to be a bad thing if you're aware of what's going on and it doesn't cause any problems downstream.
ERP System Development and Challenges
00:06:15
Speaker
We do that sometimes too. Switching between jobs is key because we just went through that the other day. All of the things you just said we went through last week or this, what is it, Wednesday? This week.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, on Friday, we're like, oh, we got to run the green foam to make our cases, our shipping cases. And during quarantine, I came in a lot and I ran like, I don't know, four days worth of foam. I just ran through a lot. I made hundreds of Norseman foam. I even made 150 rask foam.
00:06:50
Speaker
And apparently i ran through all of our phone inventory and i think we all assume that we had another box or two right of sheets on the shelf so you know friday comes around and we're like okay we gotta run phone today.
00:07:03
Speaker
Let's tear it on the machine. Let's set it up for foam. And then we're looking around. There's no foam here. Oh, man. We're like one or two days until we're out, until we can't ship knives anymore. Darn. So we had to get a speedy delivery from our foam guy and pay way too much in shipping.
00:07:23
Speaker
clean up the machine, set it up for foam, ran it for yesterday, and then spent an hour cleaning it up, and then switch back to Norseman and run Norseman all night. And it's a pain in the butt. So having the UMAX fixed, which they're super duper close, to be able to run foam is going to be
00:07:44
Speaker
It was that light bulb moment when we were doing the tour of Orange Vice and Eric has these beautiful DMG Moray horizontals, numerous of them, and he knows what he's doing. He's got a pretty good process.
00:08:00
Speaker
I forget the exact conversation, but something about how he had one cutting tool and two sister tools. He knew that that would last the longest lights outrun, which would be over a weekend. These tools have
00:08:15
Speaker
Astronomically large tool changers are capable of you know these are like two to five hundred tool changer options and somehow we're talking about another why don't you just put like six or seven or eight in there or maybe he had done that and it was a what happens is you're not solving something in a scalable and sustainable way it's like the phone thing like you think you're doing yourself a favor but really you're just creating a bunch of downstream fails you run out of it you're out of the material of it.
00:08:41
Speaker
And he was like, yeah, sometimes you put seven in there and then all of a sudden you look in there and there's seven end mills, but all seven of them are actually worn out and then you don't have any stock and then it takes two days. And then do you try to retool the machine to run it with a different end mill? Well, that causes a downstream tolerance issue because it's a different, you know what I mean? Like all these things fall apart.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah, so it takes the forethought and planning and even a rudimentary ERP system like a spreadsheet to be able to keep your eye on all this. And the more I dig deeper into this, the more it's like, we just can't remember everything. We just can't know everything. We need a system. We need computers to know things for us. And your excitement for Al has boosted my excitement for our ERP system that my dad's been working on. In the past week, him and I have made some tremendous progress on it.
00:09:33
Speaker
We should be putting that into effect, like actually using it for inventory management probably within a week or two. I'm super excited. I'm wondering if something like the foam is relatively inexpensive but takes a fair amount of work to get it to where it is.
00:09:51
Speaker
Maybe you think about doing the emergency thing we do where you keep 30 knives worth of foam in an emergency box taped up. That way, if this ever happens again, you've bought yourself a little cushion. Yeah, we should. We've talked about that for other inventory things, screws, everything we make pretty much that we need.
00:10:12
Speaker
Would it Pearson call it bread crumbs? Yeah, or like an emergency stash or whatever you call it. The second you touch this, whether it's emergency or whether it's like planned production, but the second you open this bag, you need to instigate a production order, you know, like,
00:10:29
Speaker
we got to either buy it or make it within a certain period of time or something. Because we've been caught with our pants down more than once, you know, like, oh, man, we're all out of, you know, pivots or something, and nobody told me, and I'm busy. And yeah, so we just need a better handle on all this stuff. And that's what the ERP is going to do for us.
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah, it is challenging is the absolute right word. It is challenging to implement an ERP system. Think about the future where you're going to have inventory all the while you're also playing catch up. Like, again, the whole like, we could run the other mod vice parts on the VM3, but all the tools for it are in the VF2, which is still finishing up four hours worth of this. So it's not worth it to retool it up.
00:11:15
Speaker
And it's not worth it because it's not worth it. But it's also not worth it because long term this problem goes away. But that's where you got to start to think about what we talked about last week about like, OK, what long term should we split these up between two different machines? Because if they both happen to get in demand at the same time, maybe it does make sense to be able to run them simultaneously.
00:11:36
Speaker
Like you said last week, it's all about allocation of resources, whether it's machines or people time and the process flow and just trying to solve the problem, not just throw Band-Aids on it. We've done the Band-Aid technique a lot and we've solved a lot of problems too. The funny thing with solving a problem is you forget about it because it's gone and you don't worry about it. New problems come up and then you take care of those.
00:12:02
Speaker
You almost don't realize your own progress and growth because the problems are getting solved and just disappear. And it's just great now. And something like pressing in the detent ball of our knives, that's the little ceramic ball bearing that holds the knife closed and lets it flick out perfectly.
00:12:20
Speaker
It has to be pressed perfectly to the exact right thickness to within 10ths and it has to be ground flat on the top. We used to do this by hand with an arbor press and shims every single time. I spent weeks getting the CNC machine to do it back in the tarmac.
00:12:39
Speaker
And that was, it was okay doing it that way. And then once I got the Maury, I spent a lot of time getting it dialed on there. And like for four years now, I never think about it. Yeah. It's just, it just works. Does that work with shims in an arbor press? Yeah. Like if you just shim it up and you won't, the arbor press won't compress the shim so it'll press it down to the shin thickness.
00:13:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I think I had to play with the extra tolerance, like, you know, if that were too thick or whatever it was. But yeah, you measure the final stick out and you go by that not by the shim number. Yeah, but it worked. Although, like, you we used a hard blade to put on top. So it's like, it's like the good handle and then the ball and then the shims and then a scrap blade, and then the arbor press. So it's a sandwich, right? And the blade would dent a lot. And that would mess with the readings and
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, this is like six years ago, seven years ago. The other thing we're doing is, and I think I mentioned it last week, we added that whole phase to how phase three became phase four and there's a new phase three of what we're doing for this whole
00:13:50
Speaker
redo of the shop. And one of those things is basically is having a laminated tolerance sheet and QC sheet for every product. And that ties in with blue. Red bins are now all of the what we do for work in progress and inventory. Blue bins are QC or other sort of bins because we can't afford or justify to have, for example, a zero to one Mitsitoyo Quantum mic. I don't need one of those for every single product's QC bin.
00:14:20
Speaker
So what we're doing is QC bins around features, like all of the half inch OD stuff has a QC kit, half inch ID stuff has a QC box. But then what we're also doing, and Ed's been doing a phenomenal job, is basically going through each product that we make. We have CAM that works now, but we're making it better. Do we do little tricks about how we,
00:14:46
Speaker
switch between roughing and finishing, or how you do spring passes or don't, or what order you drill tap relative to facing. Because when you drill that hole, the face mill changes the tool pressure when the insert or the tool goes over that hole. And you usually will see healing on that. So how do you tweak that? Because I don't want that anymore. And the products that are coming off now are, I'm going to say Grimsmo level. They are beautiful.
00:15:12
Speaker
Are you tracking these, not changes, but new methods? Not outside of conversations in the person's head now. Yeah, I wonder about that. For us too, because you learn these little tips and tricks. You're like, oh, if I face-mail first and then drill instead of drill and then face-mail, this is the new standard now. This is just how we should do everything. But where do you put that information? In a machining 101 for SMW kind of thing?
00:15:40
Speaker
It's a good question. It becomes a standard, and the standard can't just be shared verbally. It should be in a system somewhere. Right. Yeah, we've tried production notes that never lasted. Now, Al may change that a little bit, but that's not really what you're talking about.
00:16:01
Speaker
CAM templates in Fusion don't work. They don't fix that problem. For fixture plates, we had at one point created a master fees and speeds file. So the idea was that because every plate model is forked off into its own file, if you make a change somewhere,
00:16:16
Speaker
You're not going to go open all, you know, we probably have 150 fixture plate models at this point. You're not going to go open each one in updated at the time. But the thought was that you could also open the master file and then just make that change there. And then next time you're running a new plate, you could always try to compare against the master, but even that we failed to do.
00:16:37
Speaker
For sure. See, I've been wondering about for our European system if we have a section for Fusion 360, for example, and then in there you can have subcategories that's like, okay, here's designing tips and tricks, here's programming tips and tricks, here's tooling setup tips and tricks.
00:16:55
Speaker
It would hopefully become a resource that say a new programmer comes on and wants to learn all this stuff. They now learn our intricacies of how we run things. You could link YouTube articles and everything in there too. You'd have your own internal repository of info. You could make it part specific, but that hides it in one little part.
00:17:18
Speaker
I call fail, not because I want it to work and I want to have a good attitude, but we've done it. We've tried it across word notes, shared files, Asana, emails, fusion notes, fusion. The information becomes stale, unorganized. It's almost like a full-time position to just track it.
00:17:42
Speaker
especially when it comes to an ERP system, there isn't a single thing in AL that's not incredibly important, incredibly useful. Actually, maybe that's not true. We have a couple of fields that I want to purge because as soon as you start seeing stuff that you know is stale or doesn't fit, it changes the way you think about the resource.
Technology Upgrades and Innovations
00:18:02
Speaker
I can see that.
00:18:04
Speaker
It's like with any system. You have to use the system, how it's designed. You have to actually run it. Otherwise, it gets stale, or you don't do it, or you fall track, or whether it's a paper to-do list in your pocket, or whether it's building out an ERP system. You have to follow a method and give it its due justice. Otherwise, it falls apart. Yeah.
00:18:28
Speaker
Seriously, totally. It's a living and breathing thing. Exactly. I think that's going to be interesting here in the shop because I'm super excited about it. Angelo's super excited about it. Nobody else on the team knows too much about it. They know they want it, but getting buy-in from everybody is going to be an interesting thing. I'm not worried about it, but it'll be neat to see either way how everybody uses it. If we force them to use it or just show them, this is great. This is how we're doing it now.
00:18:56
Speaker
See, that's why I'm excited about Al. We're not there yet, so I'm still speculating that it's going to be wholeheartedly embraced because, oh my gosh, I want to know, I scan a part number and it just tells me where the fusion file is or where the raw material is or the photo of it or Julie's already been, we added all of our Uline stuff went into Al yesterday. So when you need to reorder soap or boxes, it just happens now.
00:19:26
Speaker
Um, we've got our, we did a TV and a, one of those Intel compute stick things that comes today. So that's going to be the first test for like the receiving area monitor. Um, I also think I want to get some touch screens because I do think I prefer touch screen over like a computer mouse on a lot of situations where you're just trying to quickly switch views or just check on something.
00:19:51
Speaker
Um, so whether that's like a larger iPad or getting like one of those all in one computers at a touchscreen, we'll figure it out. Right. Yeah. We're going to start with a laptop, um, and a barcode scanner as, as one like test setups station. Um, and then we can build that out from there if we want little tablets or more computer stations. I mean, it's not that expensive to make an actual computer station with a monitor and stuff, but how intricate do you want to go with like computer?
00:20:20
Speaker
You're not building computers anymore. No. Okay. No, no, no. And these will be like, these are not fusion computers. This is like a $500 off the shelf, you know, Costco computer or whatever it is. Um, yeah, no, it's simple.
00:20:32
Speaker
Oh, we used to use our video share computer server thing as the same thing for all of our CNC machines network drive. We're having problems, and so we split them up. And Alex found an Amazon Windows 10, like one of those cube computers. I want to say it was like $150, and it's been rock solid. And all it does is host NC files on a static IP, which is about as easy a life as a computer can have. Right, right.
00:21:01
Speaker
But yeah, just a nice simple solution. Speaking of network, we've got a guy coming in tomorrow to completely redo our internal network and Wi-Fi system, because it's trash right now. We have a really fast wired internet, but the Wi-Fi is just garbage. And we've tried to play with it, but it's no fun. So we've got a buddy coming in tomorrow and his team. And this is what he does. He does network systems. So he's putting in access points along the whole thing, and hubs, and I don't know what else.
00:21:31
Speaker
you
00:21:32
Speaker
It should be epic and both buildings and the entire property will be on the same wifi system and same password and everything. It's finally going to be good because everybody here in the shop basically has to turn their wifi off whenever something won't load and it's super. Holy cow. Yeah, that's crazy. Huh. And like I'm, I'm at the shop right now. I'm streaming, I'm doing the podcast from my data on my cell phone because I don't trust the wifi. Yeah, that's, that's bananas. Yep. Tomorrow.
00:22:02
Speaker
I'm curious from a shop, like entrepreneurial run, I run the shop life day in the life. When that guy comes in tomorrow, how much time do you think you'll have to end up spending like, Hey, oh, I can get you, I'll give you the login for that. Or here's the key to that door. Here's where that goes. Or I'll help you with this versus versus kind of the, Oh, I'll see you at nine and let me know when you leave.
00:22:26
Speaker
for me to him or for him to me? Do you mean I have to hold his hand and show him around? Yeah, I don't mean to hold hand holding. I just mean more like I find that those things are great. And obviously, you're hiring a guy like that because you don't want to spend the time to become an expert on the latest access points, which is for sure awesome. But does it still end up taking up a lot of your time?
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, between me and Fraser and Skye who could either, either three of us could run this guy and get them all set up with anything he needs, but I don't think it's going to take very much of our time. I think he's going to be very autonomous and he might have some questions here and there, but we're going to get work done while he's here for sure. And hopefully the internet's going to be down for very little time, if that is the case.
00:23:18
Speaker
like an unplug this and plug this one in and configure it and you get to go kind of thing. And then he's going to have to come around and like tell us the passwords and, you know, explain it to us at the end. Um, but yeah, I'm, I'm pumped. Sweet. Yeah, that'd be a nice upgrade. Yeah. What else has been going on? So, uh, a week or two ago, I forget which podcast, but I was talking about when we make our saga pen tubes, um, in the Nakamura right now, it's a one by one operation and we can do,
00:23:47
Speaker
I forget, we've done like 20 or 30 in a, no, no, I forget how many because I'm not running it. Angelo's running it. Um, but not enough. You know, like if this was automated, we'd be able to run hundreds in a day. It's like a three minute cycle. And, uh, some, one of our listeners on the podcast emailed and suggested an awesome fix. So what he does, he makes similar sized parts on an, uh, on an Akuma lathe. And, um, is this Andrew store?
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Oh, I'm glad that worked out. Yeah. Yeah. Because he emailed you first, right? And you forwarded it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Andrew reached out and said, so what we do is we use a gas spring cylinder from McMaster. And a gas spring has relatively even force along its entire travel. And as long as you get one with the right travel length for your part, and you make an adapter and you mount that in the back of a 5C collet in your sub spindle,
00:24:41
Speaker
So there's now a gas spring in there with like three or four inches of travel. So as the sub spindle comes in and grabs the part, it's compressing that gas spring, clamps on the part, and then it can eject the part into the parts catcher. But the genius thing that he came up with was
00:25:00
Speaker
What he does is when the parts clamped and sprung in the sub spindle, he'll move the turret into position like a hard stop. He'll move it like, you know, a few thou away or whatever. So right when the sub spindle lets go, it barely moves at all. And then he can slowly back the subway until the park just drops into the parts catcher.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's not flinging out. Exactly. It's not flying. I was like, that is brilliant. We are so doing that. So immediately I bought a $12 gas cylinder on McMaster. I had my buddy Matt Mitler make, like I designed the adapter in like 30 minutes in Fusion and I sent it to my buddy Matt to make it.
00:25:41
Speaker
There's an adapter to fit the 5C collets, got threads and three set screws around the outside, and a little cap to go on the end of the spring, the gas spring. Those two parts, like $220, shipped. I was like, done, just do it. Thank you. He's like, you'll have it in under a week. That should be arriving today.
00:26:01
Speaker
And, you know, at first you're like cocky and arrogant. You're like, I can make that that's not that hard. There's that that I could do that that and I realized the fact that it's not that hard means I don't have to do it. I mean, it's not that hard for somebody else who's much better suited for job shop one time setups. So.
00:26:19
Speaker
my brain is now in that mindset, like other people can do this for me, which is great, because like, while that part will eventually make me money, it's the it's the pen tubes that make me money, not this part. So I need to focus on things that will make me money.
00:26:35
Speaker
Phenomenal. Yeah. I'm excited. That part comes up today. Then we'll blast through pen tubes, hopefully make hundreds in the next few days. Then we got to switch the Nakamura back to make the pen clips, the socket clip. The gas spring, these are like the things that lift up your rear window on your
00:26:55
Speaker
car, like, yeah. And so you don't even need a part ejection functionality of the sub spittle because it's just the captive gas spring that is collapsed. And then really, yeah, okay. I love it. Unclamp and it's
00:27:11
Speaker
And so I was going to use the turret block like he suggested. And then Angelo and I were at the machine looking at it. And he's like, why don't we just use the stock in the main spindle, like the next piece, and we'll run the sub spindle forward to that stock. Yeah. And then let go, ease it back gently. The parts catcher happens to be right there anyway. And it's literally going to fall vertically, like straight down.
00:27:37
Speaker
And it's going to be perfect. I'm so excited. Oh man, but we had designed this awesomely simply thing about like, about like, yeah, like forks that expand and then, and then strip it off. And then the turret moves, but no, awesome. Yeah, that is great.
00:27:58
Speaker
Cool. Because you need, Angela and I talk about this, you need a reliable solution that's not going to back up, that's not going to have a problem, that's not going to unclamp, not spring forward. Because otherwise, if you have parts stacking up, you'll have a crash. You'll have something that will go bad and bend. Whereas a gas spring should be relatively
00:28:21
Speaker
Um, steady. So I got the lightest one they had was a 15 pound force. Um, and in your hand, you're feeling it, you're squishing it. I'm like, this is kind of hard. That's the lightest one they had, but that's what Andrew suggested. And I think in use with, with only linear force, it'll be perfect. It'd be so good. That's awesome.
Exploring New Machining Techniques
00:28:40
Speaker
Yeah. Cause I was thinking if you did, uh, the turret instead of the.
00:28:45
Speaker
raw material, you could put a like a McMaster sell some like medium durometer adhesive back rubber, and you could just put a little piece of rubber on the back of the turret, and then it wouldn't be metal on metal contact when it does release because you don't really want I mean, I don't really want the turret to become tangentially coplanar to the face of the sub. It's like unnecessarily risky. But that's cool. Yeah, it fits. It must be a tiny thing if it fits inside a Pentu, huh?
00:29:15
Speaker
A tiny gas cylinder? The body of it will hang out the back of the 5C collet. Oh, got it. Just the shank has to be smaller diameter and the little nub I'm putting at the end of the shank has to be smaller diameter than the three-eighths pen tube. Got it. I was thinking the whole thing collapse inside the 5C collet area. Got it. Cool.
00:29:43
Speaker
Oh, so I thought you were doing pen clips on the Kern. What happened? I haven't started that yet. That's what happened. But yeah, yeah, I'm thinking to myself, Angela's got about a week of tubes left. Do I have time to make the pen to the pen clip on the current before then? I don't know. Maybe. I think the priority is right. And then it's becoming one. The on WhatsApp, I threw it out, but it was like late in the conversation. Try the rotary toolpath like we did in the Tom Lipton toothpick video.
00:30:14
Speaker
That could be potentially one and done. Yeah, I have to play with that. It's got features from all sides.
00:30:28
Speaker
Well, the rotary will keep the tool. It'll maintain an angle that's either normal to the surface or maybe at a fixed offset relative to the surface. But I still think the issue with that part was fixturing it. And it seems like that toolpath could potentially do it. Yeah, I'll have to try it.
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, it'd be sweet. Yeah. Or you can, I mean, as accurate as the Kern is, you can toothpick down almost like a Swiss, like toothpick, toothpick down, rotary down, you know, quarter bench, then come back in with a different tool and finish features that need finishing, then toothpack down more. I'd be very curious to see what, what the blend lines, have you done surfacing blend line testing on the Kern? Um, no, I don't think I have. I've done some surfacing and it looks nuts. It can look bad. Um, I had some yesterday where it,
00:31:21
Speaker
The surface finish was obviously faceted. So at tolerance setting, smoothing setting, I'm not sure yet. I know with Heidenhein, they say you just want to throw it as many points as possible. Yeah.
00:31:35
Speaker
Well, I'm curious more if you just, if you, let's say you semi roughed a hemisphere and then with one tool, you roughed half of it down and then say, do a tool change, but don't cut anything. And then just change right back to that same tool and then come in and keep machining. Is there going to be how much of a blend line? So the no difference in tool length or tool condition, because you're not switching to a cutting tool, but usually basically you're coming in and out of the cut.
00:32:01
Speaker
From what I've seen so far, I think that would be a zero change. So you'd be acceptable for the pen clip, potentially. True. Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. You've got to look at the rotary toolpath then. Yeah. Yeah, I will. And I would flip it. I would put the pen tip probably pointed to Z positive because the clamping and the meets of the base, which makes it even easier because once you get down to that point,
00:32:28
Speaker
The only thing though, there's a counterbore at the head there at the bottom. You know what I mean? So that would have to be machined in the first op and then you got to hold it somehow. So? Yeah, I'm not saying it's a problem, but it's things to think about. I think either way it's a two op clip, possibly even three op if you're putting dovetails into it or something.
00:32:54
Speaker
That's not a problem. It's, it's finding the most efficient version of that, that, uh, that's the key here. I thought you were going to be able to drill in the Nakamura op one out of large, large diameter board drilling, which we have that drill it counter bore and add the dovetails. Actually don't need the dovetails the way that the rotary tool path would, would work in theory. If you can hold it without it moving, I think you can.
00:33:21
Speaker
like soft jaws or something. Hold it from the, you'd have to hold it from the ID. I don't have a lot of faith in ID holding with that much stick out. Like I've done some of it, but maybe. Yeah. It's yeah. These are all theories, right? Like who knows what'll work. I mean, the mighty bite style, the pie, the expanding pies. Yep. I have one of those. They give you a pretty good amount of, um, it's like a length diameter ratio, basically. Right. Like, yeah.
00:33:48
Speaker
But that beauty is you can cheat because what's the diameter of stock you start with right now? 5'8". Yeah, 6'25". And how long is that thing? An inch and a half? Two inches, I think. I got one in my pocket here. I don't have a tape measure. Yeah. So it's three times. Four times. No big deal. Yeah.
00:34:12
Speaker
Yeah, and it's all cutting pressures and tool pressures and stuff. And maybe sometimes we all probably suffer with this. You have a theory and you dismiss it because our length diameter ratio probably isn't going to work.
Reflecting on Business Growth and Marketing
00:34:25
Speaker
But it might. Sometimes I'm willing to throw the spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks. Yeah, cool. Lots of ways to do it. That's what's cool.
00:34:38
Speaker
What's going on today? Today, Angelo and I are going to just outside Toronto to see a DLC coding place. We haven't done DLC coding in a while because we weren't happy with our last supplier. So we're trying a new supplier and I'm excited, I think.
00:34:57
Speaker
I, we're going to bring samples and I hope they're going to do an amazing job because I would love to offer DLC coding for our pens and knives. And our customers definitely want it and they look sick when it works good. But when they come back with spots or with, you know, peeling or weird stuff, then it's just no good. Why don't, uh, why don't you just send Angela? It's a good question. Actually hadn't considered it.
00:35:27
Speaker
We need some time together, too. It'd be good to have some conversation in the car. But yeah, it's funny, because I didn't even consider that. Or drive separately. Well, you get time to get in the car to talk, but then let him do the work, and you can head back. Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. I'll keep that in mind for the future, for sure, because you get in default mode. You're like, let's go the two of us, and you don't really think you could handle this, of course. You should. Will. For sure. For sure. We'll really own it. Keep that in mind.
00:35:58
Speaker
But yeah, that's going to be fun. So we're bringing some pens, we're bringing a few knife parts and make sample pieces beautiful. And we'll see if we give you business kind of thing. Is it like the way they coat tools where there's that anode in that, in that like oven chamber and that same thing. That's cool.
00:36:20
Speaker
So we we are I am definitely have a lot going on, which is okay. We're just doing that catch up mode. And we've actually been delegating incredibly well, but they're still like, putting pulling the system off is a lot of in the air. And the one thing I'm working on today that is like, Oh, I need to do this. I want to do this, but it's
00:36:41
Speaker
something I would happily not do is the chip rag. But what's awesome is that we've got Julie and a new guy who's sort of helping on some marketing stuff. Chris is kind of writing chip rag. So it's actually been a pretty good workflow. We've done it for two months now.
00:37:00
Speaker
I'll put the chip rag content ideas into Asana with whatever requisite notes are needed, and then he'll actually take that kind of research them and figure out what the angle is or mention is. It makes me happy because I want chip rag to both be about our story, but also just as a resource for what's happening in manufacturing, in particular CNC manufacturing. Every time you read the chip rag, you should be smarter about
00:37:24
Speaker
what's going on or a process or have learned something or seen something cool. And so it's done. I just have to go proofread it or like kind of give the final blessing. Yeah. I could use your advice because you're quite good at this, which is I want a way to grow the chip rag audience.
00:37:46
Speaker
And it's funny because it's not a sales pitch. We're not selling you anything at ChipRide. It's just a good read, if you will. So I've been thinking about, you know, do you do a contest or like a giveaway or what would you do to raise awareness? I mean, I guess my way of saying, I don't care if you don't subscribe, but I think a lot of people who do subscribe will say, oh, this is actually pretty good. Thinking, it's like, how do you,
00:38:18
Speaker
How do you create awareness around something that is supposed to give you awareness? That's kind of funny. It's like you can't, I mean, you can put out more content. I mean, you could bite size it and make like little Instagram memes or whatever. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah. Do you see what Julie did on the bomb last week? Yeah, that was really cool. Yeah, so I could do that on chip rag to be like, hey, you want the full scoop? Like, hey, this is kind of like what's happening in chip rag. And ideally, if
00:38:47
Speaker
the way a lot of marketing people look at this is if it's good enough, people will share it or tell their friends or it'll spread that way. Whether it's light and funny or super thoughtful or like a great piece of information or something, people will share that stuff. I find myself sharing stuff on Instagram to the guys on the team pretty often. And yeah, that's one way you could do, I'm kind of leery of the whole
00:39:18
Speaker
make the comment here and tag two friends and make sure you're subscribed to me and that kind of thing. It's fine, but it's not my most favorite way. It feels forced. I don't like it. I don't really enjoy it when people tag us in it like it doesn't do anything for me. Yeah. I get why it works and why people are excited about it.
00:39:39
Speaker
If it doesn't feel right, then don't do it. Part of me is like, I'm totally willing to throw some resources at this. So part of me is like, hey, whether it's a longer term giveaway, like, hey, over the next two weeks, everyone that signs up gets entered into a contest for a fixture plate or something, or a micro giveaway like you've been doing, like, hey, over the next six hours. But then I don't want to penalize people who are already signed up.
00:40:04
Speaker
Sure. Yep. You almost want to reward people who are seeing that post. Yeah, right. Or do it. You might want to do it within chip rag to to, to appease to that audience that's already invested, but maybe not following closely elsewhere. What do you mean? Um, like at the end of a chip bag, like, Hey, we're doing a contest for the next few weeks.
00:40:31
Speaker
I don't know. It's hard to say because you don't just want to reward the new signups. If it's a cool thing, like if you, I don't know if you gave away a Mitutoyo zero to one mic or something like totally one or $200, everybody would want that. Every one of your listeners, not everybody's going to want a fixture plate for a VF two. Um, this is something like that could work, but like the incentive and the reward and the benefit to you has to be there as well. Yeah.
00:41:02
Speaker
Oh, no, I just want to. I mean, there's absolutely value to us in having the chip rag audience. I mean, we do mention the videos that we do. It's a good chance for us to communicate with our audience on all aspects. So I'm not going to fib about it. Like there's an absolute value in the marketing sense to it, but it's not a it's not a.
00:41:22
Speaker
sell list. It's not like one of these things where it's like, hey, we're going to hit you up on selling all the stuff we're making. It's a much more, you and I are in a weird way probably some of the best content marketing creators in what we're doing. And chip rack is just a way for us to aggregate that, both what we're doing. But when I see stuff you're doing, that is stuff that we would throw into chip rack. It's awesome. Yeah. Because like you said, we're not really asking for anything in return. We make products if you want to buy the products, great. But otherwise, we're just going to keep pumping out content.
00:41:51
Speaker
It's like the sports center. I don't know if you ever like watch sports center as a kid or whatever, but like, it's like the summary recap of what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is cool. I like that.
00:42:02
Speaker
And it's nice to have that central database basically, of you and all your listeners are going to suggest stuff to you. So that the average viewer reader doesn't have to like spend all their day mining Instagram for all the coolest content, even though we all kind of do, but it lets you compile it and like show your perspective of this is the cool stuff that's going on right now. You might not have seen these things.
00:42:27
Speaker
Right. It's very much a red ocean strategy from our standpoint because there's basically two of these that I get, newsletters I get that are really well done that are the same thing. It's like, hey, this helps you stay up to date, stay informed and see something cool or see something like, forget what, there's a really cool part that we have being machine. It's like, I just never would have thought of this. I can't wait to share that in a chip rag. That's cool. Yeah.
00:42:56
Speaker
Phrasing it such that like, here's what's going on in the manufacturing world that you might not have seen yet as like a pitch, as a tagline. Some variation of that I think could draw people in. Like somebody will see if you ever did little Facebook ads or whatever. Say that again? I want to write that down. Yeah. This is what's going on in the manufacturing world that you might have missed or that you might not have seen. Okay.
00:43:25
Speaker
and certainly play with that however feels right, but I think about the average dude like us that's scrolling through Instagram or YouTube or whatever and sees a post or an ad or whatever and they're like, what have I missed? I like manufacturing.
00:43:46
Speaker
Because that's what it is. It's not modern machine shop magazine. It's different. So you don't want it to, like, the word newsletter is kind of like a fax machine. It's like who uses that anymore in some ways. But it's still great content. And as long as you can make people remember that it's bite-sized great content, then go.
00:44:12
Speaker
For sure, the content has to be great, but that's actually the nice thing about having Chris help now is we're calling the list. We are making sure that we have more than we may need and we're making sure what we're putting out is good, which that makes me happy. Yeah. Cool. That's awesome. Sweet. Well, have fun at the DLC place. Yeah, that'll be good. I'm on vacation next week, but I think I should be able to do a bomb with you Wednesday morning. Okay.
00:44:39
Speaker
Shoot me a note if we need to change the time. Got it. Sounds good. Take care. Bye.