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Business of Machining - Episode 71
182 Plays7 years ago
Grimsmo: I'm back...I think. GK: You sure? Grimsmo: *rolls into shop at 11pm to feed the lathe* Yep!
Grimsmo's recovered from Blade Show 2018!
VIDEO: Blade 2018 w/ALEC STEELE and more awesome makers!
Delrin Bearing Cage QC Process--DIALED
Debur. Pivot. Slip Fit. Insert Bearings.
While Grimsmo's catching up on Delrin bearing cages, catch up on SAGA SATURDAY!
Batch Gone Bad Admitting a mistake is difficult but imagine admitting it publicly! Mistakes lead to new processes but make sure your new checklist stays-- in check! Read: The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get things Right
Forum on NYCCNC.com: Batch Flow VS. One Piece Flow
TALK SHOP RE: Tool Setting Grimsmo's setting up different tools; touching off and centering them individually by using a dial test indicator in a Noga indicator in a collet. The guys mull over ideas to improve workflow.
DIY CNC Turret Lathe? But WHY though? - we think we can - we want a dedicated, highly useful tool to make individual, magnetic, fixture plate hole PLUGS!
VIDEO: DIY CNC TURRET LATHE
Saunders/Hermle Sit Down Despite the cut-throat nature of the industry, Hermle holds a tremendous amount of respect for other companies who are doing it and doing it well! A rare sentiment these days.
Gorilla Glass Curiosity Assuaged? Saunders reads the full e-mail aloud. "It is indeed similar to a Prince Rupert's Drop but a lot COOLER!"-Jason V.
Sized Up and Soured What happened in Northeast Ohio? "A Machine tool is only as good as its last mile."
PATREON ASKS, GRIMSMO ANSWERS! Grimsmo explores different avenues and decisions that brought him to where he is today.
Cool products. Cool Tools. Staff to support the products and tools. "Is that a vision or is that just greed?" Grimsmo feels unfocused but from the outside looking in, Saunders gets a completely different picture!
SMOOTHING If you're looking for some sweet duds, look no further!
Next on the list: JORTS---jk.
WHO'S LAPPING NOW?
Click Photo to See IG Post!
Eric! That's who. According to him EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE SHOP IS WRONG!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Catching Up
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. Welcome to the business of machining episode 71. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. Morning, buddy. Good morning. How are you? I'm awesome. I'm doing really, really good. Yeah. Yeah, recovered from the blade show.
00:00:16
Speaker
Just. I actually had a moment a couple of nights ago where I was like, I'm back. Oh, yeah. You just like, OK, settle. Business is back again. It's real. I ran back to the shop at 11 PM to throw another bar in the lathe. Then I was like, yep, I'm back.
Machining Workflow and Strategies
00:00:36
Speaker
I'm good. Do you really do that a lot?
00:00:39
Speaker
Not a lot, but sometimes, yeah. That's awesome. I was running these parts, these little bearing cages that we make. It's a 12 hour run per bar. And I'm like, I want to make a thousand of them. So it took me like.
00:00:53
Speaker
three, four days. So I came in, but it's, once it was dialed, it was good. So I came in Saturday, Sunday, twice and Monday or something like that to just keep feeding the machine. Just for, you know, I'm in here for 20 minutes. I brought my kids sometimes and feed the machine and a couple of days I was done. So how we have bearings for six months. How many come out of a 12 hour run? Like 224. Okay. So you gotta do like four runs or something.
Batch Production vs. One-Piece Flow
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah. After we went out for frozen yogurt last night with the family and on the way back, I came in to shut the air compressor off because we'd been running a fourth axis part for like eight hours and it was done, but I wanted to just kill the compressor overnight. Of course. Yeah. Shop life. Yep.
00:01:37
Speaker
So actually, there's a really good post over on the NYC CNC forum talking about batch. What is it batch flow versus one piece flow? And I mean, everything of not a quality, but where there's big value added component assemblies, et cetera, I've always seemed to favor one piece flow, you know, build the whole product, build the whole assembly. Right.
00:02:01
Speaker
But, and again, it goes back to Jay Pearson and his examples of lean, but also his physical products where he's like, yeah, but when we have to make these little Venturi and shakes, we'll set up the Doosan lathe and we'll run six months worth, which sounds like your example here. Right. Exactly. Right. So you just have to go ahead.
00:02:20
Speaker
Some things, especially on the lathe, it's like, once it's dialed, like it took me a day to dial it in. Not quite, but like hours. I had to, after making all the pen stuff, all the tools are different now. Oh, so it's like, I had to reinstall all the live tools. I had to touch them off. I had to center every tool so that there's no misalignment and.
00:02:41
Speaker
Doesn't making the center it automatically with the touch tool, preset, not centered. It'll give you an X, but it's not necessarily X zero.
Quality Control and Production Errors
00:02:51
Speaker
You want it like, like I'll put a dial test indicator in a Noga indicator in a call it in the spindle. So that as you spin it around the live around it and mill, um, Oh my gosh, I can tell if it's, you know, two tents out or two thou out. Cause that'll make a big difference.
00:03:08
Speaker
You have to show that to me if I come up next month about. I'd love to see more about the lathe. I would think physically you would think that the machine could be intelligent enough to understand the XY relation of the turret position relative to the spindle center. Turret, yes, but every tool holder is different. They're not all within a tenth. But the touch probe, the probe is accurate to a tenth.
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah, but it doesn't. It's hard to probe around end mill on that because I can't spin it. You're not probing both sides of the tool? No, maybe I could. I guess I always think about like on the hostulates, the probe, I thought it had like a little four position or five position pad. Okay. Can it probe the front side and the backside and no.
00:03:57
Speaker
I don't know how that's never stopped you. That's a good point. I was going to say, Oh, I'd have to create a custom macro. Not that hard. Um, maybe you have to think about that.
00:04:11
Speaker
It is nice to have the indicator in there and actually physically see in X and Y how out of round everything is. I totally agree, but you'd still be better off as a workflow if you could drop on tools. Maybe this is crazy perfect world scenario that doesn't exist.
00:04:29
Speaker
you could save those offsets such that when it re-auto checked all the tools, it's within a few thou,
Efficiency in Assembly and Custom Machines
00:04:36
Speaker
so it can at least do that automatically. It doesn't have any, it knows roughly where the double sack tools are, the double drills are. And then everything would be quote unquote on center. And then when you came in with a coaxial indicator or a dial test indicator in the spindle, you're doing more of a confirmation check, making sure nothing's wrong or no run out versus having to actually like jog, shuttle it,
00:04:58
Speaker
each one, each tool. Yeah. I mean, certainly the touch probe will get it within a thou or less depending, but it's just how picky do you want to be, you know? Yeah, I am. Yep. Interesting. But yeah, I should do a video about that because I was thinking about it actually as I was doing it. Yeah. So it's funny you mentioned the idea of doing batch work because we
00:05:19
Speaker
It was actually pretty hard to want to share this publicly, but we made a bunch of bad parts. We just got bit by making one of our smaller products. I don't know how to say this, but other than to be honest, we got so good at making them that we got it.
00:05:41
Speaker
ahead of ourselves. We make them out of the house. Generally, that machine is just freaking spot on. Great tooling, great process, great cam, proven out fixtures. All of a sudden, we had a bunch of parts that were off by 40 thousandths of an inch.
00:06:00
Speaker
and you didn't see it, you didn't catch it. And obviously that's something that's really, really easy to catch if you have a simple pair of calipers. But the answer is, and so I was like, why did this happen? And I could blame lots of things, but the reality is if I were to explain this to you or to somebody I respect that's a manufacturing machinist, blah, blah, blah, the first question would be,
00:06:23
Speaker
Where did, where, how did this get by your QC process, right? Like how did that happen? And the answer is it's such a sort of simple part that we didn't have a QC process.
Innovations in Machining Techniques
00:06:34
Speaker
We just assume that the machine spits out perfect parts each time. And I'm a little frustrated that we didn't catch it just through normal, you know, being in the culture and habit of grabbing, measuring tools and checking things and always, always kind of being skeptical, always assuming that something could be wrong, but
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, so that really actually upset me and good news is we're now creating... So here's the thing, it's not a serialized product. It's not something that we need to invest in individual QC sheets that get retained. So what we're doing is laminating a visual check, calling out like three, we're grouping it into like the three or four critical tolerances and then the three or four other things to look at.
00:07:18
Speaker
Because I don't want to overreact to this and create some lengthy checklist that becomes something that you ignore. Great book, Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, where he talks about instances of successful checklists, like in a Formula One pit stop, and instances of not good checklists where people just go overboard and nobody follows it because it's one of those things you look at. It's like no one reads the directions because it's horrible to go through. It's too obvious. Yeah, exactly. Right. Interesting.
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah. So was it more of like an offset issue or, uh, yeah, we were dialing in. Um, I mean, I don't even know. We were dialing in new inserts and new finishes with a new tool and it just got walked down. I don't even know. It just did. And that's okay. I mean, that, that, that is not, that is a normal thing. It wasn't irresponsible. It wasn't vindictive. Um, it just happens. Um, yep. And I've been there too. Man, that stunk. Yeah.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, especially on the lay that I've made, I haven't always been good about writing down the two to six things to measure every time or every now and then. And so I've made hundreds of bad parts that don't fit down the line because I didn't have the tolerance right. And I was like, oh, I forgot to measure that, or I forgot to look at that surface.
00:08:42
Speaker
Yeah. Do you, so on those, what was the part you were making in 20 hour, 12 hour runs? Uh, a bearing, a Delrin bearing cage. Ah, right. A little donut with the holes around it. Exactly. So do you have a QC process on that?
00:08:59
Speaker
I do. Yeah, I have critical measurements written down.
Business Reflections and Brand Management
00:09:04
Speaker
And then we also have a deburring, like a cleanup check because all those tiny little holes sometimes get plugged up with burrs and stuff. So I have this little cleaning block.
00:09:15
Speaker
that you put the bearing onto and it cleans all the burrs out. And then I super glued one of our pivots to that same block. So you can quick slip fit it over, make sure the ID is not too small. Right, right, right. That's awesome. And we found a better way to install all the 10 ball bearings used to take me about 20 seconds per cage. And now Sky has it down to about
00:09:38
Speaker
Was it like four seconds each or something? That's awesome. Yeah, it's really good. That reminds me of what was the Jay Pearson when he installs the balls, he made 3d printed a little part that holds the balls that he slides over the pro palette system. And it just, you're like, Oh, when you see it, you can't, you can't possibly unsee that and thus come up with it yourself and be proud because, because it's already happened.
00:10:03
Speaker
Yep, yep, yep. And same thing, like one of my knife maker friends, Brad Southerd, showed a little Instagram video of him doing this method. Yeah. And he's basically dipping the cage into a container full of balls. And then you pick it up, and they're all loaded. Yeah, yeah. And then gently set it down and press it on. And I'm like, that can't be that easy. And it took some figuring out. It wasn't easy at first. But yeah, then we got to dial. And it's like, holy cow. That's awesome.
00:10:32
Speaker
So that's the that's the genesis of the widget that we posted last night, which is the first video in this DIY lathe. And and this is a very much a combination of we're building it because we can, but also what we think we can, but also because it actually could be this really functional specific thing, which would be amazing if it works.
00:10:58
Speaker
And, you know, whether the past projects that we've done, like things like the Imperializer or dedicated hardware, like I love this idea of being able to build little machines. What was I'm thinking of here is like, what if you end up building a little machine that takes the
00:11:13
Speaker
takes that Delrin part and does some QC on it. Like you could actually have somehow rigged. You could either use real metrology equipment that you hack into the workflow or you could build your own metrology equipment somehow. Building comparative metrology equipment where you have it always checking itself against a master shouldn't be that hard. You could have it deburr and then you could have it install the like you could build that little machine like that's freaking cool, right?
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah, and that's how big industry would do it. If there was a big factory that had to make millions of these things, they'd be like, I'm not going to sit there by hand and do it. We're going to make a robot. It's like all this how it's made episodes. You're like, it takes all that just to make a pizza, like a frozen pizza. Or how about, I want to come back to Gorilla Glass. So yeah, so if we can make this thing, it's pretty simple. It's its own bar feeder.
00:12:09
Speaker
We've already hard milled the form tool. We've been tying a bunch of different plastics for the right mix of a variety of factors, but they're fixture plate plugs. It's like the most unexciting thing, but you want it to be made well and you want it to be inexpensive because it's not something that
00:12:26
Speaker
you know, anyone gets excited about spending a lot of money on. And the sort of trick that we're doing different than some of the other folks in industry is we're pressing a ball bearing or steel pin into the turned part and that lets you install or
Team Growth and Strategic Focus
00:12:41
Speaker
rather remove them with a magnet.
00:12:44
Speaker
And it's a really nice workflow because it gives you a smooth top surface that you don't have another thing to collect the chips in. So I don't remember exactly why I was starting that point other than to say it's freaking exciting. Like I love it's working on the spindle right now, which is probably on the edge of something we shouldn't have built. But I think it'll actually be easy to do.
00:13:12
Speaker
How cool is that to be able to build your own spindle? Well, I say that humbly. I mean, the thought yesterday was like, even if we have a little bit of slop or play or run out in the spindle, we're using not angular contact bearings, but tapered roller bearings. Sorry. And you should be able to kind of adjust those anyway. But even if it's not perfect, we should actually be able to
00:13:35
Speaker
account for that. Famous last words, but it shouldn't actually matter. Also, the beauty of it's a one size raw material, one part, so it's not like it has to be set up for different things. We'll see. Right. For the next layer that you build, I want to see it on air bearings, spindle too. Yeah, right. You're not interested in hydrostatic?
00:14:00
Speaker
I guess that would be the next thing, but they would both create the same result. Is that the case that hydrostatic is like air bearings, but better? I get it because you can't compress fluid, right? Right. Whereas you can compress air, but from everything I've read about air bearings, they're not a compromise. Exactly, right? Right.
00:14:22
Speaker
If they're sized properly, you will not load them up. You will not overload them. They're used in spindles that have dozens of horsepower, like 20, 30, 40 horsepower. Exactly. Or the most insanely accurate CMMs in the world all use air bearing. So obviously, they're not sloppy. But when I was sitting down with the
00:14:46
Speaker
Herme Lake guys last week, you know, good conversation and fun to talk shop. And it's also nice to hear the machine tool builders say, you know, nice things about the other companies. It's not, it may be a cutthroat industry because they're all competing for dollars and customers and so forth. But they were like, man, Kern is a company that makes just amazing, amazing machines. And that was the hack of Watchmaker and Sydney has got that Kern. And that makes you just- I've never heard of it before that.
00:15:15
Speaker
I'd only heard about it through Lockwood, I thought at IMTS or at Emo. Yeah. But yeah, exactly. For all I know, it could have been a level below DMG or something. But no, I mean, they are just insane.
00:15:31
Speaker
I don't want to say the only machine tool that are using hydrostatic motion, but certainly that's what everyone says when I've heard them mention current like, oh, they have hydrostatic ways and spindle or bearings and all that. Right, right. Cool. Yeah. You said you want to mention something about Gorilla Glass?
00:15:54
Speaker
Remember how we were talking about it the other day on one of the podcasts? Actually, it may have been a while back. I forget. Yeah, I think it was a while back. OK. Because it came up in response to Prince Rupert's drops from Sparta every day. Right. OK, can I read you this email? Yes.
00:16:18
Speaker
It's from an individual named Jason V. Hey bud, just got done listening where you talk about Gorilla class. As one of the guys who's involved, I thought I would assuage your curiosity. It is indeed similar to a Prince Rupert's drop, but a lot cooler.
00:16:34
Speaker
They start with a flow of molten gas on a mezzanine above the machine and
From Frugality to Success
00:16:40
Speaker
create a waterfall of glass of basically uniform thickness, which is then intercepted by the machine on the floor below by a series of air bearings that resembles a up and down supercross track, like a series of waves or humps, with the geometry designed to impart specific amounts of vertical g-forces at different points along this line.
00:17:03
Speaker
Basically, it's like landing a big ski jump with the waves decreasing over time as this molten glass goes from molten to not molten. The overall width is fixed. It scores it along the way. There's tons of adjustments. It's all on the fly. It's non-contact of glass.
00:17:20
Speaker
company set aside a long period of time to get this set up. It's brand new. And we were very concerned. We sent all of the big people in to try to get this to be done correctly. And basically, he goes on to say that we took a lot of dialing in, but the first time we ever turned it on and started the waterfall, it worked, which was, you know, one of those like, holy cow moments. So how cool is that? That's insane.
00:17:49
Speaker
Man, so is this a new process that just came up with, or is this how Gorilla Glass has always been made? I don't know. OK. Very cool, though. But can you imagine, like, to think that the phone that we're both holding started as a falling tower sheet of molten glass caught by air bearings and then moved along these waves?
00:18:14
Speaker
dude. Yeah. There's man, there's so much like insane stuff out there in the world that nobody knows about because, because there's not a how it's made episode about it yet. I don't know. Right. Because you haven't done a shop tour there yet. Well, it's yeah, that's freaking cool.
00:18:33
Speaker
It's awesome. Yeah. On a more frustrating note, I was super excited to go meet the Cleveland Yamazan branch yesterday. They are the dealer for Matsura. Obviously, we've spent some time learning about Matsura's
00:18:55
Speaker
And, uh, emailed with the, actually met the guy that runs, I think he runs, if not, he's one of the big guys at the Cleveland office and met him in Connecticut when we were out there filming and blah, blah. We, you know, love to have you come out. Um, and so emailed with him, set up a date, set up a time, confirmed the time. Um, and yesterday in fairness, there were full disclosure. I already had to go to Cleveland for a separate meeting. So it wasn't as though I drove just for this, but that's not really relevant or nor did he necessarily know that. But, um,
00:19:25
Speaker
Drove two hours, got there, walked in. The person in the showroom was like, can I help you? And I was like, I'm here for a meeting with Paul. And he's like, Paul's not here. Paul's in Connecticut, or Paul's in Kentucky. He had an urgent sale.
00:19:38
Speaker
And I'm like, I had a meeting with him. He's like, I don't know what to tell you, bud. And I'm like, are you serious? And then I, and then he, I think he was like a little, tried to be a little bit nicer. And then, um, yeah, uh, no email, no phone call. Um, and I thought, you know what, this is just.
00:19:57
Speaker
Um, everything I've seen from Matt Sura corporate has been pretty awesome, pretty cool machine tool, but I'll tell you, um, machine tools only as good as the last mile, the sales, the service, the support, the infrastructure around it. Um, and, um, it's a sensitive thing for me to, you know, time and management and communication with people and how you treat people. And, um, I was, I was pretty floored.
00:20:20
Speaker
Hmm. That's no fun. Yeah. Amazon also does brother line and probably some other stuff too. Correct. Yep. Yep. Yep. But, um, that's a big bummer. Yeah. I was, uh, yeah. I mean, it, there's no point in, um, dwelling on it because he can say whatever he wants to say. The reality is.
00:20:40
Speaker
I mean, you're an adult. I don't know how old, but you're old enough to have a freaking calendar and know when you have obligations. And it's clear. What's clear to me is he thought I was a kid with a camera, not someone who's actually looking at buying machine tools. And if that's how you're going to size up your customers, then so be it.
00:21:00
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah. So it's tough because it sours you. For me, I thought so many good things about the Matsura brand. One of the knocks was kind of the FANUC control. I thought all L-SQL I would rather have, from what I've heard and learned, and I'm just in the process of learning, but I'd probably rather have a hide and hide or maybe a Siemens. The FANUC wasn't a selling point to me. Sure. And so as you start looking at all these different options out there, long term,
00:21:29
Speaker
Um, it doesn't take, you know, you start to getting, you get two knocks against something and it's just off the list, right? Yep. It's, it's surprisingly easy to be turned
Optimizing Production with New Machinery
00:21:40
Speaker
off by something and it doesn't always take much. And a lot of times it's people skills, right? Like just be soured with the relationship and then you're kind of,
00:21:49
Speaker
You just turned off. And that's what I was thinking. I was like, you know, I would have been pretty annoyed if he canceled the meeting last minute because I think that's pretty rude knowing that I had to, it was a bit of a deal for me to take time off, but not be here at the shop and so forth. So that would have been frustrating, but I mean, completely different outcome than just literally me showing up and a guy in the showroom being like, who are you?
00:22:14
Speaker
Right. Well, that by itself is weird. Right. Right. So anyways, onward and upward, right? Looking into the future, I see a hermally hidden new shop floor in eight months. Yeah. I keep kicking back to the UMC 750, too, because it's like, well, look, so much is positional. And another friend who I really respect just picked one up. And I was kind of like, man, you didn't think about
00:22:42
Speaker
XYZ brands. And he's like, yeah, I mean, if I had the extra cash, it would have been nice. But he's like, I'll be able to get this to do what I need to do. And we know the control, we know the support. Anyway, I'm just learning. But absolutely. Yeah, it depends on where you want to take the business if and but you can still do contoured five axis parts. Yes. The UFC, right? Absolutely. And the learning curve
00:23:05
Speaker
Basically, the only learning curve for you to run that machine will be five axis. The ability to run five axis toolpaths, the machine, the control, the setup and all that, you'll know it already. There's a lot of benefits to that.
00:23:21
Speaker
And look, it sounds like UMCs have been, in fact, I've heard other machine tool builders say that they love the UMCs because it ends up being that gateway drug. I could completely see and understand a UMC being next to a Hermele because you've got the UMC for your positional stuff, for your simpler stuff, and you've got the Hermele as the real Ferrari. Yep. It's just like having a tormach next to a Haas. You use both every day. Yep.
00:23:49
Speaker
Think of it like that. And the price point is significantly less than the next tier up of five axis machines, right? You compare math through next to a UMC 750, you get like two of them. Yeah. So it gets complicated with all the options and functionality. I hate to say that, but the reality is, yeah, I mean, that's
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, it just is. Haas is doing something right there on that as much as you want to. Good. As much as you might want to knock like it's not the world's best five axis machine. That's OK. OK, we had a I think it was a Patreon question that I thought would be fun for you to answer, which was could you walk through? And it's a little bit of a vague, a broad question, but
00:24:39
Speaker
I think the emphasis was the transitions. So how did you start your business? How did you go from being kind of a hobby to a business? How did you go from being self-employed? And then how did you go to having employees? Kind of those big changes and steps along the way. I always looked at this as a business from day one. I didn't have other work, other jobs. I had a wife that
00:25:09
Speaker
worked a part-time job that supported us just enough to pay the bills. We lived very meager, very, you know, solid, thrifty lifestyle. And then we were happy enough, but obviously with aspirations. This was 10 years ago. And then over two to three years, I guess, three years of learning CNC and trying to find the market. I was anodizing paintball guns and doing all this, trying to make car parts right. I remember that. Right.
00:25:36
Speaker
Trying to find my way as a CNC machinist and then I started to realize it was actually the craft, the machining that I love the most. And then once I found the knife industry, I'm like, I'm all in. People are making knives for, you know, 400 to a thousand dollars and I have the skill to kind of pick that up. Of course, let's do this. I love knives.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah, so it was always a business from the start. I didn't have to transition out of a day job or anything like that. I made no money for many years while doing it, but it was totally worth it for me because Meg could still hold her job and we could, you know, as long as the business supported itself in the beginning, that was enough for a while until she could quit her job with the birth of our second kid. And, and then I guess,
00:26:26
Speaker
We went full-time, I guess, because then she now had no income coming in. I never really think about it like that. Well, no, that's a good point. I mean, it is a good point, right? Her being able to quit was a big deal for us, because it took out the security. It took out the control in her hands, which she has always kind of been in control of the family finance because of that. And yeah, so it was a big deal, a lot of trust.
00:26:53
Speaker
to have us take over. But we were at the point, we were already like three years in, I guess. But she quit way before Grimstone and I just, you know, bought us more and was in your shop now and had employees and all that. Yes.
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah, probably four years ago. So three years into the business, we've been doing it for seven years total now. Yeah, three years into the business, she was able to quit her job. Leif was, I guess she was on maternity leave with Leif and then just never went back. And then, yeah, it was around that time when we were getting this shop, getting the Maury business was picking up, taking off.
00:27:37
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, all this started in our garage, our little two-car garage at home. You had that in the incorrect order. You bought the Maury and then you realized I have to find a shop. Technically, yeah. It's like we need a big machine. It's time. Let's get the machine and then look for a bigger shop. And then it was two years of Eric and I in this shop.
00:28:05
Speaker
growing and learning until my father-in-law Barry kind of offered his services for a while and got us out of some tight pitches. And we had him on for a year. So it's like, I guess, 10 or 11 months before Aaron came on. So it's like kind of a hire, but it's also family and he's also helping us out. And, you know, it wasn't like an official look up in the wanted ads for a job kind of hire.
00:28:34
Speaker
And then basically we were so busy with the business that I had no time to do marketing anymore, to do media. And I'm like, you know, around November last year, we were doing pretty good. We had a little bit of extra money in the bank. So I'm like, you know what, let's, let's try to find a marketing person because I want to get back into videos. I know it helps us. It's what it's what got us going from the beginning. So, um, so then we hired Aaron and then two, three months later, it's like, yeah, let's get a machinist. Yeah.
00:29:02
Speaker
And then after that, it's like all these opportunities just kind of appear. And I'm like, yeah, it's time. But it all happens. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it all happens, especially the more recent stuff, certainly after you moved into the shop.
00:29:17
Speaker
Um, and probably even after you'd hired Barry, like you said, that was the, that was the sort of soft hire because it was a relative and it was more flexible. But, um, the, there was never a point, there are never these points in which you're like making these, uh, jerky, unnatural, very uncertain decisions, right? Like it's all very need-based demand-based.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yep, yep. And you know this, I struggled and I pined over hiring people for literally years, even before Barry came on, you know, trying to think of the growth of the company and think like, it's hard enough just even having my brother be part of it, because I've always been kind of the solopreneur kind of do-it-yourself guy.
00:30:03
Speaker
And I've never really worked with anybody else on a regular basis. So I was always scared of hiring people and bringing in outside people that I don't know and I'm not familiar with and I have to train them and lead them and all this stuff. And it did like worry me for a long time.
00:30:22
Speaker
you know how to do it who to do it don't get the wrong person everybody says it's always so hard to hire people and that they're your most expensive thing and all this stuff and it's it can be very true but
00:30:34
Speaker
It has to align with the goals of your business. You can do what you do by yourself. And now I clearly realize that I can't do what we're doing now by myself. But you have the benefit, and it's well-earned and deliberate of a focus of what you do, a culture, a point to pride, like people know, which is what makes it easier, certainly to hire at your level. I would suspect it would be easy to hire for you to hire more people.
00:31:04
Speaker
more difficult to do something like, you know, make up these tech startups. Like, let's say we're going to create some crazy new machine with metals and different thing. And you need like, I need to hire 70 people, engineer the machine is all that from nothing. That's so that's that is a very, very difficult thing to staff out. There's no culture, there's no framework, what are people signing up for? But it's been, I don't want to say easy, but I don't this doesn't seem like you've really struggled with it, which is great.
00:31:32
Speaker
It feels natural because we're doing these stage progressions and it's all well thought out and very deliberate. And actually this is a topic I wanted to talk about in this podcast because something I've been thinking a lot about lately is
00:31:50
Speaker
Uh, scheduling and direction of where we want to go, you know, scheduling for the next few months, like what's, what's on tap basically. And then direction, like two, three, five, 10 years down the road. What, what are we actually looking at here? You know, and, and I, I definitely struggle with long-term thinking, but.
00:32:08
Speaker
I feel kind of weird and guilty because my default answer is like, well, I have so many products I want to bring to market. I want to create all these cool things and I want to buy all these cool tools and I want to be great at them. And then I want to staff up to be able to support those tools and those products and the business. And like, is that?
00:32:29
Speaker
Is that a vision or is that just me being greedy? I want to make cool stuff and buy cool tools. No, absolutely not. You know what I mean? No. Right. It's just weird. It goes back to the article I sent you, geez, two months ago on goals. Goals are so overrated because people focus on where they are today and they focus on this lofty, nebulous future event that they're somehow going to be transported to state the status and stage of. In reality, it's everything in between that matters.
00:32:56
Speaker
Yeah. So actually right before we hit the record button on today's episode, John and I were talking about something and we were just going to brainstorming about it. And I was like, look, you know, if you have the opportunity to do something that you enjoy, or maybe it makes you some money, but it's a short term sort of thing and it doesn't end up getting you to the long term position.
00:33:17
Speaker
that's the way to decide. It doesn't mean you have to say no, but it's the sum of the parts. If you keep saying yes to things like that, to take away from your time, tie up resources, tie up capital, then don't blame yourself down the road if you don't get to where you want to go, but it's easy to be guilty of that.
00:33:40
Speaker
there are so many distractions at this level, and so many directions to go in so many cool things to do. And I find myself you to falling into all these different rabbit holes that are fun and interesting and exciting, but they distract from what we're doing right now. And even the direction we're headed in, it's like, well, I don't actually
00:33:57
Speaker
That might be interesting, but it's not what I need to be doing right now. And it's not going to get me where I want to go. But Tim, I view you as having a wonderful focus. I mean, what is Grimso Knives? You manufacture the Norseman, the Rask. You just released the Saga. You will probably release some other EDC style stuff.
00:34:18
Speaker
Sometimes soon, like, I don't think I mean, I can only all I can do is compare you against us and you are much more focused. You have much you have a proven product, a proven niche of what you do. It's very simple. You can explain it on half a sheet of paper with a crayon. Like that's, that's the Warren Buffett rule. Yeah, right, right. Done. Right. So you do you really think your you suffer from lack of focus?
00:34:46
Speaker
I guess I do, but I don't look at it in the big picture like that. I look at it more small things like, wow, I just went on a, you know, 42 hour binge of learning about laser machines and I'm not nearly ready to buy a machine, but I should have been making parts instead. So maybe it's more of a focused, unfocused.
00:35:04
Speaker
It's like a preparatory learning. But I struggle with that. You have people now working at the shop. Machines can run. Business is going. I mean, if I were to extract and remove anything and everything I enjoyed. So this morning, instead of doing the accounting, I still have to do it when we hang up. I watched the How It's Made on the Fifth Axis Vice that Tim Paul posted. I don't feel guilty about doing that. I'm at a point where I want to be able to watch a five-minute YouTube video on machining a vice.
00:35:32
Speaker
rather than doing my morning accounting reconciliation. That's okay, right? But no, but like you, from a pure MBA analysis, that did not result in an increased productivity of my day. But I don't care. I wanted to do it.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You can't survive on pure productivity 24 hours a day. And I love you for who you are, partly because you're so knowledgeable about all these different things. You know, if you stopped wanting to be, if you felt satiated of knowing enough about everything, then, yeah, right. Absolutely. Yeah. And I love the learning. I love the figuring out and the challenge and all that. And I don't ever want to stop that.
00:36:17
Speaker
as we grow, as we hire more people and further integrate our current people, our team, it's fun to be able to do that and pass on the knowledge and be like, all right, you're in charge of that now. I'm going to go learn this other new thing, and then we'll add that to the mix. Good. Well, I struggle with some people's mentality. It's like you got such a great thing. Just buckle down. Just work your butt off. Do exactly what you're doing.
00:36:43
Speaker
fly, whereas I'm like, no, I want to, I want more. I want to do this other cool stuff too. I want to add this new product line in. I want to make flashlights. I want to, you know, we could easily just make Norseman every day, all day for the next five years.
00:37:00
Speaker
But I don't just want to do that. I want to diversify a little bit within the niche that we have. I mean, it's not like we're making rocket ships or anything like that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The only thing I think I would urge caution on is if you become addicted to the growth, if you become addicted purely to the newness, I think at the risk of getting into a pretty heavy topic, I think that need to always be on the cutting edge, to always be the best guy, to always be popular,
00:37:28
Speaker
will make it very difficult to always you know it's like it just sounds yeah it goes back to the very sad stuff last week about what's happening with with Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain or I think about Robin Williams and it's like well I mean how does Robin Williams not realize he's freaking a comedic genius well you have that expectation of always having to be the best or whatever that's that becomes not fun to that becomes your identity and that's sorry this is super heavy stuff I don't mean to make that turn but like
00:37:57
Speaker
you should also be happy making an endorsement, right? That's a pretty cool product and there's always tweaks to do with it and that's fun.
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And where I find us suffering as a business is when we, like several of us get distracted on this side project, like making pens, knife production can go down. We did all right last month. But you know what I mean? Like the new projects cannot suffer the current projects. Ideally the current workflow stays steady.
00:38:27
Speaker
or grows incrementally while adding in new stuff. Because if we're just creating new stuff all the time, then we're taking time away from making money, and then we're making less money to create another product line that's just going to make the same money. Totally. That's really a function, though, of, unfortunately, the fact that you've got to get a little bit of a bigger shop.
00:38:47
Speaker
Once you get a bigger shop, getting a second mill spindles, frankly, not a big deal at this point. Second lathe is probably more expensive and more learning curve. Second mill is cake.
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah. And I want both. And I want medium. And I want a laser. Right. Well, before we get too carried away, I think for me, trying to listen to that story as an outsider and put myself in the shoes of folks that are asking this question, which are usually folks much earlier in the journey, what you said at the very beginning was,
00:39:21
Speaker
was the part that needs the most nurturing. You were frugal. You were young with aspirations. You leveraged the fact that your wife was working. You had no kids. People don't talk about this in entrepreneurship or in the context of business school, but that actually stacks the deck in your favor. You had the support structure around you that helped your business succeed. You didn't just wake up and start pissing Norseman. You woke up and you were
00:39:50
Speaker
playing with the paintball guns, you're playing with anodizing parts, car parts, the Volvo stuff, all that before you found... Before you found your way. That's okay. Yep, absolutely. It wasn't crystal clear in the beginning.
00:40:05
Speaker
No, it was very muddy until we got into knives. And then it's like, and then I had my industry, you know, that seemed, you know, it's kind of a luxury EDC industry. People have a little bit of disposable income. It's not like you're trying to shill a $30 item that you're trying to get rich off of. And even at a, you know, our knives are $900 now, it's still very difficult to get rich off of this kind of stuff. Right.
00:40:29
Speaker
No, but you've done something wise, which is finding a niche where people enjoy spending, obviously, the $900 tool can be similar. Similar things can be accomplished with a 70 cent razor. I mean, that's obviously, you're playing into an existing, it's something I've always really respected about Tyson Lamb. I mean, you don't need a ball marker from him to mark where your golf ball landed, but people love him and he does a great job with him.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yep. And, and you, um, encourage this culture of people appreciating the backstory, you know, like we've done all these videos and people now have this connection to the product. And I think that's a big part of what sells. What we make is that people like feel connected to it and they want to be a part of the journey and they want to continue to watch. Quite the saga. Oh, can we end on a fun note?
00:41:25
Speaker
Absolutely. We just released our new t-shirt. I pre-ordered one like two seconds after you told me about it. And it's funny because I am super excited about this t-shirt. I think it's a super cool design. We're using an adaptive tool path outline around the SMW letters.
00:41:42
Speaker
and it's going to have a lot less ink than our past t-shirt, which will make it more comfortable. And we switched to a 60, 40 poly blend. They say super, super comfortable. It's like one of those t-shirts you put it on and you're just like, oh, this feels really good.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. As Saunders would say, folks, it's amazing. Awesome. So we'll throw a link in the description. But we're running a, they renamed it T Blaster or whatever it is to Store Frontier. Store Frontier. But regardless, we're running a, I think it's like a two week campaign. So you can buy them through there. And then later, after that's over, we'll have them just on our Saunders website. So to do that from a business perspective,
00:42:24
Speaker
The way it's set up is when I ordered one, they'll make it and they'll ship it to me directly. You're never going to touch it. Yeah, during the campaign. Correct. Exactly. But then what are you ordering a hundred from them as well? Exactly. Yeah.
00:42:39
Speaker
Then you get to your wholesale pricing order. Right. So the pricing on the campaign isn't as good because they're doing a lot of the work fulfilling the orders, but it's a nice way and it's hassle-free. But then we'll end up selling a few with existing Saunders orders or to people that are here at our shop for visits or training classes. We want to have an inventory on hand here as well. Right.
00:43:00
Speaker
Do you do you look at t-shirts as a small revenue generator or do you look at it as if I can break? No, we do. We do better than break even. But but no, I mean, it'll be OK. The the gross profit from a year of t-shirt sales would be the same profit as an average two to three days of other stuff. So it's not. Yeah, of course. Well, we're some people run
00:43:29
Speaker
some people make their entire income selling insurance, like it can be a lucrative industry. Maybe we'll sell more this time around. I think we sold, I don't know, 300 or 400 last campaign we did. Yeah, no, right. So we'll see. I enjoy it. It's fun. You don't have to look at everything as like, this needs to make certain amounts of money or else
00:43:49
Speaker
It gets stricken from the thing. Yeah, of course. Like at Blade Show, we ordered 200 shirts, had them made in Atlanta, drove there, like from the airport, drove there, picked them up, drove to the show, and it was probably a 50-50 of selling t-shirts and just throwing money at people.
00:44:09
Speaker
I guess I was going to ask the best way for me to get one from you, but I guess I'll just pick it up next month when I come up or buy one off you there. Are they gone? What size do you want? Medium. Small or medium? Medium. I'll see if we have any left.
00:44:26
Speaker
But yeah, I totally don't look at it as a moneymaker. If I can break even, I'm totally happy. It's marketing. I mean, people are going to wear my brand. It's awesome, right? We brought like 300 stickers to the show and I just gave them away for free, of course. But that's what I'm excited for on this shirt is I think it's a cool shirt. Like I actually, I've really liked that part of it, which is one of my goals this year was to make sure
00:44:50
Speaker
the stuff that we do, let's do it well. Let's not just throw our logo on another t-shirt because I don't like it. I don't like that. It's too much ink. It feels heavy. It's not what I want. And this is, yes. Sweet. That is a good note to end on. Sweet. We'll talk offline because I am traveling next week, but we'll figure out how to do this. Me too. Sweet.
00:45:15
Speaker
I'm not traveling. Meg's traveling. Meg and Clara are going out to Kelowna, British Columbia. Oh, that's awesome. Very cool. So, Leif and I have the house to ourselves for the weekend. Voice party, huh? That's awesome. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. What do you do today? Screws on the lathe, knife screws, and just... Oh, okay, I'm going to spend 12 seconds on this. We got our new laughing machine. No, more than that. Go for it. Last week. Yeah, so we got an Angus FL-15. Eric's been posting some stuff on his Instagram.
00:45:43
Speaker
I haven't yet, but it's pretty freaking amazing. The parts are stupidly shiny, and now we're just trying to figure out the workflow between when to lap the blades, you know, before milling, after milling, before he treat, after he treat, after milling the belt,
00:46:01
Speaker
There's a lot of variables in when to do it because they do warp in heat a little bit and and it makes the parts the lapping makes makes the parts like ridiculously flat. So even the slightest bit of warp becomes obvious when you're trying to lap it afterwards. And then you have to lap a lot of material away to get what size is your temporary machine 18.
00:46:23
Speaker
It's a, it's a 15 inch table and has three rings that are like five and a half inches ID. I just, I saw his Instagram and I'm like, wow, that is way smaller. I now get why you want to buy the, whatever you did a 24. Yeah. 24 inch. Yeah. So this will say two or three parts ring.
00:46:44
Speaker
Um, and right now we actually only have one ring. We're trying to get the number two and three as well. But, uh, but yeah, more info to come on that. And it's so far, Eric is like, this thing is amazing. Everything else in the shop is wrong. Like he treated warps blades milling the, your tab, like you're, you're bolting on the mill on the fixture. We'll bend this tab down and all this stuff. He's like, no, no, the lapper is you left the handles and the blade.
00:47:10
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. And because it just makes it more flat, it's easier for... Yep. And a silly surface finish. We used the tumbled parts for six hours and now Eric gets the same result in about 15 minutes. The photo that Eric put on Instagram showed that, I mean, it was a mirror. I don't think I'd recall seeing a Norseman product that was ever that shiny. I thought you intentionally have them. Like my Norseman has a lot of texture to it.
00:47:36
Speaker
Are you going to start turning this into mirror that I'm holding up the blade right now? On the cutting bevel? Or on the flat part? On the flat. Yeah, but we'll still tumble it afterwards. But it'll be a shiny mirror. Like, sorry, a shiny stone wash. Weird. OK, I guess. Yeah. So it'll just be flatter and shinier than yours. OK. And it's a noticeable difference. Interesting.
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah. OK. It's awesome. Cool. The machine looks like it's super cool. It looks like you could put it and sneak into NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, just drop it in a corner, and everyone would be like, yeah, I think that's ours. Yeah. Yep. Awesome. It's super cool. All right. I'll see you next week, bud. All right. Take care. Take care.