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Business of Machining - Episode 50
206 Plays7 years ago
The Business of Machining Podcast has hit the big 5.0.! That is, their 50th episode.
Hunger: A Common Denominator for Successful Entrepreneurs
Success requires more than making a product. Remember: You are not an island and neither is your business.
Why are you an entrepreneur, anyway?
Let’s just say, it’s not REALLY about the money...or is it?
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh offers insights.
Get a copy here.
What would THAT GUY do?
Building relationships lets you climb inside the mind of someone else. Instead of making decisions based on emotion, removing yourself from the equation proves worthwhile.
A NEW SAGA EMERGES: Norseman Fixtures
“It’s like putting all of your eggs in one basket...but it’s a SWEET basket.” Check out Grimsmo’s Fixturing Strategies here. #worthit
Creating fixtures could benefit you! So, now’s the time to get schooled.
Register HERE for the February 2018 - Fixturing & Workholding Class
When Your Coolant Isn’t Cool Anymore
Grimsmo replaces his 2.5 year-old coolant and makes a 50 lb (23 kg) discovery that’s been hiding.
Saunders gets a new Skimmer! You can see which one here.
ON YOUTUBE:
Getting Views VS. Providing Content You Want To Provide
The pressure of expectation runs high but at the end of the day, it’s about being true to yourself.
Grimsmo’s doing it right!
Check out the new GK FOAM CUTTING VIDEO!
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Introduction and Milestone Significance
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning, folks. Welcome to the business of machining episode 5.0. My name is John Saunders. My name is John Grimsmough, 50 already. I don't know what it is about obsession of even numbers, and I think 52 is probably more significant, right? Right, right.
00:00:15
Speaker
But still, cool. You know what I like about this is we have a YouTube schedule that we stick to because you've got to please the YouTube and Google algorithms in terms of producing regular content. And there's been a couple of weeks where I've said, man, I wish I could kind of skip it because I've got other stuff going on, et cetera. I have never once thought, oh, man, I wish I could just tell Grimsmo, let's not do it this week. Right. No, we haven't skipped a single week. We might have shuffled it by day, but always do it. It's great. Yeah.
00:00:44
Speaker
Awesome. What's going on?
Strategic Networking and Entrepreneurship Focus
00:00:47
Speaker
Well, where are you right now? I have a fun day. I have an 8 a.m. meeting with a thing called Spark 560, which is the reincarnation of the local business incubator, which is funny because it in and of itself has gone through some pretty major struggles. The business incubator was
00:01:09
Speaker
sort of given a large building, a former school, and they were in it for a few years. I won't bore you with too many details, but they had a lot of overhead, and they realized that was going to kill them and not help them help their mission. They basically sold it, moved into a single office inside a local college,
00:01:30
Speaker
I'm on their advisory board, and we have this two-hour strategic meeting this morning as part of their revamp, rebranding. What I mention all that is for folks out there that are into entrepreneurship, you've got to learn to help yourself. Be hungry. The thing that I think some people forget about is it's not
00:01:52
Speaker
It's not you on your own working on your own company or your own product in your own garage or shop. It's meeting other entrepreneurs. It's meeting other manufacturers or going out and talking to your local chamber of commerce, local business incubators, local ... You're nodding, Grimsmo. I don't care where you are in the country. There are other people who have an interest in helping you. In the world we live in today, a passion for entrepreneurship.
00:02:18
Speaker
Yep. And it's, it's a two way street. You know, I've certainly had people help me the past 10 years, um, some instrumental, you know, you, you for one of them, but, but many others as well. And, uh, any chance we get to give back to help people, you know, you and I get emails all the time, guys asking questions and we're happy as we can be to help. So
00:02:38
Speaker
No, and it's like, I know Grimsman, you've had your college students on the marketing stuff. I remember you had a lunch with a guy once, and you actually, maybe you even called me or told me, you were like, just one of these eye-opening kind of random things. It's awesome. That lunch was roughly a year ago today. Serious? It's funny. Yeah, yeah. The lunch. Yeah, I need to get in.
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, I need to get in touch with the guy again because it's a lot different now than it was a year ago. So if we had a lunch today, it would just be a totally different vibe. And that's fun too. Totally coincidental. So I'm actually going to Chicago this afternoon.
Lessons from Successful Entrepreneurs
00:03:16
Speaker
Nice. I'm having dinner with a guy who is just this awesome guy, like actual legit successful entrepreneur.
00:03:25
Speaker
I discovered who he was after he came and took our first ever training class. He was in the beta class and he lives in Chicago. Then a really weird funny coincidence is he's on the advisory board for mHub, which is where we're doing our 2018 event in lieu of the open house. We're doing the
00:03:46
Speaker
September event in Chicago. So I said, Hey, Michael, you up for grabbing dinner. So we're going to grab dinner tonight. But it's fun with him, just like your guy, because these people have kind of these bookended or spotlighted views through your story. And that can be really helpful just to it's fun to it's fun to share with them and update them and then just shut up and listen to what they have to say. Yeah, absolutely.
00:04:12
Speaker
Are you totally right? I should get in touch with my guy that I had a meeting with last year because it's so easy for us to be in it. Every step of the way, we know what's going on. We know where we want to go. We know where we came from. But you tell people that you don't talk to very often and they're just like,
00:04:30
Speaker
What just happened in the past year? And it's people like that. I don't even know some of these people that well. I don't know them like I know you or my friends here, but sometimes I think to myself, what would Michael do? Would Michael buy that machine or would Michael do that deal or would he handle the situation this way? And even though I don't really know him,
00:04:52
Speaker
You're somehow able to just kind of think through what if I were selling it to him, what he might say, and it can really help you on the spot within five minutes start to critically analyze something and make sure you're not doing something stupid or irrational or emotional.
00:05:07
Speaker
Yeah, I know you've mentioned that many times before, and I don't naturally do that. And I kind of wish I did do that more. Like, what would Saunders do, or what would this guy do, or that guy do? I think it would actually help me answer a lot of open-ended questions a lot better if I framed it like that. So I don't know about that. Maybe it's just something I do weirdly. I have no idea. I know I'm weird and strange, but I don't know how weird and nerd and strange I am.
00:05:36
Speaker
I was walking by Julie's desk the other day and she just looks up at me. She always wears headphones and she looks up to me and she goes, we're going to get t-shirts made that say preparatory purchase. And it threw me off guard. I'm like, what are you talking about? And then she slowed down and said it again and I just lost it.
00:05:54
Speaker
I was thinking about that yesterday, and I'm like, what was that word we said last week? I can't remember what the phrase was. Preparatory purchase. Maybe we will do. The two that have stuck out for me are growth. I don't know who said this one. I don't think it was either of us. Growth eats cash for breakfast. You brought it to the conversation. You read it or saw it somewhere. I think you saw a sign in some building or something. I forget.
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah. Growth eats cash for breakfast. I love that one. Preparatory purchase. Oh, man. But you got a laugh classic. Totally. No, but it's exciting. When I think about the one thing, it goes back to that really good book. I think you ended up reading it. The Zappos guy, Tony. I am into it. I haven't gotten very far. It's like this really cool scenario where you keep asking somebody, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that?
00:06:50
Speaker
like nobody ends with the answer of what to make money. They usually end with the answer to make money to let me do something. Well, why do you want to do that thing? Well, ultimately, most people end up distilling this like thing down to happiness, which is kind of funny and it feels kind of like silly, but
00:07:06
Speaker
The one thing I've always just really enjoyed is being able to talk and share, and sometimes that's learning, and sometimes it's professing or teaching or helping other people on that. And anyone who's been an entrepreneur, I don't know any really successful self-made entrepreneurs who have a exclusionary, I don't want to talk to you attitude, because everyone's been through it. And when they see somebody else who's also invested, I'm not talking about a freeloader who just says, I want to start a business, tell me everything.
00:07:35
Speaker
It's really cool to hear them and have conversations with them. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're purposely surrounding ourselves with hungry, motivated people, both at the beginning stages, but also at the top end too.
00:07:49
Speaker
Which is always fun to talk to. To talk to legit, successful people who are still hungry and into it, even though they're comfortable. But they're forcing themselves not to be comfortable, basically, by just striving harder and harder. Yeah, none of those guys. That's awesome. There's nothing. Those guys work, I'm not saying they grind in a bad way, but they love...
00:08:11
Speaker
They love doing what they're doing. It's super cool.
Team Building and Hiring Insights
00:08:14
Speaker
That's how you figure stuff out. When it comes to companies that form board of directors or board of advisors or even hiring employees or stuff, you don't just put up a Craigslist ad. It ends up just happening through conversations with people like that. It's fun to practice and start those things now.
00:08:35
Speaker
Yep. And just like anything in life, practice makes perfect. Whether you're negotiating or talking to people or hiring people or anything, I feel like I'm still super green behind the ears, but I totally scored with Aaron. And then Angelo's coming on in two weeks now, officially, as our machinists. So I'm super excited about that. I was going to ask, what are you going to do this week? So this week, I finally added
00:09:03
Speaker
So our Norseman production has been scattered, and we're consolidating it all onto this one big fixture. And I finally added clips onto this fixture, which was a huge milestone for me to machine the pocket clips. And I tried a couple new strategies, new fixturing strategies, which I'll send you some pictures of. I should probably post on Instagram.
00:09:21
Speaker
which is totally worth it, totally awesome. And it's saving us setup time and just flow and everything else. So I just got one more thing to add to the fixture, and then this fixture makes everything for a Norseman in one cycle.
Streamlining Production Processes
00:09:36
Speaker
Super.
00:09:36
Speaker
Very excited. This is awesome. This is what we've been working on for, this may last longer than the Linda Wheel saga, but okay. Yeah. I guess what I care about is not the past, but the future. I mean, can you now make a seventh and eighth version of this with confidence relatively easily? Okay. That's good.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, so right now we have the one fixture. The goal would be to have four would be perfect. So we can have two on the machine and two off. And then we can just hot swap them and load offline because it takes a good 10 to 15 minutes to load it. And it's silly for the machine to wait while that's being loaded.
00:10:13
Speaker
Worse than that, I find that if you have spindle down, you end up being super anxious and you end up compromising. You use the wrong wrench or not use a torque wrench or you should report. Yeah. And it's like, no, that is right for error.
00:10:29
Speaker
We're doing this, I think I told it, this February, Fixturing and Workholding class. And I've been putting this PowerPoint together. It's like 40 pages. And it's one of the most exciting things I've made because every picture is, not every picture, but
00:10:46
Speaker
almost every slide is a picture and is a story. And you can analyze this fixture. And I've been kind of taking a step back and thinking, why do we do fixturing? Is it for process control? Is it for lights out? Is it for custom work holding? And what are some of the lessons that we've learned? And what are some of the beginner mistakes about that we certainly made on a fixturing goofs and things you just don't think about it. It's like, I don't know, it's probably my favorite topic on that element of machine learning.
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah, mine too, for sure. I totally nerd out. Right. There's no one who's like, I've reached the end of my fixture learning. What's next? There's always more to do. Yeah. And while there is the book on fixturing, probably several, but there's no book. It's totally up in there. You do whatever you want, whatever you think. You amass as much information and knowledge as you can.
00:11:35
Speaker
You just go at it. I'm combining so many different theories and aspects into this one single fixture. And it's kind of putting all your eggs in one basket, but man, it's a sweet basket now. But that's the thing too. We have this list in the power presentation of every single fixture that I can think of that we've used or come across. And I don't mean to say that that's all encompassing, but it's pretty darn comprehensive. And then on the next slide, it's the 10 that we go to.
00:12:02
Speaker
Because you have to learn fixtures. You have to learn how pit bulls work. You have to learn what the limitations are of talon grips or of cylindrical expansion. And so you get really good. And fixtures are expensive. I can't afford to keep more. By having, say, 10 that we go to, we can keep some in stock or we know the can behind how to make them rock and roll or replace them and so forth. So there's a practical element, too, of saying, hey, I need to try to do it this way.
00:12:31
Speaker
But I've learned most of my stuff. It's kind of funny from Instagram, watching some of the other guys post stuff on, hey, I just have it rotate over to this dial pin. And that's the clock you stop. And you're like, oh my god, why didn't I think of that? Yeah, it's so simple. And then all it takes is one guy to find the simple solution that's not obvious. And then it can share with everybody else. I'm excited. Cool. Yeah, so we've just been rocket production now.
00:12:58
Speaker
So excited to get these fixtures done.
Machine Maintenance Techniques
00:13:01
Speaker
On Sunday, I came in and we spent the better part of six hours cleaning out the coolant tank, which is the first time we've done it in two and a half years. It was a job. There was so much chips in the bottom. This is going to sound silly, but can you just walk me through that? Literally, tell me a five minute story on this coolant thing because I'm curious.
00:13:27
Speaker
So we've had this batch of quality chem coolant in the machine for the past two years or so. And then it started foaming really bad. So it was leaking out onto the ground. So we had issues. It was time to clean out the coolant. It was time to put new coolant in. So our coolant representative said, you've got to clean the machine like Windex and paper towels inside in the sump, vacuum out the sump so that there's no old coolant to contaminate the new stuff. OK, fine. It's time to do that anyway.
00:13:56
Speaker
Great. So we unplug everything. We roll out the chip conveyor and the coolant tray and everything. We just roll it out from underneath the machine so that we can see it. Take all the covers off. And there's like, I don't even know, probably 100 pounds, 50 pounds of metal down there. Like a huge rubbermaid. That's where all your chips went. Exactly, yeah.
00:14:23
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we were vacuuming it out with the shop vac and little shovels and things like that. How did the coolant look itself? It looked fine. It was white like milk or maybe a little yellowy, just a little old. It never didn't smell or anything like that. It still worked except for the foaming issue was the problem, but man, there was a lot of chips down there. Can you do anything to change that?
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think there are these strainers in the front of the machine that the chips, the cooling goes through the chip conveyor and then through these little strainers. And we just did a terrible job of cleaning them out over time because they're hidden behind these covers. So now we have these covers off so we can always visually see how quickly they're loading up. And now we can establish like, okay, they need to be cleaned out every three weeks or whatever instead of every six months, because if they're full, then the chips just go around them.
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's funny. When they're full, the chips then can pick up more contaminants, and it takes much longer time for your coolant to cycle through the machine, because these coolant wants to hang on to all these tiny chips. It's really... Exactly. John and I have been on this three-week-long WhatsApp conversation with a few other machinists, and a significant amount of the conversation has been
00:15:39
Speaker
this insane level of detail about coolant and it's crazy how much coolant matters for everything from surface finish to machine performance to end the life. Like I had no, I kind of knew this, but hearing other people really nerd out on it. The Haas system seems to be a little bit more
00:15:58
Speaker
conducive than the Maury for adding in different rough filters, coarse filters. We're going to add that aquarium media that Amish has to even help clean out before it gets to our cheesecloth. Then we still have the Pearson system, and then we have the Haas system, and we just bought a new skimmer. We're trying to get serious about it as well.
00:16:23
Speaker
Nice. Did you get that, uh, uh, that, that skimmer that Ken was talking about? What's it called? Next, next, next gen is it something posted in the tech. Um, I'll email what we bought to Erin so she can put in the description. Cause apparently I actually saw it at the Reynolds open house, which we did a YouTube video on, but it looks more like a fish tank thing that actually, and this was my one concern about it is it's actually pumping the coolant up.
00:16:52
Speaker
to this like plexiglass or acrylic container that's like three feet above your coolant tank. So I was like, I don't know if I like that because now all of a sudden you've got an inlet and an outlet that could leak. You've got the tank that could leak. You're basically lifting coolant up, which is our buddy Tyson Lamb just had a little coolant accident this weekend, which is not fun where you end up with coolant all over your floor in like six minutes.
Exploring Coolant System Upgrades
00:17:17
Speaker
The skimmer is supposed to work super, super well. They're like $500. And again, I'm just kind of like, what is the right? It's like what you said with the three-week thing schedule. What is the right process? What's the right recipe so you can have it last for a few years? Yep. Yep. But I've heard a lot of good people talk about that. It's not a skimmer. I think they call it a coalescer. It lets the oil float to the top, and then you drain out the oil in this canister.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, so I've been thinking about getting one for the lathe because the lathe absolutely pisses Weylub oil into the coolant. I'm not kidding. We're putting in half a gallon a week of Weylub oil. Are you serious?
00:18:01
Speaker
Oh yeah. Apparently, that's normal for that commercial. Jared's going to put that skimmer together tomorrow or something. When I'm back this weekend, I'll post an Instagram picture so you can get it out of it. It's actually kind of large.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that's a no-brainer. Yeah, absolutely. So then once we cleaned out the coolant and scrubbed the tank and everything, which we filmed the process. We'll put up a YouTube video of it. Aaron's been working on it a little bit and got all nice and filthy. And then we mixed up a week batch of coolant, like 1% to wash out the lines, wash out the machine.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yep. And then we kind of hose down the machine with that, and then drain that, and then mix up a fresh batch of 7% fresh new quality chem. And boy, it smells better. It looks better. It's like cleaner looking and everything. So it's good. Sounds like you did the right thing. They do have foam, FPs, foam preventators or something that if like, I know we get a lot more foaming on through spindle. Oh, we got to talk about through spindle cool too.
00:19:08
Speaker
that can help with it, but it sounds like your coolant was just like coolant doesn't last forever. These chemical chains break down or something. I'm not a chemist. Exactly. Do you know what it would cost for you to add the pump to your machine through Spindle?
00:19:26
Speaker
I don't. My machine, as you know, is prepped for through spindle coolant, which means it has that union joint thing at the top of the spindle. But I don't have the pumps. I don't have the filters. I don't have the extra capacity, coolant tank, whatever it takes for through spindle. To do it legit, I feel like it's $7,000. But to do it DIY, I think it can be done for $1,000 or $2,000.
00:19:51
Speaker
Do you know how big your coolant tank is, preferably in gallons? How much is a drum? Yeah. 55?
00:19:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah. We only have a 55-gallon, and we run through Spindle daily. So I don't know if you need a larger tank. I would just say I would highly encourage it. If anything, it's not always practical to buy through Spindle solid carbide tools, because they're insanely expensive. But I think is it Rego or Parleq? Somebody makes some tool holder. Heimer does, too. Their banana is expensive.
00:20:27
Speaker
but you can get these tool holders that will actually jet direct the coolant down, which could really help some of your slotting or small ink, maybe. If you don't get the chips out of there, you're going to fail.
00:20:42
Speaker
And then drilling is, I just won't. Yeah. Like you do a ton of drilling because each fixture has like 500 holes in it, right? But we do it on almost all of our parts. I mean, I would say this, if you offered me a brand new machine, like some insane showroom deal at 30, 40% off and it didn't have through spindle coolant and it couldn't be retrofitted, I would pass.
00:21:05
Speaker
It's just nothing. Wow. Yeah. And the three spindle drills aren't that expensive relative to what you can do with them to a life and all that. I mean, I use a 59 thou drill. I use a 93 thou drill and an eighth inch drill. And that's like the only drilling I do on a regular basis.
00:21:28
Speaker
But if you had really big problems with slotting ops or something, you could gang drill at first. And that's going to help facilitate chip evacuations. It's going to preserve.
00:21:43
Speaker
I keep forgetting about that. You mentioned that to me like nine months ago, and I just keep forgetting about it. It'll be a lot slower if you don't have through spindle, I suspect. But you can get these short stubby drills. They don't need to be spotted. And you're going to present the end mill then with uneven chip load as it goes through it. But if you are still doing cleanup passes, I suspect it would be a win. It's just less work for the end mill. Because the drill that I would use, I know that I get really good tool life with that drill.
00:22:12
Speaker
So it should like, oh, I should just do that right now. I like that. I'll try that. And that, I mean, as shallow as you're going, maybe you don't need through spindle. I don't know. Drills are good at lifting up. Yeah. I mean, everybody says drills are like the best at removing material. You want to remove a lot of material. A drill is the fastest, cheapest, easiest way. And I am having this sliding operation that we texted about yesterday that caused me a lot of problems.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah, remove most of the material with a drill, which is cheap and easy. And then, yeah, I love it. I would love to talk to somebody. Maybe this is on my IMTS list, but somebody who really is smart on this. But my understanding is that with ThruSpindle Coolant, when you present it at the tip of a drill or a tool, obviously, there's benefits. It's actually giving the coolant
00:23:01
Speaker
where the cutting is happening, which is great for lubricity and so forth. But like certain pressure through spindle coolant can just help evacuate the chip and not recut the chip, which is obviously really, really important, perhaps the most important thing. But the higher through spindle stuff, the coolant is actually fracturing the chip. As the chip is being formed, the coolant is making sure it gets broken, which also means it's a smaller chip, which means it helps get evacuated. That's insane.
00:23:30
Speaker
That's crazy. Yeah, like some of the Swiss slates have like 2000 PSI of oil coolant. Really? And that's like crazy. Technically, I believe you can call that hydraulic fracturing. Wow. Yeah. Fracking is not what they call it in mining. Right, right. That's a big buzzword in the States, but obviously very different use. But yeah, it's pretty freaking... I'd love to see one of those like slow-mo videos of through Spindelkorn cracking a chip. Holy cow.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, but how would you look through the through spindle coolant? Like with the camera? Dude, they've come up with like, um, when we were at emo in our video and we were at the, Ooh, was it pH horn? Maybe I can't remember. I feel bad. They had
00:24:12
Speaker
a lathe that had half of the part machined away. Then they had the strobe camera and they sink the strobe with the chuck. Then they put a video feed up. If you watch the machine, it's super disorienting. But if you just look at the TV next to it, you're watching this lathe do ID boring and it looks like you have this like magical telescope or like telescopic or transparent
Capturing Manufacturing Processes on Film
00:24:39
Speaker
vision.
00:24:42
Speaker
I've seen YouTube videos like that and it's always fun. I think Star put up a couple of videos like that. A lot of the Swiss Layeds, like when I was doing research for Layeds, you see a lot of these videos and I'm like, I want to do that now. I don't think it was a... I don't know how big a deal it would be to set up. I think you probably have to have a pretty specific frame rate camera and strobe system and all that. It didn't look casual. I think
00:25:08
Speaker
Your strobe would have to match your spindle RPM. So one rotation gives you one strobe. So you need a little sensor to like every rotation, fire the strobe. And then does the camera have to be anything special? Or is it just going to record strobe? You're probably right. The camera might be OK. Frame rates are weird though. I know Julie gets really mad at me when I film in like the wrong frame rate by accident. I used to not care.
00:25:33
Speaker
Right. We're still at the point where we don't care. A guy asked me the other day where you were with EDMs. I figured, oh, you know what? I don't even ... I mean, I know you're being very judicious with how you think about your year, but is EDMs on your wish list? It's on my radar. Not currently on the wish list.
00:25:52
Speaker
Would you buy... I'm just having fun here. Is there another machine you would rather have first? Oh, that's a big question. The second mill I would guess is probably a... A second mill would probably be the logical choice because the more is getting more and more maxed out.
00:26:09
Speaker
which is excellent. But if you did, if you got your Norseman pallets nailed down and then did the same for the Rask, that's not no small feat. But if you did, you could be running four knives of one of each type every night, overnight. And even if you figured one out of five nights you had a tool problem that you're still getting the machine freed up for the during the day for a fixture in R&D and other stuff. Totally. Like we do run it every night, just one pallet, which is two knives. You do.
00:26:40
Speaker
Dude, how many nights do you come back and have it not complete due to a problem? Well, this morning I came into a red flashing light, although it was just at the very end of the pallet run, which is sweet. So the cleanup, the fix is going to take no time at all. And actually, the tool wasn't even broken.
00:26:58
Speaker
It's a broken tool, but I look and it's still there. This is while I was running in this morning to start the podcast. I don't know if there was some tolerance issue, something like that, but- Be careful. Maybe the break in action tolerance is too tight. That's probably- Okay. That's always when I have big red flags, I'm like, okay, just slow down. The machine told me something is wrong. Don't be arrogant and think, oh, I'm just going to pound through this.
00:27:23
Speaker
We filmed next week's Wednesday widget, and it's the most boring Wednesday widget ever because it's just two different warm-up routines, but the whole thing is built using custom variables in the G-code that are handled through Fusion 360 expressions.
00:27:46
Speaker
I love it. I mean, I am sure it's going to be a mediocrely popular video on YouTube. I just made up a word mediocrely, but it is like you just plug in your starting RPM, your time, your increments, and it loops through this code, all driven by variables in Fusion. You can put in your machine's travel area. It references your machine home, goes around the maximum extents. It was so fun.
00:28:13
Speaker
Whoa. So that would work certainly for any Haas machine. And you just type in your different table sizes. We wrote it for the Tormach. But I just have to look. I mean, Tormach is PathPilot, which is Linux CNC, which is largely a FANUC driven G-code system. The only thing I don't know about is we use this command called
00:28:37
Speaker
G53, which is machine home, that should work fine. L20PX is able to... Have you ever seen that? You're able to write the current position of the machine off the coordinate system? Does that make sense? Yep. Okay. I should try on the Haas this afternoon because that would be... We have a warm up routine for Haas, but this is a little cooler.
00:29:00
Speaker
Nice. That's awesome. So you're getting into variables and math and routines. I mean, it's like anything. Once you break it down, and that's what we did, it's actually a long video because we wanted to kind of explain it, but it's not hard. I mean, like, it's just, it's the hard part is the hurdle of getting started. So I had a similar, I mean, completely different, but a friend of mine who has two Haas machines asked me this like super simple question about typing in a tool change code.
00:29:36
Speaker
walk through it piece by piece with how I do it. And I was thinking about that. I'm like, it would probably be fun and helpful to four people out there, but to do a YouTube video on simple things. This is how I do a simple thing on the Maury, which will be interesting to everybody who has maybe a tormach. And it's different. And it's just, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like day to day kind of normal stuff. So I've had this kind of like. Or would that just be too boring?
00:29:59
Speaker
And I'm like, that seems weird.
00:30:03
Speaker
I don't, so I've had some, I've wrestled lately with this, like, this might sound weird, but, you know, the people say you're, you know, you're, what is it a victim of your own quote unquote fame? And don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm famous. But, you know, all of a sudden now I feel like there's more pressure and expectations with a YouTube video.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah, there's more trolls. There's negative feedback. It's not focused. Again, I know if I turn my whole YouTube channel into machining stupid fruits and vegetables and silly stuff, it would probably hit a million subscribers. That's not me. So one of the things I wanted to film next week was a
00:30:44
Speaker
a manufacturing entrepreneur's beginner's guide to accounting, or basically a beginner's guide to accounting for machinists and small business owners. And it's a little bit of a different spin or twist on explaining it. That is not like
00:31:00
Speaker
Somebody who is focused on YouTube growth would tell me, don't do that video. I don't care. It's my channel. Same thing. I want to do a video on how we do tool management in our house. That I think is okay to do, but it's not going to have 50,000 views, but I don't care. You know what I mean?
00:31:20
Speaker
Like there's two categories here and I feel totally the same way now that I have a dedicated video person, Aaron, and we're doing these kind of highly edited music induced videos that, you know, it's all timed the music and cool stuff. And we're trying to be as, I don't know, impressive as possible to sound, you know, guilty saying that. But I also just want to put out like good, normal, helpful, regular content that
00:31:44
Speaker
you know, four people will be like, wow, I didn't know you did it like that. And, you know, you just, you learn by observing people do things and I want to do more normal things so that other people can observe how I do it and maybe get something from it. Um, I don't, I don't want to lose that, you know, by just doing this kind of fast paced, high end, like,
00:32:03
Speaker
That's my other list. I have a list of people that I look back to and think about because I get worked up or it's easy to get worked up over expectations of content. It's fun when you put out a video and everybody is like, that was amazing. There's no question that you get an endorphin high if you get a video that has 50,000 views immediately with all these people loving it, loving it.
00:32:25
Speaker
What I try to remember is there's a list of people who ... Think about it, John. If there are 17 people who legitimately have a better year in their business or their manufacturing because of you, 17 people, to me, that passes a test with flying colors. The reality is it's probably more like 500. If you put out a good video, that's what we got to remember.
00:32:52
Speaker
What's on tap for today?
Machining Techniques for Knife Inlays
00:32:55
Speaker
Today, I'm making inlays out of African Blackwood, which is so far my favorite wood to machine, because I've done a lot of super brittle woods. And you try to machine it, it cracks in half. You try to take it off the fixture, which is glued to the fixture, it cracks in half. So most woods are just, even stabilized woods, are just super annoying. But African Blackwood, it treats like plastic.
00:33:18
Speaker
Oh, okay. I was going to say, your comments on wood please me. I have no love for it. No, that's super cool. But yeah, it looks super cool. Does it look like a wood or does it look more like a big light or like something? It's very black, but it does have a grain to it. No, that's cool. What knife is that?
00:33:40
Speaker
Oh, that's an inlay for a Norseman. Sorry, it threw me with the with the curve. It's got like an S curve or she came through the middle of it. Hmm. That's cool. Oh, how do you how do you pronounce that Hewlett point on a Norseman blade?
00:33:56
Speaker
because I sent you that email the other day. So in Japanese, like, OK, so the Norseman is a modified tanto blade. So the front end is kind of blunt, and then the recurve part, and then they meet. And there's this point at the cutting edge where the front point and the main edge meet. And in Japanese, that's called the Y-O-K-O-T-E. So Eric and I like to like put on this fake Japanese accent and call it like the yokote. OK, yokote.
00:34:26
Speaker
But I don't know if that's pronounced properly. It's just. No, no, for sure. It's it's very interesting because I have kind of had to learn how to use the Norseman, which sounds silly, but there are good ways to use it and there are kind of not good ways to use it.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. So how has your experience been now that you've been carrying it for about a week or so? I definitely need you to move up. Right after you published the IMTS 2016 video, I need you to publish the How to Sharpen a Norseman video, because I am using it. Yeah. Good. Good. Yeah, that's on our list, Aaron and I, to film that video. Cool. That's awesome. Sweet. So yeah, I mean, we're grinding production.
00:35:08
Speaker
We're holding a steady pace. Holy cow. Eric finished 10 nights a day. You guys can't see this, but I know based on knowing the shop layout of Grimsville Shop that he's looking at his Pearson boards right now.
00:35:22
Speaker
I am. It's awesome. We actually might make them now because we're now we've got enough focus on like four or five different core products where I'm now starting to it didn't work before because we were too jumping around. But now I'm now I understand how it can help us, which is exciting. Right. Oh, yeah. And I actually go I actually go back and forth with using the Pearson boards and not using the Pearson boards like for weeks and weeks at a time.
00:35:49
Speaker
There's one sheet on there where we cross off the knives we did every day, which is what I'm looking at right now. But as far as the inventory and things like that, some things are just on such a daily schedule, we just make them every day. Handles, blades, clips, make it every day. Laid stuff, you basically batch it whenever you can, don't run out. That's what I struggle with because I don't want a system that has mixed info where some of it is actually well kept and some of it is just stale.
00:36:18
Speaker
Even in Asana, like I was telling Julie and Ed and even Jerry, I was like, guys, I'm not in Asana every hour. And I probably need to be in there at least three times a day because I need to be paying attention a little. But I got to share this. This is my one note today. I had a day Monday, John, that was like this entrepreneurial epiphany where
00:36:41
Speaker
It was just everything clicked. And what I was trying to figure out how to describe it and I was like, I couldn't have gotten stressed if I tried to.
00:36:51
Speaker
Everything's working. The systems were in place. The processes were in place. I wasn't needed. Of course, what that does is it lets you flourish. It lets you be the best self because you're now ... It's like I was trying to explain it to Yvonne. I was like, it's kind of like saying, oh, I'm going to do really well on this test because I'm going to go take 27 practice tests. Well, that
00:37:14
Speaker
Nobody can do that. You get ground down. But it's like when you're like, I know I'm pretty prepared for this class. I'm just going to go decide what I want to do to kind of finish fresh. That's when you frankly do your best job of actually preparing.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah, when you're comfortable. So I had one of those. Wow. Hey, what is a good start? It's only the 17th of the month already. No, but it was pretty darn cool. I don't know what it was, but it was kind of like one of those things where you know if you've had one of those days. So that became a very clear, you have a little taste of it and that becomes a very clear goal.
00:37:55
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. That can be a big goal for you. And I've had tastes of that kind of day before, maybe not for a whole day, but certainly for many, many hours at a time where you're just like, I'm comfortable just chatting with Aaron about planning video planning for like an hour and a half. And I'm like, the machines are running. Everybody else is busy. I'm good. Let's concentrate on this. And this is fun. And I'm excited. And we're talking about, you know, big picture stuff. And it, you know, this is great. That makes you smile. It's awesome. That's really cool.
00:38:24
Speaker
Good. I should wrap up because I've got to go. I've got to go do this meeting. Sounds good. Pressure bud. I'll see you next Friday. Next week. All right. Take care. Sounds good. Have an awesome week. Bye.