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New Year, New Shop & New Expectations!
228 Plays6 years ago
Happy new year everyone! This week John & John talk machines, promises and expectations. Grimsmo Knives gets the keys to their new shop and the new Kern landed in Canada. This then sparked the conversation about the planning process with rigging new machines and the move in general.
John Saunders all about "The Prepared" by Spencer Wright, which is a newsletter for "people working on real problems in the physical world". Click HERE to check it out!
Saunders' also makes a list of some of his 2020 goals. The boys talk about struggling to drill titanium.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:02
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 151. Happy new year. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmo. And this is the basically private intimate conversation between two good friends who've been doing this for a little while and have their own manufacturing businesses.
Acquiring a New Shop Space
00:00:23
Speaker
On that note, what's new in your business?
00:00:28
Speaker
Uh, the, the realization that this year is going to be utterly nuts and insane. Awesome. I saw the picture of the shop on Instagram and I was like, this is it, huh? Yeah, this is, this is it. I was, that was me driving by on my way to work and I was like park pullover snap picture post. And, uh, yeah, it's, I got the keys, uh, yesterday. Awesome.
00:00:53
Speaker
I was like, it's happening. That's awesome. They moved out. You have the keys. You can... I know. It's like we're paying rent to us up today. We got a free month in the contract, but yeah, today it's ours. Actually, it's a good... Anything to share, learn on what you went through going from not having that space to leasing it? The lease, working with brokers, dealers.
00:01:19
Speaker
We're going to do a video about maybe not get into that much nitty gritty, although maybe we should. Having a Realtor definitely helps, especially for all the paperwork and the finalizing and all that stuff. And it does help to find places.
00:01:38
Speaker
like there's public listings that you can certainly look at. And I looked at all of them. Um, but in the end, my realtor found this one before it was listed. You know, he was about to list it and he knew we'd been looking and I've been working with him
Leasing vs. Buying Properties
00:01:50
Speaker
for years. Um, he found our house, he found our old shop and, and yeah, he was like, yeah, I've got these friends that I've been, I've known since high school, basically. And, uh, I'm going to list their property soon. You want it? Let's go look. Um, so I like everything just worked out, but as far as, uh, tips and tricks, I mean,
00:02:11
Speaker
I don't know. I'll have to think about that one. Okay. Well, you got a free rent, so your broker, he represented both sides? He did, which can have its ups or downs, but it seems to work out great on our end. But yeah. Okay. Cool.
00:02:32
Speaker
It's a big process, but it's got to feel good to be mostly behind you. Yes. Much easier than buying a house, that's for sure. But even getting the keys to our house was like, oh, you got to meet the lawyer at this time, and you got to do this. The process was hard. Whereas this one, it's like, yeah, guy's there right now. You want to go get the keys? OK. Yeah, that's why I go get the keys. Right, right.
00:02:56
Speaker
But yeah, anyway, so I went there yesterday, got the keys, got to
Preparing the New Shop for Operation
00:03:00
Speaker
walk through it. I've walked through it several times before with varying stages of them moving out. But seeing the place empty and clean, they did a really good job cleaning, actually. It's immaculate. Oh, awesome. That's nice.
00:03:13
Speaker
And it's like, oh dear, this is now ours. They have shed it of their stuff and now our stuff. And it seems much bigger than I thought. Even walking into some of the offices, I was like, whoa, I didn't see this corner last time. That corner's huge.
00:03:31
Speaker
Real estate has a funny way though. Sometimes places seem cavernous or large, but a lot of times, in my experience, a space seems smaller empty. This isn't something unique to me. It's why brokers will stage spaces oftentimes or show you floor plans because it's like, you can actually fit a ton of machines in here. This is what it could look like, whether it's residential or commercial, but that's awesome.
00:03:59
Speaker
Yeah, so today I'm going to bring my wife and the kids and my dad to go see it. And kids are going to bring their roller skates. Yes. So we're going to have a blast. That's awesome. But yeah, between that and the current is now safely in storage. We'll get moved in probably on the 20th, I'm thinking. So we got 19, 20 days away for that. And then, yeah, Epoxy Guy starts tomorrow.
00:04:28
Speaker
Awesome. Okay. Let's ask. So that's the first commercial day of the year and you're blowing and going, huh? Heck yeah. Yeah. So I did a lot of planning and thinking and strategizing and organizing the past month or two, but specifically through December.
00:04:45
Speaker
to make sure, okay, what's happening first? Let's do the flooring first, get it done. Cause he's going to make a mess and then clean it up. And then it's going to be like spotless downside is like, you can't get around it, but all the work afterwards is happening on brand new clean epoxy. So like all the rigging trucks and all the, you know, boots and everything is we're just going to have to do a good job cleaning it up. But, uh,
00:05:12
Speaker
Well, that's not the mighty boots are no big deal. Yeah, of course the if I could offer a humble piece of advice if you can with the riggers have them drop have them drop the machines onto skates as soon as they cross over the
Moving Heavy Machinery Safely
00:05:28
Speaker
threshold of your pack concrete pad or door so that way they just push those machines in because the other thing that our riggers taught us was it's not only
00:05:40
Speaker
the weight of the machine, but when they were moving our VM3, that's a, I think, 16,000-pound machine, maybe more. But they have a forklift that literally weighed something like 20,000 or 25,000 pounds. So you have 40,000 pounds on the contact feet of the tires, and that alone can cause pads to just crack, because I haven't seen that amount of pressure ever, or maybe not in decades. So it was pretty cool to see them. They just dropped them on these spider-like skates.
00:06:07
Speaker
that have maybe five or six points and then literally three or four able-bodied folks just push the machine around. They're like metal rollers. Yeah. Interesting. So we bought our. It's interesting. OK. I'm just thinking it's good because it doesn't put any extra weight. Yep. But I wonder if it's bad having that much contact weight on a small metal wheel instead of a big rubber
00:06:35
Speaker
I don't think so. Well, first of all, you're shedding, the forklift weighs more than the machine, so it's half the weight. The feet have, I think, five or six rollers each across numerous feet. I humbly say I don't think so. Those same skates are the things I told you about that you can roll across your floor with nothing on them.
00:07:01
Speaker
And you literally just rolled across the floor and you'll hear when it rolls over a spot where the subfloor or not subfloor, the foundation or gravel or soil below your concrete has settled. So there's a gap and that's where it'll crack. So we had like two of the spots. I just put a piece of tape down and when we skated the machine through, we just kind of went around them. Nice.
00:07:25
Speaker
Sweet. And so with our ST20Y, we just had them drop it. I had such a frustrating experience with the UMC and TM3P that I just had the different rigger put the machine right inside of our garage bay over on the old fab side of our shop. So quite a waste from where the lathe is now. In fact, opposite corners. I just had them leave it there. And we then the next morning, we use our little towjack. We dropped our, we bought the,
00:07:53
Speaker
You can buy those skates I was talking about from Northern Tool. They're not the same as the German quality, kind of the rigors used, but I don't know if they're $400 or $500 per skate, but I already had a couple of the tank skates. They're like $99 or something per skate off eBay. I bought like two more. They have a much lower weight capacity, but it's still
00:08:15
Speaker
It's still incredible. It's still like 8,000 pounds per tank or something skate. And the big difference is they're not nearly as stable across something that's slightly uneven, nor are they as easy to maneuver steer. So they're not as good as the Spyder skates, but for the SC20Y, it's pretty stable and not that heavy. We just threw the four of those under the jack studs of the machine itself or the mounting studs. And Jared, Ed, and I just pushed it across the floor. Nope, like seriously, not a big deal.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, I looked up picture right now. And now that you say tanks, I mean, they physically look like an army tank, just tiny. And then I see pictures of the spider ones too. And I don't know, it's a square with wheels on each corner of the square and they all swivel.
00:09:00
Speaker
If I was starting with nothing and knew I was going to be maneuvering some machines around, I would, without hesitation, pick up a set of those square guys, like you with the U-MOCs especially, and yeah, I would do that. Interesting. Because between a towjack, which is cheap, and then a car floorjack, which you might already own, we can move basically any machine in our shop.
00:09:24
Speaker
Because really, you just need to lift one corner of the machine to get a skate under that corner at a time. There's never a point where you're making a big safety risk because you're never lifting the whole machine up. Exactly, or weight risk for that matter. If a weight is 16,000 but you're only lifting a corner, that's theoretically a quarter of that, 4,000 pounds or something. Nice. Maybe don't move the current on your own. No, I'm good there.
00:09:54
Speaker
It's not that heavy. I mean, the more is heavier than the current by itself, but yes. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Just funny about not knowing how that current is. Of course. It's like not a DIY machine. I'll put it that way. No. No.
00:10:10
Speaker
That's awesome. Did you sign off on anything or have you seen it or just the rigors are like, yeah, we got it. The sensors are all un-violated. Speaking of which, so there are the shock indicators that pop red with any problems and quite a few of them were blown. No.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah. And they're all, they have multiple different ratings of, you know, shockitude, which is good. Which is good. Yeah. Which is good because then you have, you have an indication of how severe various shocks were.
00:10:50
Speaker
And yeah, there's gotta be at least 10 shock indicators on the whole package. And several of them were blown at the port, so after the sea voyage. And then- Oh, you know where they were blown? Yeah, because every step of the way, the person who's taking possession of the machine, from boat to dock, from dock to truck, they have to log all of this stuff. So I'll get the log book afterwards. And I'm communicating with Kern
Shipping Practices and Standards
00:11:17
Speaker
too.
00:11:17
Speaker
And they basically said it's kind of normal, like good grief. I mean, it's a bumpy sea voyage, I guess, and lots of moving and stuff. So maybe they're derating the shock indicators to find that balance zone. But he basically said it's not a big deal. And he's never- Who's he? My current guy, Tony in the US. Okay.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah, he basically said, don't freak out yet. I've seen this before. Don't worry about it. We'll handle it as we go. But just make sure that everybody's taken notes along the way. But yeah, it's an interesting process. I saw the pictures, and I was like, oh my gosh. Maybe it's fine. I don't know. And then Tony's like, yeah, don't worry too much about it. Just be aware.
00:12:06
Speaker
It's a good, interesting sort of segue into a story that you and I have heard about, and I don't know how privy we are to share all the details, but a friend who has a really high-end, very solid branded machine that had some error by a service tech upon installation, perhaps a year or two ago, which was noted, basically a service tech was doing something pretty bad and pretty wrong to the spindle.
00:12:36
Speaker
They gave them, I don't know if it was written or verbal, we'll take care of you if there's ever a problem. They came in after, I think it was a year right now to do some maintenance and scheduled service check. Apparently, the spindle is quite a bit out in terms of its run out. I don't know all the details, so I don't want to restate it incorrectly.
00:13:01
Speaker
It's a really good example of it's different what people think is said verbally. It may be even different what was written down on paper. It's different what people think their intentions may be because people move and change and attitude and moods change. So it's kind of like, wait a minute here. And I'm going to, what is the situation? Who is getting this fixed? And interestingly, one I never contemplated is this idea that, well, we will probably
00:13:29
Speaker
assume responsibility, but you first need to spend five figures to replace it. We're going to send it back to our HQ and look at it, and then we'll make that decision. Yeah. By that time- These things can be- They grow out of control. By that time, it might be somebody else in charge who didn't promise you that thing.
00:13:51
Speaker
I mean, the more you can get in writing, the better, even if it's just email. But verbal confirmations, like, yeah, we got you. They only last so far. Right. Well, just try to play out these scenarios if you can. It's a tough balance, because the New York side of me is kind of like, no, we are going to figure this out now.
00:14:14
Speaker
There's the New York side of me that's like, okay, you want to figure this stuff out. You're going to flush this out unapologetically and contemplate through these scenarios and really not just look at what a sentence says or the intent says, like we will fix your spindle under, we will give you a two year spindle warranty. Well, what does that mean? Who pays for what and when and what defines a out of spec spindle because nothing mechanically is perfect. There's degrees of
00:14:38
Speaker
of things that are not good. So I think I'm wired like that because for eight years, that's kind of how I was measured and judged as an employee. It was my ability to kind of come through with ironclad contracts or purchase agreements or things where things went well. But that's very different than I think being an entrepreneur or a business person where you've got a
00:15:01
Speaker
especially at our level, a bit of a lower level where you can't necessarily spend $5,000 or $10,000 within the lawyer going through a warranty agreement or a purchase agreement, and you had to have a much more practical approach and a much more relationship-driven approach. Because ultimately, that's a lot of what it comes down to is it's not just what happened in the past, but how this is going to contemplate the future. So you got to wear these... It's really tough to do because it's kind of this
00:15:30
Speaker
You've got to grease the wheels and make people happy, but get things done. Yeah, and part of you just wants to be nice and go with the flow and trust that their warranty policy is good enough for everybody. It's the same with contracts though. You really should read everything and understand it fully so that you know what you're getting into. Yeah. What's the point of these load sensors on this current if it's like,
00:15:57
Speaker
I mean, were you realistically, when let's say seven of the 10 were at their, were violated, are you realistically going to turn the machine away at the port? I wonder if it's to the point where, you know, imagine
00:16:16
Speaker
I don't know this probably deep conversation but what would break with a rigid shock it could be almost anything I'm sure but I wonder if it's actually boils down to a list of like top five things which are
00:16:32
Speaker
possibly easier to fix in the field than I don't know. But I can see the value of having a range of shock sensors so that you know, like say you have, you know, two, four, six, eight and 10. And two to six are busted, but six to 10 are good. You know where it happened, you know, the shock value was six.
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah. Are there shock sensors inside the container on the sheet metal of the machine or the casting frame of the machine as well? Which I'm sure are not visible yet. Right. So some of it could... Yeah, sorry. There's a couple, like I just saw pictures, but there's a couple in the crate, there's a couple, I don't know, various places.
00:17:22
Speaker
As a layman, I wouldn't worry. A machine that hasn't yet been set up with that. If it was dropped so heavily that the mineral casting cracked, then that's obviously no one's going to argue about that being catastrophic. Sometimes these sensors are things that are put in place not by Kern, but rather by even the shipping company or by the insurance company that's insuring either Kern or the shipping company.
00:17:48
Speaker
We don't really care. We have to put them on there. Don't worry. In some case, yeah. In this case, I know it's current that installed them themselves. Got it. And maybe it's also like, hey, containers get dropped, or maybe they were trying to install the tool changer and the machine just tipped over. Yeah. Yeah. Anything can happen. Yeah. That's exciting.
00:18:16
Speaker
But yeah, so I'm not worried. You got to post more on Instagram. I do. I feel weird about it. I haven't really posted anything about the current yet. And I'm fairly deep into the process now. Right? You got to bring us along, man. I know. So I'm keeping this secret, but it's not a secret because we talk about it all the time on the podcast.
Reflections and Business Growth
00:18:37
Speaker
But yeah, it's time to shed that. Which brings me to one of my points for today is January 1st.
00:18:45
Speaker
This is the time to reflect and think what the year is going to bring and what you're going to do differently this year and all that stuff. Normally, I don't think too much about new year, new me kind of thing, but it is a nice little chance, especially with so much new happening in our life and our business.
00:19:05
Speaker
good little chance to like say well what what do I want to be different you know what kind of outcome do I want differently for either my personal experience through this or you know the business or my relationships or whatever but one thing I was thinking of on the drive home yesterday was uh I think I have this I don't know if it's fear but
00:19:29
Speaker
sort of nervousness about sharing too much or even, uh, opening up, you know, cause I'm, I can be relatively shy guy. And, uh, and as I've seen so far, like in my business, there's so much value in opening up and sharing some things and, uh, being more open and willing to talk about, you know, the good things, the bad things, as we find on the podcast too. Um, I want to do more of that.
00:20:00
Speaker
And it's not shame necessarily, but sometimes I do feel like I don't like to do it, but I want to do it because it's hard. Well, if you don't like to do it, that's different. But if you're just worried about the fact that the world is a tough place, people can be pretty terrible people out there like
00:20:20
Speaker
There's a lot of sympathy for the John Grimsmough who's building a successful business with a tag or Tormach rather in his garage and crushing it and young and hungry. That's a very relatable, sympathetic underdog character. It's a different John Grimsmough who's now thinking about how he's contemplating the Swiss machine and the Kern and the new shop and buying two used machines just because they're around. That's just different.
00:20:49
Speaker
I hope you don't let that well, I guess I shouldn't say I hope you don't let that affect you because the reality is it affects both of us. But don't let that win. Yeah, I'm having a hard time putting my finger on exactly what the you know, the emotion is the fear, the hesitation, okay, you know, is it is it fear of being
00:21:12
Speaker
you know, hated on by the trolls, uh, maybe a little bit. Uh, you know, then you ask yourself like, well, why is it, is it going to happen? Is, does it matter? Does it actually affect you? Do the wins outweigh, you know, the negatives? Well, yeah. And I mean, as I've known from yours and our experience for the past 10 years, like
00:21:34
Speaker
we hear from people basically every day that are like, Oh, you've, you know, you've, um, inspired me to start my business, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I'm afraid to share the level of success that we've reached because I want so much more for myself, but right not showing it is not helping anybody. Yeah.
00:21:59
Speaker
John, you're still just a small business. I just was out east with my wife for the holidays and had the chance to either catch up with or hear about many other friends from college and a former life. We're doing well as well, and many of them are doing much better.
00:22:18
Speaker
in the pure like, if you're just going to judge it by title or company success, and many of them are working for companies, but what they're getting paid, what their lifestyle is like. I am literally not jealous. I'm happy for them. It's interesting. It intrigues me because some of them weren't necessarily the strongest students, and I think that's wonderful because it kind of
00:22:41
Speaker
throws water on the way our academic system judges you and makes you think you're gonna do well and how it's not necessarily, you know, being a really good member of a sports team or a club could be just as important as the A and multi-variable calculus or whatever. But it makes me, it reinvigorates the fact that I love what I'm doing and, you know, John, you're able to employ people, you're able to sell products, you're able to legitimately build a successful business.
00:23:10
Speaker
That's awesome. Do not shy away from the pride that comes with that. And it's showing that pride and being excited and proud of it. Being publicly proud of it is something I shy away from. And I'm like, why? Like internally, I'm so proud and I'm so happy and I'm so excited for what's happening. But it's like I put a filter on when I'm either standing in front of a small group of people, leading a meeting with our team,
00:23:41
Speaker
And I realized that sometimes when I'm talking to a small group of people, I tend to sort of calm my energy based on the energy of the room. Like, you know, some people are happy, some people are sad. So I kind of go in the middle, even if I was super happy beforehand. So what I'm trying to find out for myself is like,
00:24:03
Speaker
Don't do that. If I'm happy, be the happiest person in the room and let that infect other people instead of trying to blend in with everybody because that's middle ground. That's not where I want to be. Dude, you got to do your list of the John list, the list I keep of seven or eight, 10 people that I can think about how
00:24:29
Speaker
I would seek their advice. Again, I almost never talk to these people. I don't know if Alex Steele is on it, but he's certainly a great example of somebody that I would put on that list. I have spoken to Alex Steele. I might even say I know him, but it's not like we're friends. We don't have lengthy conversations.
00:24:51
Speaker
But I know him because if you don't, if you're listening and you don't know of Alex Steele, the summary of Alex Steele is a relatively young, I believe, British forging blacksmith, knifemaker kind of blacksmith who relatively recently moved to Montana and is absolutely crushing it like
00:25:09
Speaker
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Instagram subscribers, YouTube subscribers, and he has one of the most infectious, positive personalities. Incredible. John Hoppin, what am I not saying about Alec? No, absolutely. He's just enjoyable to watch. You might not care about what he's doing, but he is fun and energetic and puts that smile on and
00:25:33
Speaker
And funny enough, I've been watching him for a year or two now, and we've become friends. We chat on WhatsApp and things like that. And he's got this hair that just poofs up.
00:25:47
Speaker
his confidence is infectious as well. And that made me change my hairstyle too. And now I kind of stick my hair up into like a, you know, fake mohawk. And my hair is happy doing it. I don't need any gel or anything. I just stick my hair up, you know,
00:26:05
Speaker
plow it into a mohawk and I like it. I like it a lot. And I was like, I do that because not because of Alex Steele, but because he gave me the random confidence as a person who wasn't my friend yet to be able to do that. And that's the infectiousness that I want to have the confidence to portray. Because I have it, I just don't like to show it because I like to like, call myself and tone it down a little bit. And I'm like, screw that.
00:26:33
Speaker
But Alec does it as well without, so I think you gotta make Alec Steele meet Dale Carnegie. Alec Steele talks about what he's doing. It's clear that he's doing quite well and is quite successful, but it's not about I or me, it's about everyone. And I think that's something you, don't take this wrong way, but you gotta get over, and I do too. No one cares about John Grimstow's personally being successful.
00:27:01
Speaker
that they care about you sharing what you're doing with Grimsby Knives and don't apologize for the energy, don't apologize for the trajectory or the path. That's different in a subtle way than saying, well, I'm doing well or I'm making money. No one cares for that. Yep. I agree. And Alec is one of those guys, Alec does not
00:27:21
Speaker
read a room and say, well, I'm going to temper my energy because it seems like this energy of this room may be a little bit mild. No, Alec is Alec. Alec is passionate and he's going to get there and he's going to raise everybody else up to his level. Yes. And I think I'm afraid to do that. Being truly introspective and trying to understand myself, I think I'm afraid to be that
00:27:42
Speaker
that loud and proud raise people up to my energy level. Or I just don't know how to do it because I've always been sort of meek in a public sense. You do, John. You do. And you're going to. Yeah, exactly. It's just really interesting. It's fun to think it through and to understand why I'm doing things and where I actually want to go with this. But yeah, I know I can do it for sure. It's just a matter of convincing yourself to do it.
00:28:12
Speaker
Start done. Just think about it. What Alec would do. Really? I don't think that's, you don't need more than that. It's actually a great segue to what I said last week, which is let's talk about 2020. And
Purpose and Mission Alignment
00:28:29
Speaker
we've already kind of been doing that, but I have kind of, I kind of thought of my
00:28:34
Speaker
I actually have not thought as much as I'd like to about it, but I had a little list of things and then yesterday I kind of got knocked on my butt after reading something that I want to share. It's actually a really good email list called The Prepared. Have you heard of it?
00:28:55
Speaker
I will include a link in the description. It's a free weekly newsletter by a guy named Spencer Wright called The Prepared. It's about general manufacturing and technology at the risk of, I should actually probably go read what he describes it as. We don't have things like 3D printing or auto or stuff that's not subtractive in manufacturing CNC, but it's still pretty interesting.
00:29:22
Speaker
I like that he talks also about, so like the most recent episode has like businesses that are talking about planning and strategy, manufacturing, distribution of logistics, some tangents, like really cool, interesting stuff. And I read the last week's episode and he had this line in there that just absolutely, again, this is the one that kind of knocked me on my butt.
00:29:49
Speaker
under the planning and strategy section. My favorite businesses are the ones which deeply know why they exist and use that knowledge to drive every decision made in the company's name. Bonus points when external and internal messaging is aligned and when customers benefit when the company is successful. So that's what made me think there's a lot to breaking that down, but
00:30:17
Speaker
don't apologize. Like you have more so than I figured out why your business exists and what you're trying to do with it. You know with that. So don't deviate, don't apologize, don't fail to embrace that internally, externally. Why do you exist? What you're trying to do? The knowledge like, yes, yes, yes. On all of that.
00:30:37
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah, it's, it's what is the book? Good to Great by Jim Collins has a similar vibe to it. Understand why you exist, why you breathe, why you work. And finding that I mean, the sooner the better, but further defining it always and forever is the key to success and business growth and knowing where you're going.
00:31:01
Speaker
And that takes effort and thought. And it's almost so easy just to go through the motions and come into work and do your work and do the thing and grow incrementally and just let the business happen. But I also deeply enjoy and
00:31:20
Speaker
Like to sit back and think about it and where we going why we're doing this What sort of value to the customer are we actually providing? what does the customer expect out of our business and what can we provide to them and And what's the what's the vibe supposed to be like what are we actually here to do? Mm-hmm It's a good I think it's a good
00:31:48
Speaker
mindset because it's the most success-driven, direct statement that isn't about finances and profit. And those still matter, and they matter in the sense that you can't do this with a product whose margins don't work or don't support the infrastructure needed for the business. That's still very relevant, but this is a much bigger
00:32:17
Speaker
a much bigger and better definition of long-term success. And the thing goes on to talk about decisions that you can make. There's one where I guess Patagonia, I love this, Patagonia shut down selling their, I guess you could buy a Patagonia fleece, but have it alongside the Patagonia logo, have your company's logo engraved. And it became this kind of like,
00:32:45
Speaker
thing in the finance and tech industry of our new startup or our investment bank has Patagonia Fleece's this year. Patagonia is like, we don't really like you guys. We don't think you really represent
00:32:59
Speaker
similar values in the world. So we're going to basically make it really difficult for you to buy our stuff because we would much rather be selling this to companies that are doing good things for the world or whatever. Nice. Now, I have a whole different thing. Should companies get involved in downstream political decisions? That's a little bit different of a thing, but I also like they know who they stand for. That's okay. And they're not afraid of it, and they're clear, and they're not afraid to make decisions based on that. Absolutely.
00:33:29
Speaker
So it makes me think about like, what do I care about? And what do I enjoy and like? And also what do I think we're really good at? And I think we've become very good at offering folks a very good work holding solution through fixture plates and the Modvise system. We've got some really cool
00:33:48
Speaker
additions and revisions to that product line that we're going through right now. Like literally, I think this afternoon, I'll probably go in and work on the lathe to do some live tooling work for one of those products that I'm super, like I am absolutely fired up. Like this is peaked life to be able to do that to me. It's awesome.
00:34:07
Speaker
So that's the Saunders MachineWorks business, and we need to crush it on that. We need to do a better job of showing why that stuff is a good value, why you should have a fixture plate in your machine, or why the mod vice can help you, and bring people along for that journey and so forth. And then the second thing to me is ProvenCut. That is a much more
00:34:28
Speaker
existential like, why do you... To go back to Spencer Wright and the prepared, why does a business exist at a deep level and why are the decisions paid to drive it forward? How do you align the messaging? That, to me, Provencut's ability to offer
00:34:45
Speaker
you know, templated pre-programmed speeds and feeds that work on a variety of machines and a variety of materials with a variety of operations will be a huge force multiplier across all the manufacturing space. Whether it's John Grinsville hires a new local intern to come in and start working on the UMOCs or the
00:35:04
Speaker
morey or that you've got to all of a sudden make a steel fixture and you don't really cut steel. You cut titanium or brass most of the time or whatever. We give you a solution and we give you a whole framework around diving into that as a force multiplier. If you want to further tweak it or learn or understand how do you run the machine harder? You need to start drilling holes. What drills should you use? Do you have through spindle? Do you not?
00:35:31
Speaker
I am absolutely fired up about this, but that's the difference. John being fired up in his head doesn't matter. I need to make sure that the external messaging, the product offering is working at a bigger scale there.
00:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, and it's also fired up. Bring that energy and passion into the marketing for that. Yeah. And one of the coolest things I like about it is maybe it's just me being not a job shop, and we're very product-based and very specific. There's a lot of things we don't do very much. We do some drilling, but not a lot, and certainly not a lot of deep drilling. So a deep drilling recipe would be very valuable to us. Or cutting, I mean, even aluminum. I cut so little aluminum that
00:36:10
Speaker
most people take it for granted, but I have loaded up more end mills than I can let care to admit. And there's just tips and tricks that it's like, if you just hand me the solution, then I'll use it and I'll be happy. And that's exactly what Proving Cut provides. It's you guys basically playing with every scenario so that we don't have to, and we can just work and make money.
Team Expansion and Efficiency Improvements
00:36:35
Speaker
And I appreciate you for that.
00:36:38
Speaker
And we love it. We are good at it. And the question is, but that's where I struggle. I have to stop. That's one of my flaws as an entrepreneur is I'm an internal thinker and no one cares. Stop using the word I. Provencut needs to show all these things off. And so
00:36:58
Speaker
that needs to happen on a marketing level, on a social media level, on a paying it forward level. So I've started to think about that. And one of the biggest hurdles that we first needed to hit was we needed a person more dedicated full-time to that. And I've talked about this over on the NYCCNC forums and it's kind of a job that I would like, but not really. I just mean it's an awesome job and it'll be really fun. And the person that is full-time focused on that starts tomorrow.
00:37:29
Speaker
Awesome. Brand new employee. Super, super excited. So I've been working on it. Jared's working on it. Ed's been working a lot on it. Alex has been working on it. And that'll continue to some extent, but Jeffrey, the new person, his full-time job is going to be diving in. And we've got a ton of work to do of recipes in the queue, but it's also kind of the like,
00:37:49
Speaker
we'll spend some amount of time venturing into the quirky territory. So things like, okay, hey, so we need to do a one 30 second slot in 25 Rockwell steel. Is it better to just slot it or should we gang drill at first and come back through and slot it? How does that affect process reliability? How does that affect tool light? How does that affect which surface finish of the sidewalls?
00:38:10
Speaker
By the way, based on your suggestion from a year ago, I've got a 1 16th end mill slot in my titanium two times deep, and I have been gang drilling for the past year. So I gang drill it with an 059 drill bit, which I already have in the machine, and then I slot it and tool life is not an issue anymore. I used to randomly break tools.
00:38:29
Speaker
And now it's just been completely reliable. It's not a tool I ever worry about anymore. Awesome. Yeah, the gang drilling does indeed work. Probably takes a little bit longer, but process reliability man all day long. Has it had a meaningful consequence to your drill life?
00:38:49
Speaker
No, I get, okay. I measured like 8,000 holes out of this tiny drill bit. Yeah. Right. And the drill was like $6. Like I don't care. Right. Right. Drill drills are really good at what they do.
00:39:03
Speaker
Yep. But same thing, we have a, we had a, we had to do a job where we required a, I don't know, $200 flat bottom. So it's like 100. If it's not 180, it's like 179 degree Mitsubishi solid carbide non through spindle coolant drill to do a really, really deep flat counterbore. And that's the drill that I don't have a problem buying if I know it works. But I don't want to spend 200 bucks if it's not going to work or talking to do what I want to do or whatever. So I,
00:39:32
Speaker
We are going to do this. We're going to crush it, but we're also going to show how we share that. And we've got the team now. We've got that offering in place. We know there's value here. So we need to make sure Jeffrey's going to start working, learn to work with Julie on it. Hey, let's get this up on Instagram. Let's show this off. Let's talk about this. Let's show how this is cool stuff. And the proven cut whole tech side, which we spent a year and a half working on, is really coming too, because it's one thing to have the information. You've got to make it easy.
00:40:02
Speaker
to access. So we will continue to have the Provencut website where you can go and say, I want to look for aluminum drilling without through spindle coolant. It'll show you the vice piece that we have. What we're also going to do though, or planning to do is we're going to start offering prepackaged kind of template files. So it'll be like a fusion 360
00:40:25
Speaker
The initial ones will be quite simple. It'll be like, hey, you have a 40 taper machine. Here's all of the normal operations for titanium, for aluminum, for steel. So you just download that and one file, one part will have all your traditional facing, adapters, contouring, et cetera. And if you want to further look at one of those recipes, you could go back onto Proving Cuts website and say, hey, show me the video on recipe 413, because I want to kind of see
00:40:50
Speaker
Uh, what they did or what was the, what was the URL to buy that tool or I want to poke around more, but otherwise it's kind of like, look, I know these work. I've got one file that gives me all this stuff. What we'll also do is things like there's a slotting file. There's a drilling file. There's a surfacing file, which is a single fusion file that will give you all that you may want to know for slotting different diameters, different length, the depths, et cetera. Love it.
00:41:16
Speaker
And that's basically what I do internally is I just, if I know I've done that operation before, I'll open up that old file and I'll copy the operation and paste it into my new program. Right. I'm doing exactly what you're doing just internally. Cause I'm like, Oh yeah, when I made that last thing, it worked. So I'll just grab that file, grab that operation with the tool attached to it and the speeds and feeds and just paste and done. I don't worry about it anymore. Yeah. Right.
00:41:43
Speaker
Sweet. That's amazing. By the way, if you're listening to this, it's actually January 3rd. Don't adjust your calendar. We were just two days earlier. Exactly. I was talking to some other podcast guys, and they have a one or two month turnaround time. And I'm like, oh, we have a two day turnaround time, and I feel like that's slow.
00:42:02
Speaker
Right? We agree. Part of me wonders if we... Yeah, it's good to have that buffer. It's really only a day because it's like they get this Julian... Sorry, not Aaron. Thank you. Get this kind of tweaked on Thursday. On that note, I think we're probably running on the long side, huh? No, because we had that section in the middle of random music.
00:42:25
Speaker
But we have to cut out. The listeners don't know that. Yeah, unless we add a little thing at the end. I don't know. One more quick thing about drilling. So on the Swiss, I'm trying to drill a quarter inch hole. And I've tried, I think, two or three different methods with catastrophic failures all every time. Not catastrophic, but so I'm trying to drill a quarter inch hole to make these pens and not very deep, maybe two or three times deep.
00:42:52
Speaker
And what is it? So I've got, I tried with a spinning drill bit in a live tool holder. No, I tried with the spinning end mill and I was like boring the hole, which works fairly well, except I would rub and the chips would build up on the shank of the tool. Maybe a relief shank tool would work better. But yeah, so I made a couple dozen parts out of that.
00:43:22
Speaker
Didn't didn't really give what I wanted to and it would I have the tool totally load up and Start smoking and oil in the Swiss and danger will rob fire So luckily I was standing there, but obviously it's not a process I can leave unattended so then I had a solid carbide drill in a fixed holder and I would I guess I was peck drilling it and then I Was I did that couple parts?
00:43:50
Speaker
And I started seeing the chips that were coming out the top of the part, I saw them glowing. And I'm like, oh, dear, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. So luckily, no fire there, but I saw sparks. And I'm like, what the crap is going on? So tomorrow, I'm going to quick order some through coolant drill bits. I modified a tool holder block to put that in.
00:44:15
Speaker
Because it was too many steps in the moment to add through coolant, and I didn't have it. So I was trying to find other alternatives. But yeah, through coolant drill is going to, I mean, it's really the only other option. I don't think that's, I think you're missing something. Because through coolant is amazing, but that's not going to solve what sounds like is a different type of problem. You're not turning something backward, are you? I don't think so. Double check that. Because what's your interior?
00:44:44
Speaker
It's making holes, titanium. And you're running appropriate service footage? Yeah, 150, right? So on a quarter inch drill at four times D, don't peck. Ever peck. No, no, no, no, no.
00:45:02
Speaker
Nope, don't need to. It's entering the hole is by far what creates the most heat and the most wear on the cutting edge of the drill, so don't peck. Maybe you peck at once, but basically don't worry about that.
00:45:20
Speaker
And I don't know a ton about super detailed stuff on titanium, but it probably is worth looking for a specific grind for that or coating rather than general purpose twist drill. There's some carpet on all of a sudden and like salt. Yeah, but that doesn't, no. What is for the pen cap? It's for the tip. So if you take your saga part, where the spring goes, that it's a quarter inch hole within a seat at the bottom, like a flat bottom seat.
00:45:49
Speaker
Yep, I'm holding my hand right now. And yeah, this is not one of the problems was it was the part was actually spinning in the collet because I hadn't set the tightness of the collet tight enough. So one of the catastrophic failures was the part spun and then got hot. And at first I didn't know what happened. But I can't go too tight because I don't want to mar the part and like create gouges and stuff.
00:46:18
Speaker
So it's a balance. That's a big deal. Yeah. Yes, that's totally true. You're generally better off, I believe, rotating the part and leaving the tool static. So which you probably have the ability to do in the lathe, in the Swiss. Yeah, I would for now. You could, what's your, do you know what your feed per rev is? No, I can look up the code if you keep talking.
00:46:47
Speaker
Right now you're running your oil, but just not through coolant oil. Correct. And the thing with oil is it actually kind of sucks about removing heat quickly. Like water is just so much more thermally conductive. Yeah. And in a deeper hole, literally no oil is getting to the cutting flutes, plus titanium, plus the fact that oil is flammable and titanium doesn't like to get hot. And it's just too many variables. So through coolant, I mean,
00:47:15
Speaker
it gets the oil where it needs to be and removes the chips better. And I've got 2000 PSI of oil to play with.
00:47:23
Speaker
Clearly that's the solution. Sure. So if you're creating heat because you're not evacuating ships and that's rubbing and that's creating the heat, then through spinicle will solve your problem. But if it's just bad feeds and speeds or you're running the drill backward or the part backward, that's obviously not going to fix it. You could always drop your footage by 30% and increase your feed per rev by 10 to 30%. Titanium is tougher. You want a large enough chip to let it try to pull some of that heat out.
00:47:53
Speaker
A quarter inch drill generally will have quite a large gauntlet, so it's unlikely that your chips are so large that they're not able to be evacuated. You shouldn't load up that drill and maybe a peck at once.
00:48:08
Speaker
Yeah. And the packing thing is interesting because in my head, my default is like through coolant don't need to pack coolant. You need to pack or, you know, solid drill. You need to pack, but this is what I said earlier. Like I don't do a lot of drilling. I just, especially deeper stuff. Um, definitely don't pack with the through spindle. Yeah. I knew that, but yeah.
00:48:35
Speaker
Cool. Good stuff. Thank you for that. Well, Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you too. Let's give her this year. Let's do it. All right. See you next week. Sounds good. Take care man. Okay, bye.