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Two successful entrepreneurs talk about manufacturing, lean principles, and the freedom they are pursuing in life and business.
lean built 104
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[00:00:00]
Andrew: So Jay, I sent over a screenshot in signal of a page from the hi Yuki ano five Pillars of the Visual Workplace. And he had a helpful distinction between organization and orderliness. . And it, the word organization, this simple word is often misunderstood. Organization does not simply mean lining things up in rows or into neat stacks that is just forming lines.
Jay: . And,
Andrew: and the matter of
factness of, yeah. That's just making pretty shapes. That's not organization. Yes. And he said then before, be sure you understand the full meaning of this word organization means clearly distinguishing between what is needed and to be kept.
.
And what is unneeded and to be discarded.
Then the idea is [00:01:00] after you have organized, after you have separated out the things you need and are keeping and the things you don't need and are getting rid of, from there, you pursue orderliness so that everything has a place. Everything is well labeled, everything is easy to find, but just arranging all the crap you shouldn't keep into nice tidy piles.
Not organization
Jay: *so that those words are often seen or used synonymously order, put it in order. You know, we want to get really organized here, but they're very different like that. That's a great point right there. You, you, um, go through the steps of creating. Well, like I've said before, like the root word of organization is organ, like an organ in our heart, lung, you know, kidney, they do one thing and they do one thing well, yeah.*
*And make things organ eyes. Then you get rid of all the clutter. Yeah. And then you put that clu the clutter's gone. So now you put the organs in order for optimal flow. All this abdominal *
Andrew: fat needs to leave the organs need [00:02:00] room.
Jay: There you go.
Andrew: And then he gave a bullet point list of the kinds of waste and errors and defects.
Yeah. Great. That failing to organize causes. Yes. Unneeded inventory, incurs extra inventory related expenses. Unneeded documents and materials require additional storage space and shelving. More lockers and shelves are needed just to store the unneeded items. Unneeded conveyance requires extra pallets and carts.
Extra manpower is needed to move and manage the growing inventory, and it gets harder and harder as you have larger and larger amounts. . To actually separate out needed from unneeded inventory. . And then stocked items become obsolete. Due to design changes, limited shelf life. . Quality defects result from unneeded in-process inventory.
Stuff gets damaged. Stuff gets broken. Unneeded equipment poses a daily obstacle to production activities. You've got machines on the floor that aren't being used, that are in the way. Yeah. And the presence of unneeded items and unneeded equipment makes designing equipment layout more difficult.
Jay: Yep. I go, oh man, [00:03:00] you got me.
Yeah,
*you've got my number. It's so common. You know, there's stuff where, you know, we've, we were having like more and more new people come on board and you know, the first thing we, we want to emphasize is like, Hey, be curious. Find out how things work. Ask questions, question why we're doing things.*
*And one guy Tanner's like, Hey, , why do we put 'em here? And I said, because when we moved into this room, the assembly room. That's just where the guys set it down and it just stayed there and there was no active participatory thought going into it. And then it looks our assembly room and parts of it looks just like this bullet list, unneeded documents, materials, lockers, shelves, things like that.*
And then you're moving stuff around or you're moving, you are the one moving around stuff that just shouldn't be there.
Andrew: Yeah,
Jay: very
Andrew: common. So I went on a red tagging spree. Today's Tuesday. I went on a red tagging spree. Yesterday at lunchtime, I just got out a roll of red vinyl tape and I went into Bay four where we have our storage racks.
Basically all the overflow stuff. That was in the way in our production bay. Yeah. [00:04:00] We put it on pallet racks in Bay three so we can start to sort through it and get rid of things, and I had just not gotten around to it. .
Jay: And
Andrew: I was red tagging vacuum pumps and shelving, you know, disassembled small shelving units and space heaters, and a whole 14 inch floor standing Delta Band saw that we don't use.
And just a bunch of things. I'm like, it's a perfectly functional piece of equipment.
.
We haven't needed this piece of equipment. This is our backup band saw. It's like we haven't needed this piece of equipment. I haven't turned it on in four years. . Yeah. I got it for, I got it for free when I was a broke woodworker.
I'm like, this is amazing. And I now have two bands, saws for two different kinds of cutting. And I used it a lot when I was doing guitar work. Right. And I just sentimentally didn't wanna get rid of it. 'cause that tool represents that period and that process of my life.
Jay: I know,
Andrew: but I'm looking at it going.
This just needs to leave. You know, that's the founders. We've moved it around so many times.
Jay: Yeah. *That's the founder's dilemma though, because I have stuff that is intrinsically valuable to myself, *[00:05:00] *in fact. . We had, what was it? We had something that the customer sent us a picture, he couldn't get it to work.*
*I, I don't remember the story, but we said, Hey, send it back to us. We'll do a full rebuild. And it was one of our like, like single digit pro palate systems, you know, it was like serial number, like three. And I'm like, wow, look at this. This guy's been using this for like a decade. This is amazing. And I said, you know what?*
*Are you okay if we keep this and send you a brand new one? And the guy's like, sure, yeah. Everything works. Yeah. And so we have this, like, this dust bin full of like quote unquote Pearson history Museum stuff. Yeah. So. And it, you know, it's, total trash. I ran across more stuff the other day. It was a prototype that I made in my garage in Austin, Texas, circa 2008, 2007, something like that.*
*Ultimately, it was an early iteration to our smart back system where, where I went, wow. This was like the first thing that came off my mini mill. I'm going to keep this, this is history. And other people were like, dude, *[00:06:00] *it's an ugly piece of metal, you know? Yeah. And yeah, it's just those things that I think that the owner will exercise owner's privilege to keep the things he has to keep.*
*But when it comes to the gemba, the shop floor the value stream. I've been given this some thought. And there are primary tools and each primary tool can maybe have a backup tool. Yeah. And everything else that you think is ancillary and necessary, it could end up in the trash if you really need it.*
*McMaster can get it to you in a day or two or same day like we are here. Yeah. So, *
Andrew: so look that question of how much spare stuff do you keep? One thing I saw when I was at HFW Industries in Buffalo, New York last week. Was they had a whole rack, a multi pallet rack that had large totes of different oils.
. Different oils, hydraulic oils for different machines. You know, your vectra, your light. Gear oil, all these things. ISO 32 and they were all run on gravity, taps down to a row of handles that were all well labeled. So you could take a small container and put it under there and [00:07:00] just, you know, that's awesome.
Draw, draw a pint of vac for number two. That's so cool. Chug it down and then chase it with some light hydraulic oil. Well, there you go. And I think that was a project the nice labeling was one that Tuck's Garage had been doing. So Tuck's garage. Works at that company. Okay. Uh, and it was really funny.
He wasn't there the day that I stopped by, so I took a picture in front of his 3D printer and then sent it to him. It's like, Hey, I'm in your, I'm in your shop checking out your clean improvements.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: But how many spare parts of things? Like we have a, there are some things that are critical to ev some, like we have some small eyelet setting dyes and some other tools where if they ever get damaged.
We can't make any holsters without them. We have to have them like screwdrivers. We got lots of screwdrivers. If I lose or break a screwdriver, I'll just go get a different screwdriver. I got plenty of electric drills and drivers. We got hacksaws, we got all kinds of other stuff. We're in a pinch. We can find some other way to do it, even if you don't have a duplicate of that exact tool.
Like if I was cutting some EMT maker [00:08:00] pipe to make a rack and my hacksaw blade broke, if I needed to, I can go get an angle grinder and a cutoff wheel and finish my build. It'll work. Sure. There are certain things where they're very particular and if I don't know how quickly I can get 'em or there's only one place I can get them from
.
Then making sure I have one.
Jay: Yes.
Andrew: Super helpful.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: But that doesn't mean I have a spare Matsuura.
Jay: Yeah, exactly. So there's things like, uh, grinding wheels. Grinding wheels are very critical to Yep. Some of the components we produce and there's, always gotta be one on hand. We actually do saw blades two at a time.
Okay. 'cause especially if we're doing like a new material or you know, there's, so a new material for us that we're introducing more and more, just 'cause it's perfect application is 17 four. And so, and that's the pre
Andrew: hard version four or H 900? It's,
Jay: uh, it's the pre hard Yeah. Or we'll get H 1150, which is the softest of the hard hardened states.
Okay. And I knew that we would, there would be a learning curve. So yeah, we have a Kanban [00:09:00] card that says, the minimum is one. The reorder is one, so we always have one at least. But knowing that we were going to, um, actually I know what it was, it was a thicker cross section, so we needed to go with fewer teeth per inch.
Okay. TPI of like, like three to four or something like that. And so I said, you know what? We're gonna bump it up eventually we're gonna use it. But this is one of those exceptions where the. *Acceptable amount of inventory. It's not excessive, but we're gonna have four as we learn how to master cutting this six and a half inch diameter, 17 four, which does work Harden on you.*
*And sure enough, by the, you know, end of the week, I think my guy Juan, had broken a couple saw blades, which is fine. He learned a ton. And, um, yeah, it's, it's all about, I, that's why I don't think anyone like you or me or Paul Aker or any of these lean gurus could ever put a number. Did you just call us Lean Gurus?*
*Yeah. I'm sorry. Ooh, any legitimate lean gurus. *
Andrew: *How about that? I don't want ever be a guru, like, oh, I feel like I got some guru on my hands. I better go *[00:10:00] *wash that off. *
Jay: *I don't know. I just don't think there's a magic formula out there. It's not, it's it every, that's the beauty of lean. It's a core set of principles that every.*
*Every industry, every shop needs to adapt to. *
Andrew: *And the idea that what I need to keep spares of . Could be totally different from what you need to keep spares of. That's right. And this is one of the places that we're actually commonality across machine tools is really nice. Like what oil does that machine use?*
The same oil as the other three mills of the same type. What? Grease cartridges. Does it take the same grease cartridges as those other three mills? .
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: Every time we have a new machine, like our Matura uses a a bunch of different fluids that none of our other machines use, that we never had to keep on hand.
And then you gotta get pales of those and you gotta label them. You gotta storm someplace and then you gotta remember where they are and what they're for.
.
Andrew: But we talked a bit before we hit, uh, record about maintenance stuff generally, and maintenance is never an exciting part.
Jay: Well, I've got an exciting maintenance story for you.
Okay. Hit me with the exciting maintenance story. So, so my, one of [00:11:00] my long-term guys who's been with me almost 10 years, Juan comes up to me, he's like, Hey I was cleaning the saw the other day. There's a gearbox that I notice has oil plugs. Yeah.
.
And I'm like, yeah, oil. Yeah. Okay. And he's like, to my recollection, we've never changed the oil on it.
I'm like, I don't remember either. I don't even know that there's a gearbox. Yeah. Obviously there's a gearbox in the saw, but it's not top of mind. So he said can you get me a manual? And yeah. So sure. You know, we have a Hemsaw, uh, Hemsaw is a great, like, family owned companies. I wouldn't say it like, um, they don't feel corporate.
They feel very like family oriented. They're great. So very great portal with all these things. So I, I downloaded a few, um, manuals really robust in their documentation. Sure enough, you just need to, basically, it doesn't say about like, change in the year the, the oil on a yearly or monthly basis, whatever.
It's just, every few months check that it's to the top of the top, uh, oil plug. . So it's just topped off. And so, Juan, I mean, it's, his [00:12:00] shift has gone for the day, but I said, when you get back in the morning, just do it. Let me know, I'm gonna already order the, you know, four quarts of oil.
If it's bad, maybe tell me if I'm in a good mood. If it's fine, you can tell me anytime. So I don't know. The, the saw is cutting fine, but it, it was one of those things that caught us off guard because the saw is like, it's just super utilitarian. It's the dirtiest piece of equipment we have.
'cause chips skid everywhere, you know, it's got an open, it's, it's got splash guards, but *it's pretty much an open machine. But it is one of those things that, man, if you don't stay on top of maintenance, I mean you're, you that could, like if the saw breaks. Or is inoperable for day we're screwed. Like it is one of those things.*
*It's like, it's as critical as like our air system, our air compressor. . And I was just thinking for you, you know, you have a new machine now might be a great time to create a standard, uh, set of operating procedures on maintenance, wondering if you got something like that. *
Andrew: We have started collecting some documentation on what we want to do regularly on the mat server, but we haven't [00:13:00] standardized it or put it into a binder or laminated it.
We just have. We have some notes, we've got some post-it notes and things taped to the front of the machine to remind us how to do certain things and when to check certain things.
.
But I would, for me, one of the most basic things on the brothers, you have battery backup. Okay. That preserves all your, yeah, all your memory.
And I, every, I change those batteries once a year and put the best quality like Highline, Duracell, batteries in there.
Jay: Just because, right. Not because, just because an alarm. Right.
Andrew: Not get an alarm.
.
And then I just throw a sticker with a date. I print a thermal label that says Changed on Yep. And date, and then slap it on the cover.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: And that allows me anytime later to be like, oh, yep, yep. It's October. October is battery change month.
On our Speedos. And knowing that, okay, it's gonna be time to go around to these machines, and as long as we're within a plus or minus couple of weeks . I don't care. Yeah. It's not an exact science.
Yep. It's just like. It's just like anything you use, well, guitar, [00:14:00] world guitar pedals, wireless mics wireless battery packs. If you're plugged into a wireless cord on your, uh, guitar base, it's like, did I change the batteries today? Well, you don't want to find out the middle of a performance. It's just one of those things.
It's like, well, what happens? The cost of replacing the batteries preemptively. . It's just like tracking tool life and going, okay, I could probably get another a hundred holes out of this drill.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: But it's the end of the day. I'm gonna change it out tomorrow. We'll start fresh, we'll reset its counter and I'm just not gonna try to push it till it goes down.
Jay: *Yeah, that's right. Yeah that, that's the cost of the battery. One guy, you know, we had a technician show up 'cause we have. Our haws robotic pallet loader has a, has a, a fanatic robot and he says you're, you're gonna have to, you know, change out the batteries, you know, maybe four to six months. I'm like, what?*
*He's like, yeah. 'cause we cut power to the transformer so it doesn't have, like, it's not trickling power to it. And I know that's there's times where we don't turn it on for weeks at a time. 'cause it's not a robot application. *[00:15:00] *He said no that whole time it's using batteries at their full extent.*
*It's just worth it, for the cost of batteries. And don't buy the Amazon ones. Yeah. Get like the Duracell, you know, industrial ones. It's just worth it. Yep. 'cause the loss of the data is far more expensive than the cost of the batteries. Even over the, it's not even close. It's not even close. Yeah.*
*Night and day. So. Interestingly, *
Andrew: last little music observation on batteries. Did you know that it's a, it's a thing that in certain pedals, particularly distortion in overdrive pedals that are nine volt powered, that some players really like the way the pedal sounds best when the battery is starting to die.
Yes. Yeah. JHS and that's, yeah. That always sounded to me like the craziest thing. I could completely understand doing that in a recording session. Sure. Where I'm like, oh no, my DS one cut out in the middle of the take. Aw. But I can't imagine performing live or gigging out as a guitar player going, yes. Yes.
There's, my battery is perfectly run down to only 15% power. My tone is perfect. I know it's [00:16:00] so subjective, dhs, but it sounds so risky.
Jay: I, I know DHS makes a pedal that solves that problem. It's kind of kinda like a low battery emulator. Yes. Yeah. So, I don't know. It feels disingenuous. I don't know. It's fine.
He's a good dude.
Andrew: Yeah, if that's the, uh, JHS Batim,
Jay: that's it. Yeah.
Andrew: And the idea, yeah, you can starve the pedal and not give it as much power as it needs and get that kind of lo-fi additional crunch that you want.
Jay: It's just
Andrew: one of those weird things.
Jay: Okay. It's all subjective. I don't know. So, you know, I think for taste, going back to maintenance, we've been spoiled on the hoses.
'cause they have, you know, maintenance timers, like, Hey, you gotta change this filter or, you know, change this oil. Or it's just like alarms out because the way lube oil is, is low or *Yeah. Yeah. They're back to oil. I think they used to be a Greece or one, one or the other. But these quote unquote dumb machines, like a saw that doesn't alert you or the air compressor, which really, there's only twice a day where someone interacts with it.*
*It's when they *[00:17:00] *turn it on and when they turn it off. Yeah. So we're, we're continually moving, like I've mentioned Trello several times, but using Trello as like a, a shop task maintenance thing. Even if it's just like, Hey, we're just gonna like wash the windows twice a year, like that type of thing. Just set a recurring date.*
It makes life so
Andrew: easy. Yeah, that kind of stuff is great. And then also having a person for whom the they are, that is their primary responsibility and they are always thinking about focusing on. I really appreciate it. In video tours I've seen of Ryan Tierney's Seating Matters Shop that they have a guy there, Patty.
. And Patty, his main thing is help. Improve and facilitate lean improvements. . People come to him with ideas and he helps them get them done. He helps them build the improvement. He helps them tease out what it is they're trying to fix and evaluate different ways to approach it. And having somebody who's kind of the lean improvement, mad scientist in the shop , who isn't in the middle of a big production job or isn't [00:18:00] programming some complicated new thing on the CMM.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: They're there available to help anytime you have a lean improvement. Yeah. That's really powerful and I've
Jay: *considered like having a position where like maybe some like retired machinist or retired engineer just comes in and has maybe, you know, eight to 16 hours per week of just working on lean improvements.*
*I mean, eight hours is a huge, like an eight hour push for improving things and just going around, Hey, what would you like? Well, I'd really like this shelf or this tool, or this 3D printed thing. Powerful. So *
Andrew: *yeah, for a lot of that stuff, Brian, our facilities manager is the go-to guy to build if you need something built in the shop for you.*
*Okay? He's the guy and that means he can quickly weld something up or he can cut up some maker pipe and build you a shelf or get some brackets, cut up some plywood, saw some two by fours, whatever you need, and build the thing. You wanna try uhhuh, but having our staff have access to a person who's available.*
The problem is this spring with the addition and the new [00:19:00] compressor and, all right, rerunning the air. Re a bunch of power and getting the Matsuura in and having to move all of our machines. . He's been really busy just doing facility stuff and hasn't had as much time or bandwidth to be available for improvements.
Jay: Now, what does he normally do if there were no matura?
Andrew: So facilities management is just taking care of all the utilities, making sure that we've got, anytime we're moving things around, making sure we've got power and air where we need it. Okay. Taking care of the grounds, the driveway, he manages all of our Gotcha.
Snow removal, tree limb clearing around the edge of the property, basically anything so that I don't have to worry about the building or the grounds. Right,
Jay: right.
Andrew: I don't wanna mow, I don't wanna weed whack. That's not what I'm here for. Yeah,
Jay: and he's full-time.
Andrew: Yeah. Wow.
Jay: That's awesome.
Andrew: Yep. Yeah. But he also, he sets up and adjusts all of our sewing machines.
Sewing machines are weird and mechanical. Like they're not, they are not machines with a lot of sensor feedback. . It's, it's kind of like a big watch. Like everything in there is moving around and the timing and location of things has to be very carefully adjusted.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: But you kind of have to guess and [00:20:00] check at those adjustments.
So he's not only doing building maintenance, but he does a lot of our equipment maintenance. He's the one who moves any big machines that need to move around. He's our main forklift driver most of the time.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: And we keep him pretty busy. So actually we hired him an assistant this spring. No. Who sometimes does production work, but mostly does maintenance and facilities work.
Jay: Okay. Yeah, that,
Andrew: and that's been
Jay: great. I* thought of a maintenance guy, like, you know, like I just said part-time it would be like an improvements guy. That's what I think. Yeah. And I do think it would grow where, the, the ideas would start to snowball and he would knock 'em out and we're like, wow, this is great.*
*You get that momentum. Then it's like, well, no. Oh, you're gonna be gone four days and then we're gonna see you on, you know, on the fifth day when you're back on another Tuesday or Wednesday. No, stick around. And I could see very much how that be, could easily become a full-time* gig in a lean organization like yours or mine, where we're always like.
Continual improvement is a core principle in our companies.
Andrew: *Yeah. And that person being the flywheel, once they get that *[00:21:00] *momentum going. Well said. If somebody comes to them, even with a not even half formed idea of an improvement, right. But they notice something that's a problem. *
Jay: *Yes. *
Andrew: *There's that momentum there, that inertia to get the idea, going to ask questions, to clarify it, to help develop.*
A solution that's at least worth testing. Yeah. And then to keep the momentum going and iterate on it and then actually come up with something way better.
Jay: Yeah, I like that. Yeah. One of my guys, Paul. Okay, so we do Working Genius and, and we found out that there's three inventors, discerners, inventor, Cerner in the company, myself, Ian, another engineer, and then Paul.
And I'm like, oh yeah, I could totally see that. And he's listening to this podcast. He catches 'em all. Shout out to Paul. But yeah, that's one thing, like he's jumped in on things. I'm like, dude, that's awesome. You just did that. That's fantastic. Keep doing that. That's great. And it's such a, it adds so much value to the company and the guys love him, you know, and, and it's, he's not just a machinist working in the value stream.
He's actually [00:22:00] building the company while he helps build components and parts and, and all that stuff. And that, that's such a huge value add to any company.
Andrew: . I sometimes think I would love to just do lean improvements all the time. There are days when I think I would just love to do nothing but lean improvements.
Jay: You know what? Honestly, okay. When we come to the age where we retire, I think that's a legitimate thing that we would entertain.
Andrew: Oh,
Jay: I, I, I think
Andrew: it'd be super fun.
Jay: Yeah. To be
Andrew: kind of the lean improver emeritus and the company have somebody else. At the right point.
Jay: Sure. Yeah.
Andrew: Be the CEO be managing the DAYDAY operations and just be focusing on culture and improvement.
. That's actually really attractive. That's a thing that interests me to continue doing long, long term. Right, right. I don't have a lot of interest in. Assembling holsters. . After I retire. .
Jay: Like, eh,
Andrew: yeah. Not excited about it. Building guitars maybe, but making lean improvements and, and seeing people get it.
.
And seeing them start to get that momentum and start to make consistent changes. [00:23:00] That is really fun. Yeah. And gratifying.
Jay: Definitely.
Yeah.
Andrew: So what else is on your mind?
Jay: Lemme look at the list.
Andrew: We haven't spun the wheel in a long time. I don't even know where the wheel is.
you
Jay: don't think you grab it?
Andrew: Probably somewhere in the office closet. '
Jay: cause that sounds really fun
Andrew: right now. I'm gonna go see if I can find the wheel. I'll be right back. Alright. The wheel was being used to store several small rolls of loose Cat six cable. Oh. They had just hung them on the spokes.
That's nice. I love, I love the utility of the wheel. Yeah.
Jay: Yeah. Give it a spin. All right. Give it a spin. Let's see what we got.
Favorite tools. Oh, it's a good one. Wow. You know what? You know what I got recently is this, fiber laser engraver. It's a little spotty on its con consistency, but it's good. That's been neat because it feels like the bamboo labs of, uh, fiber engravers is kind of neat. But I think the one that really like stands out is my renewed passion and [00:24:00] love for our CMM.
Okay. So it's been something that I stepped away from 'cause we got it to a point where, We just weren't utilizing it to its capacity let alone its full capacity. I mean, it was like, well, we could go fire it up and, you know, CMM, this part, or we could just use two mics and a caliper. Get close, you know?
Good enough. And so yeah, it was, it was neat 'cause I was speaking to Paul. he jumped in on it without me asking and I said, dude, that's great. You got some momentum. Here is a playlist from this guy. He's fantastic. He's a teacher on the East coast. And he just plowed through it and then just kinda re rewrote or wrote new kind of like programs that we would be like, wait, why are we doing this?
Because we can do it pretty quickly and pretty efficiently on the digital height gauge and the accuracies. The same, uh . But, but it's been one of those things where I go, man, these and ours is, I remember I got it used, so it has one of those articulating probes so it can go . You know, 90 degrees, all directions no [00:25:00] star probe needed.
And it's just been one of those things where I go, man, this is such an amazing machine. Why don't we use this for everything? And now the thing is we have, it's got a large table. It's, I wanna say it's a. I think it's a 600 square millimeter. 600 millimeter square. So now we're thinking, do we standardize where we have different sections of the table?
do, we use our pro pallet system, which is what we're currently doing, and we palletize our setups, our in our inspection fixtures. And so we've been like kind of playing around with that. 'cause I know you can buy dedicated workholding for cmms. But for us, I go, well, we're a workholding manufacturer.
We have plenty of 3D prints. 3D prints are a completely, especially if, if they're carbon fiber prints, they're a completely legitimate way to knock out some type of like pedestal to hold your part in an orientation where you can, CMM it where you can probe it because the. The pressure of the stylus is like, fractions of a gram, if I remember correctly.
And so as long as you could put it where it kinda self [00:26:00] centers, like we have these round parts that go into a V groove. Perfect. We can touch it on all different sides. So yeah, since I bought this, here's the story. I bought it used probably at 20 cents on the dollar. It's about a 20-year-old Zeiss Eclipse, and it's been great, but you know.
I think when it by the time it hit my floor, I think I probably came close to doubling the cost that I paid for it, with calibration, with freight and rigging with, um, all the little things, the software upgrades that we opted to do. And then, then the training, there's a, there's an actual like unseen cost for training.
And so I, man, I was looking at kind of like the Duramax, the Zeiss Duramax, and I just go, man, for about 60, 70 grand. I mean, I would've bought that. Instead of this eclipse, which is a more powerful machine. It's pretty, it's pretty, uh, beefy. But yeah, the Zes eclipse, I think that's, my next big purchase because CMS are just so
Andrew: amazing.
Jay: Totally in love with them. Again,
Andrew: I'm gonna [00:27:00] go totally the opposite direction and go super, super small. Okay. I love Fuji Pliers. And there's two particular models. So, Fuji is, they call themselves the pliers and nippers company. They specialize in a lot of really high quality small nippers and pliers of different kinds.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: We have a angle flush face set of nippers. I have several of them. Uh, and it is their part number. Where's the part number
Jay: angle flush face. Okay. All right. I can picture that.
Andrew: It is the, uh, Fuji MP five dash one 10. These are my favorite small cutoff pliers for anything for wire, for little plastic burrs.
They're just so good. Like when you cut off the tab on zip ties, that's one of my pet peeves is people who zip tie things and then leave the tail sticking out.
Jay: Yeah.
Andrew: These cut it off perfectly, beautifully flush. And they're lightweight and they're orange. Oh, perfect. And then the other one is Fuji makes [00:28:00] screw removal pliers.
This is their NSPO one dash 1 5 0. And you can get both these on, uh, on Amazon. And they're about, you know, 20 to 25 bucks per pair of pliers. But they're just so well thought out. They're a comfortable size. They're not too heavy. They're good quality steel fujita, their own forging. It's just really, really nice.
It's one of those things where I use them all the time and every time I pick them up, I like them.
Jay: Wow.
Andrew: I've often owned pliers and they're things where every time I pick 'em up I'm like, oh, these pliers kind of suck.
.
Like, but they're the only ones of this particular size where shape that I own, and I don't hate 'em enough to bother going out and finding other ones.
But when I got these, as soon as I got a pair of each of these, we bought like three or four more pairs of each one.
Jay: Man, I could totally see to keep around the shop. Yeah, we could have used these just literally two days ago. So we have a derin part. It's like this little round disc. It's an end cap on the upcoming, soon to be released Vice palette.[00:29:00]
And it's so low value and so high volume that it's not really worth it to hand it off in the subs spindle to face off the . Parting thing because no one will ever see it. So I had my guy, Armando just come along with pliers like this, albeit super cheap, and he just nipped off, you know, the nipple that sticks out.
Yep. But I could see how these would do the
Andrew: premium job for that. And the screw removal ones are great anytime you, like, if you have a. A nut or a bolt or something that's sort of gotten rounded off and a socket is slipping on it.
Jay: Okay.
Andrew: These actually have a curved tooth cut in line with the front jaw, so you can go straight down on something and bite on the head of it and then twist.
And you know you're not gonna get out a big bolt that's got lock tight on it, right? But for small fasters and things, it's fantastic. NSP zero one dash one
Jay: 50. I just sent you a link. Nice. Oh yeah, [00:30:00] man. It's this type of stuff. I remember Adam Savage talking about his favorite tools. Oh, man. Yeah, he, he got his one, like these like long nose pliers that surgeons used to reach into body cavities and a little, little alligator things, you know?
Yeah.
Andrew: The number of times you find a tool Uhhuh that you're like, this does. Does what I want every time. Yes. I never go, man, that tool just didn't get the job done right, man. So somehow these are, these are my favorite
Jay: pliers. Well, somehow these suddenly became more desirable than my CMM. I'll be honest.
I need it. Well, they're at
Andrew: least, they're at least bite size. You can afford to treat yourself. Like, oh, treat yourself to a news ice. No. Treat yourself to a $20 pair of Japanese pliers. Yeah, no, you'll enjoy them. So, so YouTube
Jay: recently, Suggested told me that I need to learn more about Japanese stationary and stationary equipment.
They have the most amazing Japanese mechanical pencils [00:31:00] that you don't have to click to get the lead to come out as you lift. There's like this spiral mechanism that's always like micro feeding a little bit more lead at the rate at which it's consumed. As it rotates, it rotates the lead as it dispenses.
So there's never a flash. Just keep a sharp edge. It's always a sharp edge. Oh man. And I'm like, I don't normally use pencils. The joke is pencils are for people that make mistakes, therefore I don't use them. Total joke. Okay. I just like the pen experience. I'll cross it out. My, my scratch pad is mostly crossed outs, so yeah, it's like one of those things I'm like, well, I'm gonna buy it.
Really don't need, it shows up in Amazon and my wife's like, did you order this for the boys? 'cause we homeschool? No, that's for me pencil. Really? What's special? Wait, this is a $20 pencil. Don't worry about it. Okay. It's a business expense. It's for me, I taking it to the shop, that type of thing. But no, I dig all these little Japanese useful trinkets.
This is amazing. Wow. It's good stuff. Yeah, it's good stuff. Really cool.
Andrew: Well. It's a good place to wrap. Yeah. [00:32:00] Slightly shorter episode this week, but I actually have to run off to a school board meeting tonight. Super fun. Let her rip, right, Andrew? Oh no, I'm, I'm on the board. We're just, it's, it's summer stuff.
Planning for next year. Okay. Alright. It's just a super exciting kind of behind the scenes logistical stuff.
Jay: I've seen one too many like angry board meetings on YouTube that go viral, so maybe that's what I picture board meetings at.
Andrew: So actually I attended my town council meeting yesterday. Okay. And it was the most crisply timely run meeting.
For government I've ever seen. Wow. And they, the entire meeting. Wrapped in 25 minutes. They didn't have a huge agenda, but there were a number of things on it, and everyone was there on time. There were only a handful of members of the public there. Everyone was courteous, sat down. We they said a quick prayer.
We stood for the Pledge of Allegiance, and they got right into the agenda. And everybody had their documentation ready. The council members had read the proposals. They had only a few clarifying questions. They were, and they just like, they just kept the pace up and they [00:33:00] didn't get derailed on any of these long side conversations and like.
It was amazing. It's like we haven't even been here half an hour and we have a motion to adjourn. Yeah. And everyone seems happy. Like there's nobody making angry public comment. And it's just, it worked. It was awesome.
Jay: This was this Spencer or Bloomington? No, this
Andrew: is Ellisville.
Jay: Elliotsville. Okay.
Alright. So
Andrew: Elliotsville is a town that's in between Spencer and Bloomington.
Jay: Gotcha. Oh yeah. I live
Andrew: in Elliotsville. Bloomington is the big town. Yeah, big city. Henry Holsters and Spencer, and then Henry Holsters is west of Ellisville and Spencer. Gotcha.
Jay: Okay. All right. Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, it was interesting.
I'd never been inside the Ellisville town hall before and it was nice and neat and clean and relatively new, and everybody was very polite and it was very well run. Wow. I was, I was impressed. I think that, hopefully that's common in, in smaller municipalities. Yeah. It, it can be, I mean, there's, there is always that trade off of if they don't have a lot of staff and they don't have a lot of resources, and especially if they're in an older, historical building .
Getting things wired up for audio visual, you have to, [00:34:00] you know, you're required to record and make available through public records, all these council meetings, and so individuals, small municipalities, small towns that just don't have a lot of infrastructure and don't have a, great building for it.
Jay: Uhhuh,
Andrew: they can struggle a little bit more. So some towns. They broadcast their meetings on YouTube or they record them with Zoom. So it's a mixed bag, but generally it was a really pleasant experience. Very commercial. It was good. Alright, we'll get to your meeting. We'll chat next week. Yep. Thanks Jay.
Bye. See you.