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Two successful entrepreneurs talk about manufacturing, lean principles, and the freedom they are pursuing in life and business.
lean built 101-prescript
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Speaker: [00:00:00] If you noticed, we have new theme music and big thanks to my friend Jonathan Baker, who composed and recorded the music for us to be used for episodes one through 100. Jay, what do you think of the new music?
Speaker 2: That's, that's a trap and you know that because I have not heard the new music, so I was, I was gonna, at the time
Speaker: of this recording, we have not yet picked the new music.
By the time it airs, we will have picked the new music. And that's what, but if
Speaker 2: it's not new music, uh, we are not very Oh no. There'll be new
Speaker: music.
Speaker 2: Okay, good. Good. I like it. By
Speaker: Hooker, by Crook New music. This episode, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did. Yes. I love that. That, um,
Speaker 2: [00:01:00] constraints. It. We have to pick new music by episode 1 0 1, so great.
Yeah, we're gonna do that. Paint yourself into a corner, fight your way out of it. Love it. So, so, so you sent me, um, an article to Uhhuh, uh, sauna's blog. It was great. Really got me thinking. And it is, okay. So it's, , it's narrow focused on, , inbox zero isn't what you think. So we're talking like inbox zero.
We could do an episode on that. But where I was going is, is the pursuit of inbox zero a pursuit in doing things that just don't really matter? We could talk about that because I was telling you, I spent at least an hour of my day today looking at our network. We have a ubiquity network. It's top of the line.
It's great. We had a very, a, a bit, I don't wanna say hyper complex, but overly complicated setup for security things. I'm like, we could probably dial some of that back so we could navigate our network more effectively, you know, with permissions and internal firewalls, all that stuff. And [00:02:00] in that deep dive, I'm going, well, A, this is not revenue producing B.
Mm-hmm. It is not life giving to me. Like it's, it's not invention, it's not discernment, it's just rote, just knocking stuff out. And I think it's such a common thing in life and specifically in manufacturing to work on things that just kind of, often when we take a step back, it's not that important. , Specifically inbox zero.
You sent it to me. Did you have thoughts on that? Like how important is inbox zero? So
Speaker: I am a, I'm a habitual inbox zero person, and at the moment I have zero emails on red in my *inbox. , But the interesting thing is it's one of these things like it's easier to keep a tidy shop tidy than to do a deep clean on a shop you haven't cleaned in six months.*
*Yep. Well said. That idea that the goal of Inbox zero isn't, as the article said, *[00:03:00] *just to have zero emails on red in your inbox, because that's, um, that's like measuring productivity based on how many steps you take in a day. Yeah. It's like, no, no, no, no. Let's, let's measure the actual value add, not the effort applied.*
Yep. Mm-hmm. Uh, there's a famous analogy like, you know, this, this big, big, like a ship's motor naval yard. You know, binds up, stops running and they can't figure it out. Can't figure it out, can't figure it out. And finally they call this old mechanical expert, and he shows up with a toolbox with nothing in it, but one brass hammer.
And he walks around for hours checking out the engine, and he taps it in one spot and the engine restarts. Mm-hmm. And he hands him a bill for $10,000 and they're like, why are you billing us $10,000? You only, you only only tap the hand, the engine in one spot. And he's like, oh yeah, it's only a dollar for the engine D.
It's $9,999 for knowing where to tap.
Speaker 2: Yeah. For his experience. I love that.
Speaker: Yeah. And and there's various versions of that story of all [00:04:00] kinds on social media and blogs and various places. Yeah. But when you say you're pursuing peace mm-hmm. I don't like having open loops. For us, one of the biggest things internally we've done this year to help really close down open loops or allow open loops to be self-managed mm-hmm.
Is to use asana. And we've, we've consistently been refining and improving and adjusting how we use Asana, how we build our templates, how we create subtasks, who signs off on what, what the interdependencies between tasks are in order to make it so that. You don't have to keep things in mind and juggle them mentally.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: *Yep. But for me, I've, I, my zero inbox pursuit has basically just three legs. The first one is anytime I get a generic email list, email I unsubscribe. Unless *[00:05:00] *it is an extraordinarily compelling, interesting thing that I know I will want to read the next time it shows up. *
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: *If I go, ah, this kind of annoyed me this time, but next time it'll also probably annoy me.*
*I unsubscribe right then, and that's the David Allen getting things done. *
Speaker 3: *Right. *
Speaker: *If I can't unsubscribe in less than two minutes, or I can answer the email in less than two minutes, I do it. *
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: *I don't do folders in email ever. People who take the time to drag and drop emails into lots and lots of folders.*
*That's Overprocessing. It *
Speaker 2: is Overprocessing, absolutely. I'm not
Speaker: into it. Right. It, and so I have zero unread emails in my inbox, but I have tens of thousands of emails in my inbox. Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So your inbox isn't a black or white screen? It's
Speaker: No, it's, it's not empty in the sense that there are zero items in it.
Yeah. Okay. 'cause [00:06:00] doing the extra work of processing those things out. Mm-hmm. Is not adding value. That's right. Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I think we're on the same page as I look at my inbox, uh, and I don't like keep a, a true zero inbox. Is it? It's, it's, it's a blank screen. It says no emails, you know, that type of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't do that for the same reason you just said. It's overprocessing for me to, and I, and I archive a lot, either delete, answer, reply, archive, all that good stuff. , But I do keep a handful of unread emails just where I, I will read them and then I'll be like, Hey, I, I need to get back to this, and then I will mark them as unread just 'cause they're bolded and they stand out.
Mm-hmm. But you know what, it's interesting because, , un unread emails, uh, even after a few days, doesn't actually bug me in my personal in inbox or my, work inbox, but it mm-hmm. Bugs me. Mm-hmm. On our customer support inbox, because that is tied to a lean waste of the customer waiting. Like, we don't want our inefficiencies to make a customer [00:07:00] wait.
That's, that we're, that's hypocritical. You know, there are times where we just can't answer it or, or we're actively working on something like a quote or a figuring out a, uh, solve, uh, solving someone's problem. , But for me personally, like I take the approach, well, I heard this recently, you know, a, an email address.
Is a to-do list that anyone in the world can add an item to. It's not, well, I didn't say that. I didn't make it up, but I, I really like that. I'm like, yeah, just because this customer says, Hey, I got this opportunity, this, uh, idea. I want you guys to make it, you know? Wow. Wonderful. Thank you. I'll take a look later.
Oh, when Can you look at it much later? It's just not something that I, and that I attach urgency to.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: Um, but in technical support, you know, questions that Pearson work holding,, that is a high value, um, very intense inbox that we, we, we, it does bug me if there's, you know, five unopened unread things.
It's not acceptable. And we, we've got a framework for our speeds of answering. But, um, yeah, true, true inbox. Not a [00:08:00] fan of, but, , unread things, eh, it's kind of a tool. But I think we're actually on the same page. Yeah, if that's how you're defining Inbox zero.
Speaker: Yeah. So I unsubscribe from things. If I can reply in under two minutes, I reply, I.
I aggressively delete things. I don't archive much and I don't put things in folders, although I do occasionally set up smart folders. Mm-hmm. If there's a particular topic, a particular client, a particular thing that I want to be able to just jump into a smart folder and browse only pre-filtered, keyword sorted things on that topic, Uhhuh, that's a useful tool.
'cause it's automatic. I don't have to do anything there. Yeah. And then if I have an email come in. You mentioned you can mark as unread. There are occasionally times when I will mark as unread to keep an email pending on my end. Yeah. But most of the time, if it's something I need to reply to and I'm not going to reply right now, I hit reply and open it [00:09:00] and it saves into my draft inbox.
Draft outbox.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: That way, I keep those open loops pulled up separate from my main inbox screen, and I can spread those out and see them all at once and then pull one up, finish it, and send it whenever I have time or when I've taken sufficient time to chew on the question, the problem, the opportunity, whatever.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. But
Speaker: I'm always trying to park things somewhere where I do not have to do additional work to sort them later.
Speaker 2: I think, I think when people talk about, oh, lean it's for manufacturing. No, it's really not. It's really a mindset, like a way of life and that you're applying lean to, you know, a, a digital problem.
Speaker: Yeah. The, the idea that I should put every single email into a folder
Speaker 3: mm-hmm.
Speaker: That's work that 99% of emails don't actually require. Yeah. I'm literally never going to go back and look at almost any of them. I like. [00:10:00] When I die, I'm not going to be laying on my deathbed thinking, uh, I wish I'd put more emails into folders, or, I'm glad I did.
Yeah, no one's gonna care.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We, we have some automatic Wait. Do you use
Speaker: Gmail as your backend for your No, I use Apple Mail, so I hub multiple email accounts. I see. Apple mail, so it's accessible on my MacBook, it's accessible on my iPhone.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Um, I use Gmail on my Windows base. Windows based desktop.
Mm-hmm. My CAD machine. Yep. But I,
Speaker 2: I don't love Gmail. Okay. Yeah. So we're, we're Gmail powered and you know, we have some filters, like every invoice for McMaster car or order confirmation goes to a McMaster thing. Gmail's pretty powerful. Like every order that has ever gone, you know, through our system, has been entered, you know, through our store, , sends me a confirmation, sends a customer [00:11:00] confirmation, I get a copy of that.
So, you know, usually if it's a call, hey, what's your order number? You know, W dash whatever, you know, five digit number. And then I, I just do that. It's faster than our, than our system. And then I can just see, oh, briefly, okay, I got this is, you know, this is everything. You ordered. All that good stuff. I used to have it where it would go in and I would have a specific orders, you know, well, I actually still do have that filter set up.
I never go into that folder because the, the search functionality in Gmail is actually pretty good, especially if you know how to use it, like putting it in quotes, searches, that specific phrase. Um, but I, I do find, like, if it's automatic, I would say that's a justifiable use of folders. 'cause I'm like, Hey, I'm just gonna search a McMaster.
It was kind of last June and I don't want everything that says McMaster, you know, in, in my search results. I'm just want to go to that, that thing. So yeah, that, yeah, that's a good conversation. But the bigger picture, you know, are we doing work that doesn't need to be done, that does, doesn't add [00:12:00] value to our lives or the lives of our customers?
Um, answer, yes, we are a hundred percent
Speaker: yes. We, we absolutely are. Every week I do things that don't matter. So every Monday I lead our lean morning meeting, and this week, the eight of the eight ways, the one that I picked was Overprocessing and we talked about it and it really is interesting. There are so many different places.
Our lives that we just overprocess things. We spend time doing a thing that doesn't matter, we don't need it. And the person we're doing it for doesn't need it and it isn't adding value. Mm-hmm. Good stuff. So, uh, changing subjects, we've been running our Matsuura a lot this week and a couple things that have really come into Sharper Focus for me.
The first one is Brothers have absolutely ruined me on tool change times. Like my expectation of how long any tool change, no matter what, any tool change should take is [00:13:00] clearly warped. Yeah, of course. And uh, on the part we're currently running, we have one oversized tool. It's a, a asymmetric fly cutter.
It's a, it's a weird shape thing it, and so on Matsuura, you can designate a tool as an oversized tool, and that way it will always park it back in the same pot in the carousel. To make sure that you can have clear spaces on either side of it and not have any issues, which means depending on what tool you ran before it, you might need to sort of double tool change.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: You swap something into the previous pot and then you pull that tool out and, and so I was watching that tool change. I'm like, I. What is going on? We're like five seconds in and we're not back in the cut yet. Like, what's
Speaker 2: happening? So brothers, you know what brothers, they're fast at their tool changes, but they're not scary fast.
Like I mentioned last episode, a machine we got rid of, and that was one of the quality of life aspects of it we didn't like, is it had this high speed, umbrella style tool changer that whipped in and out that you, you just never got used to. Mm-hmm. And it was this large [00:14:00] mass of tools, you know, probably a hundred, 150, 200 pounds.
Whipping in, you know, up, down, uh, you know, and whipping out. And it would, it would move the enclosure. And, you know, the minim mills are built on welded steel frames and it was, it was not worth it. I'd rather have, uh, prioritized quality over speed. But the brothers are such smooth things. It's just like up, rotate down.
Yeah.
Speaker: Beautiful mechanism. Elegantly simple and effective. Yeah. Now even among brothers, like the Speedos have the big rotary wheel style tool changer. Mm-hmm. The R series have the chain link oval racetrack. Yes. Tool changer.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And
Speaker: that one is just as fast. Okay. But louder, clunkier and more unnerving to watch.
Speaker 2: Okay. Let, can we talk about this for a second? Sure. Because I'm gonna kind of break some news right now and they didn't gimme permission, so I'm gonna ask for forgiveness. So Haws is coming out with a new belt style tool changer on some of their machines. It's their largest tool changer they've ever made 120 [00:15:00] pockets, and it is kinda like, I think they call it like a, a chain style or train style.
Mm-hmm. Where the pockets are, are linked together and they go on a track essentially, and it's got this wheel that, that, uh, articulates it. Um, I'll, I'll send it to you afterwards, but Awesome. Um, yeah. And so I'm wondering like, uh, people that use that, like the brother version, it is slower, right?
Speaker: Uh, it's, if it's slower, it's not perceptibly slower. So like brothers have about a one and a half second chip to chip time. Okay. Which is freaky. Now obviously the difference between going, going from one pot to the adjacent pot versus one pot to the opposite side of the tool changer, Uhhuh is non-zero.
Okay, there is added time, like if you're going from pot one to pot 16. It's gonna be more time than going from pot two to pot three.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Got it. All right. I just sent it to you in Signal so you can take a look at it. Oh, cool. I'll check it out. Um, yeah, and I think they're announcing it like, [00:16:00] you know, July 1st or something, so I'm not in that much trouble.
Um, but yeah, it's, it's interesting. I would definitely consider that. I, you know, we'd also talked about, you know, last episode of being a early adopter. Mm-hmm. Like, I want it because we, I'm considering a, a new machine. Oh boy. And I would, I would probably get this mm-hmm. Because we've been spoiled with a hundred tools on the EEC 400.
And this would, this would probably go on, I want an automated, lights out, five access solutions. So UMC seven 50, , the new upgraded one that's, that's been out for several years. But this will be one of those tools. 'cause you can only max out to 70 tools on the UC seven 50 right now. But to go to, you know, 120, that's, that's a game changer for us.
Yeah. Um, so yeah, take a look. It's, I don't know if it's the same as the brother. I mean, it's just a, a chain style. Mm-hmm. Um, it's not super innovative, but,
Speaker: I don't know. Interesting, interesting, interesting. That's an interesting shape. Yeah. They're, they're looping it back to gain more [00:17:00] linear space. Yes.
What stake does it look like? Does it look like a, I dunno how to describe it. It looks like a, it looks like Oklahoma. Yeah. It could look like Oklahoma bulb. Yes. So that there is a brother, I've, I've seen pictures, but I haven't seen it in person. Uh, a Speedo that has a hundred tools and it basically has your main center wheel, and then it has two sideways mounted wing wheels mm-hmm.
That can feed tools into the main wheel. Okay. So you've got a two stage, like a, a magazine, and then your main tool carousel and tools move in and out. But this is the really interesting thing, like on brothers. You're always putting the tool back in the pot that it came from. Right. There's no random mix of like, Hey, tool seven's in pot seven.
It lives in pot seven. It never goes anywhere else.
Speaker 2: Essentially. Umbrella style.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. It's just a vertical umbrella basically. Yeah. Mm-hmm. When you go to multiple umbrellas interacting, then tracking down where tools are and [00:18:00] what's what. It gets way weirder when you're not like, okay, well what The only way, the only way for me to know that that's the tool, I mean mm-hmm.
Is to call it to the spindle with an M code and then go, yeah, that's it. That I call Tool 64. And that's the tool that arrived in the spindle, that's tool 64.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's a whole different way of thinking about and managing tools that I'm just unused to, 'cause I'm, I'm a brother guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's been interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: *The other thing on the Matsuura is. We're clearly interacting with a machine that has much more thought put into its automation. Hmm. And that thought is put in by people who are not in my shop and have never seen my shop. And that means sometimes they discover efficiencies I wouldn't have thought of.*
*And it also means sometimes that they do things. That I go, why? Yeah. They're forcing you into workflows you normally wouldn't *[00:19:00] *choose or, yeah, there's, there's just, there, there's a particular way they think about how to do certain things and you have to learn and understand and regroove your brain mm-hmm.*
*To think about it the way they think about it. Otherwise, you will always be trying to turn left on a one way street. Yeah, it just doesn't work. Right. Uh, and so a really interesting example, like Matsuura have the ability to set a timer and have the machine auto wake up and auto warmup. 'cause Matsuura has to run a warmup.*
If you turn it off, you have to run a warmup before you can run programs again.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And depending on how long it's been powered down that that warmup program gets extended. So if the machine's been off for days, you have to run a longer warmup program than if the machine's been off for less than 12 hours.
Okay. Okay. Okay. In order to wake up and warm up, the machine has to have air. Interestingly, there's no built-in solenoid for the inflow air. What I would like to have built, we're [00:20:00] working on, on rolling our own, but it would make sense to me that you connect air, and when the machine powers on, that opens a valve that charges the machine with pressurized air so you can keep your system in the shop charge.
But there's nothing like that, like the machine, if you keep it connected to your pressurized system, it's bleeding air. Mm-hmm. Constantly. Yeah. So if we shut the shop down at four o'clock or five o'clock in the afternoon and the machine's gonna wake up at 7:00 AM and warm itself up from 4:00 PM through to 7:00 AM.
It's bleeding away money the entire time. Mm-hmm. Just sitting there powered down. Right. Because it has to have that ready airflow when it turns on. Otherwise it alarms out, the warmup doesn't run. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: then
Speaker: you have to
Speaker 2: wait. Yeah. The closest we've come to this, uh, problem we've tackled is we had our, we have our mist away mis collectors on top of all our machines.
The Haas [00:21:00] have a one 10 outlet, and, and it's, and it's low amperage. we're exceeding it. like we've talked to technicians, they're like, yeah, dude, you should not plug that motor into that. But it hasn't blown anything yet, you know, so, but you know, essentially when you apply power to the machine, that one 10 outlet becomes live.
And then from there you can then, , power your, your thing. . The Doosans don't have that because they come from overseas. I'm gonna say guess that the Matsuuras doesn't have anything like that in the cabinet? No. Hmm. Not to my knowledge. Yeah. I mean, it could be done if you're tapping off one of the legs.
Well,
Speaker: what we're, what we're planning to do is initially we're just gonna set an external solenoid on the air feed to the machine that runs on a timer. And we can just set it it. So ideally we want them interconnected where the one triggers the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: But at least for now, like our first solution was [00:22:00] a laminated tag that lives on my desk on days in the Matsuura needs air overnight.
Because if I stay for an hour after work, it drives me crazy to hear the matura hissing air Right. When it's sitting there off. So at the very least, I shut the air valve to the matura as long as I'm still in the building and the machine's off.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But I have to open it before I leave. Otherwise it won't warm up in the morning.
Speaker 2: Right. So the temptation there, I love your solution by the way. Most people would say, oh, that's come on a label that you throw on someone's desk. No, that's, that's called, you know, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. It's the first step in continual improvement. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, I do think it's solenoid that goes live when the machine's on.
That's the way to go. , I would probably say skip a step and go, don't go timer base. That's got us in trouble a few times. Like when we go lights out. We used to have our air dryer. On just a, a timer and then they would have to remember to mm-hmm. Override it, you know, 'cause we're, we're off, we run off these casa Smart home plugs.
Mm-hmm. Um, that way we can just automate [00:23:00] everything in the shop. And, and now all the mist aways are on timers. They're not tied to that, you know, sketchy circuit in the back of the haws. Uh, mainly because we couldn't automate, you know, the Doon. Yep. So yeah, the air dryer and, you know, we tested it, we confirmed that yes, you can just kill power to it.
Like you're pulling the plug out. It's fine. Uh, 'cause it does have like a digital thing. You get, get a hold down this, this, uh, this little touchscreen thing to turn it on. And I don't like that. , Yeah, but I mean, something that would give you a signal when the Matsuura is on, there's by default gonna be a sono that's just open.
Um,
Speaker: yeah. I mean, initially the whole point of the timer is just to take those hours from like 10:00 PM mm-hmm. To 6:00 AM
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker: And not bleed air during that time. Right, right.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker: So it's, it's fine if the solenoid opens up and lets airflow 45 minutes before the machine turns on. I don't care about that.
We're not trying to thin slice it to the second
Speaker 3: uhhuh.
Speaker: We just want something where, if I know that the machine's [00:24:00] gonna warm up in the morning. Mm-hmm. I mean, I've actually wanted to quantify this and I don't actually have a number. I've wanted to know, based on the flow rate, what it costs us to have the Matsuura sitting.
Leaking air, bleeding air per hour? Yeah. Like is it 20 bucks per hour of air? Is it five bucks a dollar per hour? I don't know what the number is. Haven't figured out how to calculate it yet. Haven't really spent too much time trying to
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker: But. If the Matsuura were consuming five bucks worth of air an hour mm-hmm.
If we have 20 or 30 hours a week of unattended unpowered time mm-hmm. When it's putting wear and tear on our compressors and and consuming air. That's actually putting us into the red. Right? That's, that's, that's loss. We have to make our way back against and then make money.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And I do know that compressed air is the most expensive utility in any shop.
Yeah. The power [00:25:00] required to generate it. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And so that whole question and how to find those kinds of solutions, a, a timer based solenoid is easy, cheap, quick, we can just drop it in. We got the parts here, we're gonna probably do it beginning of next week.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Integrating a power triggered thing, whether it is sensing capacitance in a line or is tied into the control in some way that's a little more complicated and we'll definitely get there.
Yeah. But also the idea like the. *The improvement that I want is the next available improvement. *
Speaker 3: *Mm-hmm. *
Speaker: *Like, hey, this is understandable. We can do it. We can implement it immediately. It's not expensive. Let's do that. Let's get that game. *
Speaker 2: *Yeah. *
Speaker: *And even if we only use the timer based thing for a month or two.*
*While we figure out the tied in solenoid. Mm-hmm. Awesome. *
Speaker 2: *Yeah, that, that mindset right there, that's the right mindset because a lot of times you're like, yeah, but we could make it better. I've got an idea to make it better. Well, how *[00:26:00] *long is that gonna take to implement? It's better to just do something, anything.*
*Knowing that, giving everyone permission to say, dude, it's gonna be crappy cardboard and duct tape, that's fine, but just do it. We'll learn so much from it. , And over time ideas just get better and better. Yeah, that's definitely the first step. Hey, can we take a little side step? Sure. Because I do want to talk about compressed air.*
So yeah, I think one of the questions that we didn't get to is, um, along the lines of, uh, crazy uses of our products.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: But, um, I got an interesting tech call today. I. The guy said, Hey, we're using two of your vacuum power units. Uh, for those that don't know, it's, it takes our, our vacuum power units, take compressed air and they convert it to, uh, a really deep vacuum.
Um Yep. A Venturi based system. Exactly. You've been using it successfully for years, along with thousands of others. Okay. So it's a great product. He said, Hey, we think that it is consuming too much air. I said, okay, so number one, what is your regulator set to? That's kind of a gotcha [00:27:00] question because they go, oh, it's not hooked up to a regulator.
Okay, well that's a problem. It's hooked directly up to the machine, you know, manifold. , then they, I think they integrated the, , the regulator and I said, just set it to like, you know, the, the minimum, like 95, 85 is the true minimum, but 95, that's kind of the, the lowest, , tolerance.
I think you should have it at. And then I got a call probably, , 20 minutes later and the guy said, look, I'm having kind of like a, uh, an argument with my boss because he thinks that, you know, your device is not designed well because it's consuming way too much air. And what's happening is when we are running two of our vacuum power units successfully, , in machines that are running vacuum jobs that are, you know, flawless at this point.
Other, other machines are alarming out, uh, during tool changes or during blow offs. Just, just, and he thinks it's just, it's, they're consuming too much air. Now statistically, our vacuum power unit only consumes 0.8 CFM.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2: And he said [00:28:00] if this were designed right, it would not constantly draw air. , My rebuttal to that is if you had a standard, you know, plug in the wall, vacuum pump.
There's a, a, you would plug it into a power source. There's a hot and there's a neutral that completes the circuit in a Venturi based system, it needs to consume some power to continually generate the vacuum. So that's the, the exhaust is essentially the neutral. Mm-hmm. And I said, well, can you tell me like, what, what is the size of your compressed air tank?
And this is the, the kind of, the basis for my question. He said it's about 50 gallons. And I said, okay, how many machines do you have? And he said, about 10. So I said, well, I'm not gonna step into the middle of an argument or disagreement with you and your boss, but I do think that 50 gallons for a 10 machine shop is inadequate.
Here's some pointers that I would probably recommend. Maybe some external tanks. You could buy like five or 10 gallon, [00:29:00] you know, external tanks from Harbor Freight, these yellow things. Um, what does your gut tell you? Because I didn't have a good, good answer for gallons for a shop or per machine. Um, I do think about 15 gallons feels right.
What's your gut tell you and what do you have specifically?
Speaker: Um, we have, we're just connecting a second reservoir tank and at that point we'll have 400 gallons of tank plus our line volume. Yeah. We have less than 10 machines. The Matsuura eats a lot of air. The Doosan lathe eats a fair bit of air. Mm-hmm.
The brothers are,
Speaker 2: have screw screw from compressor, right. Rotary screw,
Speaker: yes. Yeah. Yep. We got, we have two screw compressors. That's right.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Um, but we have also, since we brought the Matsuura in, we have struggled with low air pressure alarms. Occasionally on the brothers. They, they consume a burst of air at tool change.
Mm-hmm. And what we found is the Matsuura is a constant [00:30:00] drain on the overall volume and pressure of the air system.
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker: And if the matura is running constantly and we have, you know, four or five other cncs running our overall system, air pressure gradually declines. Yes. Until we get to a point where when they start running tool changes, some of the brothers start alarming out.
And so our solution for that is we need a bigger compressor, which we have on order, should be here next week.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker: And we need more volume in the system so that when we achieve pressure, that pressure lasts longer. Mm-hmm. But the idea that, uh, a event, I mean, it's just physics. A Venturi based system requires a constant flow of air.
Yeah. You are pulling a sympathetic vacuum. Mm-hmm. If you do not have airflow, there is no sympathy.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Right. And you have, you have no, you have no vacuum at that point. Yeah. So my first [00:31:00] exposure to Venturi, uh, based vacuum systems was in furniture building. It's very, very common. What venturis are great for is things that have long open times.
Mm-hmm. So we used a Venturi based vacuum bag, breather mesh system to laminate tabletops. Because your glue has an open time measured in, in some cases, hours. Mm-hmm. Depending on the glue. And you need to, you don't have a big leaky system. Like it's very different to run a an MDF spoil board on a, on a four, eight by, or five by 10 foot router.
Mm-hmm. Where you're laying a sheet of plywood down and you know, you're cutting through the plywood into the spoil board, which means you are exposing some of the vacuum surface and you are allowing a certain percentage of leakage.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: In that point, a high volume. High CFM Rotary, vacuum pump is essential because you know you're going to have to overcome a certain amount of leakage.
Speaker 3: [00:32:00] Yeah, right.
Speaker: Just like, just like pumps in a boat, if the hull leaks a certain number of gallons a minute, your pump has to be able to at least keep up with that. If the hull is super tight like a Venturi system. Does not do well for volume. And that's the reason. Like we don't use venturis for thermoforming plastics.
We always used a two stage rotary pump that allowed us to both either pre vacuum a surge tank or just apply direct vacuum in a very short system that had a very low line volume and immediately evacuate the air that's under our hot plastic sheet. 'cause when your thermoforming plastics, your open time is measured in seconds.
Right? Like our goal was outta the heath press, onto the mold, under the frame, full vacuum in six to eight seconds. Mm-hmm. We did a lot of ergonomic work to bring everything close on the forming stations so that you were not spending time messing around. Yeah. 'cause your temperature falls off a cliff when you take your plastic outta the heater.
But doing laminate, uh, laminates and veneers on [00:33:00] tabletops, you put an entire eight foot tabletop in a big vinyl clear vinyl bag.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: You lay some breather mesh over it so you don't trap air pockets anywhere, and then you hook it up to a Venturi. Uh, shops like, uh, Joe Woodworker or Veneer Shop online.
Yeah. Joe Woodworker Veneer Shop online. Mm-hmm. Um, they sell kits. You can build your own inventory for vacuum work holding for furniture making. And the first time I saw my boss plug an airline into that and I heard this hissing sound, I'm like, it's leaking. And he goes, no, it's supposed to do that. Yeah.
I went. What do you mean? Like you're applying pressurized air and I hear hissing. Yeah. It's supposed to do that. It sounds like it's leaking. He's like, no, no, no. It's a Venturi. And he explained how the system worked. And once I realized that that allows you to run a compressor. Mm-hmm. Whenever your pressure drops low enough, and then when you're above, you're required minimum pressure, the system just sits.
Mm-hmm. And it runs through a small volume of air. Mm-hmm. Less than one c fm and your part stays vacuumed overnight. That's [00:34:00] way easier than having a vacuum pump. 'cause vacuum pumps, inexpensive vacuum pumps, they're not variable. They're like, you're redlining it or it's off. Right. And redlining it on a fully vacuumed tight system is just putting wear on the pump for no reason.
And a lot of those oil sealed pumps aspirate oil.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: That's right. And so you're pumping out oil mist into your shop air. All the time that that's running. Yeah. Right. And so there were, it's really interesting, like vacuum is a category of physics in work holding, but the actual applications of vacuum in work holding.
Are wildly dependent.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Is
Speaker: this a dry process? Is it a wet process? Is there glue involved? Do you have to avoid sucking things into your pump? Because I mean, a Venturi, if you suck coolant in the Venturi sucks it in and blows it through. You can gunk up a VPU and those have a process for taking them [00:35:00] apart, cleaning them, re lubricating them, resembling them.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker: If you suck in epoxy into a conventional vacuum pump.
Speaker 2: You're done. Goodbye.
Speaker: Yeah. We
Speaker 2: have a you have
Speaker: a vacuum
Speaker 2: brick. We have a rebuild kit. Exactly for that. Yeah. Oh man. It's wild. I get the, the call every now and then about like, Hey, I see that, there's these products called vacuum cards from day tron.
Can I use your vacuum power unit with this? The answer is no. I understand 'cause and then I walk through and I really want to do a, a, a video with the DAYRON people. 'cause I love them. We, we get along just fine because we're always steering people to each other's products. You know, it's, it's like they have this large, expensive, high flow, high level vacuum pump.
Multiple thousands, like I think over 5,000 at least. And then the vacuum card that acts as it as a huge leak. And then, but you also, you pair that with small [00:36:00] surface area and in vacuum work holding small surface area, they don't mix, but you can get away with it because you know you're running 40, maybe 60,000 RPM on a tiny one or two flute tool on a dayron.
Using alcohol as a coolant and you're taking these little micro cuts just blazingly fast. Mm-hmm. That whole system works together so. Can you pull a vacuum through a a da tron VACU card with our vacuum power unit? Yep. But it ain't gonna work at all. There's a measurable amount of vacuum you could pull, but it is, you would it, it would never work.
You know,
Speaker: because of the built in assumed amount of leakage through the Vacu card. Exactly. The VPU can't overcome that required additional free flowing volume. Right. And you don't achieve peak vacuum. Yeah. Yeah. Vacuum. Vacuum work holding is great for things that have. Low lateral tool pressures. Right.
Uhhuh, lowing because vacuum is, vacuum is great against [00:37:00] vertical loads.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And not good against
Speaker 2: shear. Right. That is always the, the tech support type of stuff. The, the, the presale stuff that we're wrestling with. You know, the other thing is that, when you're using, gosh, this is a spiral into a vacuum episode, but whatever.
When you were working with Vacuum and you, we should title it, this episode sucks episode 1 0 1. I'm down with that. So, so here's the thing, like, um, the, the follow up question or or statement by this guy's boss was that I don't think this was designed right because it should pull vacuum and it should shut off and hold that vacuum.
My next thing is all vacuum systems leak because it's relatively low pressure. Um, and trust me, if if you, you have a micro leak, you're racing the clock, like yeah, you could put a ball valve between our vacuum power unit and the application our, our, our chucks. But you're racing the clock to win. You know, enough volume [00:38:00] of air will leak past the seals that are sealing between the chuck and the bottom of the part.
So you're always gonna want to be pulling a constant vacuum to overcome that, those vacuum leaks and just the volume at which our vacuum power unit pulls is faster than any rate that it could ever leak. So, um, that's, that, that kind of wraps up, oh, Andrew, answer my question. What do you think is a, a reasonable amount of volume for a machine shop?
Like just throwing out random numbers, 10 machines, 150 ounce tank. I have no idea. I know, I know. 'cause every machine's different. Yeah,
Speaker: I don't know. Um, so a couple of the questions. There were a handful of questions that came in either after the buzzer or that we just didn't get to for time constraints on episode 100.
Speaker 2: Oh, should we say this for next episode or are we gonna do it now?
Speaker: Uh, this is a pretty simple one.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker: Uh, this question came in setting aside, building tiny homes and making bass guitars, which is your other gig in my previous gig.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: If you had a chance to [00:39:00] pursue a completely different company or product in another life, what would it have been?
Good one. Software.
Speaker 2: Software. Ugg. Oh G Me? No, listen, hear me out. I mean,
Speaker: I'm, I'm starting a software company right now, so I, I'm, I know I'm sympathetic, but hear
Speaker 2: me out. There's no cost of goods sold. The, the equipment needed to build it, the physical infrastructure mm-hmm. Is minimal. It's, it's a desktop. Um, it's where people come in that gets very expensive.
, But software, it just solves so many problems. No cogs, um, no. Capital investments, that type of thing. Um, I think it actually is getting so much easier now with chat. GPT, like I coded this calculator, like I've told you before. Yes. GPT ultimate vibe coding with an ai. Yeah. I mean, it is just so simple to create these simple web apps and even deploy them.
Hey, I need help deploying this onto AWS, please help me. Um, yeah, I'd say software period. Which I too am probably gonna, we, oh, we, we [00:40:00] talked, you teased me, Andrew, you teased me about your, your fulfillment system. Yep. Is that the software you're gonna build? Okay. So, yep. That's the software we're working on.
Yeah. So we have some in-house products that are software based that, yeah. I would, people every time they see, they're like, oh my gosh, I need this. Yes. We know that people need it. Just, just gimme some time. We're, we're gonna make it, uh, you know, sellable. So we had our
Speaker: regional, we had our regional US postal.
Rep in this past week. Yeah. And she was blown away. She saw our F fulfillment center and she said, did you guys write this? I'm like, yep, this is our software. And she goes, she said, you need to sell this right now. Yeah. And so we're working, we're working on getting our roadmap to live. Betas and other shops mapped out to figure out what we need to do.
But we've already made a bunch of changes to the ui, UX in the past two weeks. Making it cleaner, easier to look at making the critical information bigger, bolder, more color grouped. Like we're, we're really making it look a lot nicer than it has. Mm-hmm. And that makes it intuitively easier [00:41:00] to understand, easier to grasp, less confusing to look at.
So I'm excited about that. In terms of what I would do other than building bass guitars, um, I've always been fascinated by guitar pedals. I, I'm not really an electrician, but the details of how you take. Basic electrical components like capacitors and build a circuit that modifies audible sound. Mm-hmm.
In a predictable but adjustable way. That's fascinating to me. Yeah, definitely. And I had a friend who's passed away since named Mike Stig, who ran a company here in Bloomington called STIGs and made relatively low volume. These were point to point hand wired, pretty highly regarded, uh, effects pedals. And I still have on my pedal board, .
Four or five of his pedals, including one that was a kind of a one-off that was off his personal board that I traded him for. I'm like, I really want that fuzz pedal. Mm-hmm. I played it and I'm like, I really want that. And he's like, okay. And, and we swapped. I have, I had over the years the opportunity to try out several one-off [00:42:00] pedals from him and they were always super fun.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And the details of, you know, I don't wanna build. Big it network things. I have no interest in the digital side of technology in that way.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But like how analog parts go together. The same thing with the people who build amplifiers. Amplifiers and guitar pedals are fascinating to me because , they're physics, they're electrical physics.
You have these individual components. They modify current and amperage in a certain way and it changes what you hear. Mm-hmm. And that is just, that's
Speaker 2: just cool. You know, what makes me sad about that is I think some of the coolest guitar pedals are made by Ryman right now. Oh, yeah. Loveman. They're ryman's awesome.
Right. But a lot of them, they're all digital. Yeah. They're digital, they're, they're algorithm based. And I, I deeply respect, like, I just, I just bought a, a noble, preamp based preamp. Mm-hmm. It's pre, you know, it's, it's the best I think. , Big fat, resistors, capacitors, like, it's, it's as [00:43:00] analog as you can get, and the sound that it, that it produces with most bases is just unbelievable.
And that, that, like, that science, that, that magic mystery, that's, there's a huge cool factor in that. Yeah. Like, like I, I bought it and I had to wait 10 months to get it because he's like, I only make a handful a day and I'm, I'm backed up 10 months. And this one, this one guy, whoa. Yeah, Jack, he's, he's, the dude needs some automation.
Well, but that, you know, if you're buying a handbuilt, anything, you don't, you don't want it automated. You know, that's, I mean, auto
Speaker: automate some of the parts that are wasting his time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker: That's all. Automate some of the parts. Speaking of base rigs, I recently at church switched to a Tech 21 sand amp base driver a V two.
Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: And uh, it's great. It sounds great with a pase. Mm-hmm. A pase and a pick through that sand amp with a little bit of the gain knob turned up.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Pretty, pretty tasty.
Speaker 2: Okay. Try the Aguilar tone hammer if you ever get a chance.
Speaker: Yeah, I looked at that one. [00:44:00]
Speaker 2: Look, they all have their, I just needed
Speaker: something simple that myself and other volunteer base players at the church could share and easily understand.
Speaker 2: Oh, the, the Samp Tech 21, that's the one that's the go-to. Just really clean or as dirty as you want. ,
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. It's the, it's the Toyota Corolla of Base di
Speaker 2: Yes. That's, well, well put.
Speaker: Yeah, the tone hammer really cool pedal. There's, there's just so much good sound gear and I definitely had a phase in my life where I was like really chasing tone.
Like I had a farn blackbird. I tried out a bunch of different amps and like was constantly on the hunt. For the, I mean, and I still have in my brain a guitar tone that I want and a bass tone that I want. Mm-hmm. And the whole point of those tones in your brain is they are meant to be unachievable. You should never actually get all the way there.
You should always be able to like the minute you play a note and it puts a huge smile on your face. You should be able to imagine an even better sound because it, it should keep you hungry. Yeah. It [00:45:00] should, it shouldn't just be, well, I've settled, I've arrived. This is it. Like, yeah. That's good. It, it could be better.
Anyway. Well, thank you all for enjoying episode 1 0 1. I hope it didn't suck too much.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker: And, uh, check out our new outro music coming up here in 3, 2, 1. Cue the music.