The guys talk about LB's Lean Day, company culture, Freshdesk, Quotient, Fusion 360 Nesting, Justin's New Kaeser Compressor, and the YCM CF BIN file update.
DISCUSSED:
Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.
SUPPORT THE SHOW
Show Info
HOSTS
Jem Freeman
Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
Like Butter | Instagram | More Links
Justin Brouillette
Portland, Oregon, USA
3, 2, 1,
Justin:That was pretty good.
Jem:really?
Jem:I was terrible at my end
Justin:Let's try it again.
Jem:I think think I'm awake enough.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:You got coffee.
Jem:I've got coffee.
Jem:Yeah, that's the non-negotiable.
Jem:As I enter the building,
Justin:I don't understand how people don't drink coffee
Justin:in the morning like that.
Justin:I just, I don't get enough sleep.
Justin:I think for that,
Jem:how much sleep do you get?
Justin:Oh boy.
Justin:Historically pretty terribly.
Justin:Six six and a half hours.
Justin:Yeah,
Jem:I've got two small children.
Jem:That sounds all right.
Justin:architecture school kind of ruined me for a long time.
Justin:And then, it was like just part of the culture, unfortunately, and I
Justin:don't, I've always had bad times, so I'm thinking it a little better.
Justin:My older age, over 30, starting to sleep a little more.
Justin:The children things gotta be tough though.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:It's it's so normal now.
Jem:The lack of sleep is just the no, but it's not the bad.
Jem:I typically get six, six or seven hours, if I'm lucky, It's just very broken.
Jem:Which, which brings me to my first point of being late this
Jem:morning due to an alarm fail.
Jem:So I'm with, at 6:00 AM my time when we're supposed to be recording this.
Jem:But I had a failure of my alarm settings and I really disliked being late.
Jem:I don't know how you feel about being late personally, but it's one of the
Jem:few things that really rubs me up the wrong way personally, when I'm the one.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:And so I sort of rushed in this morning and like bumped the coffee pot and
Jem:coffee grounds went everywhere and you know, there's a mess out there
Jem:in the staff kitchen and I did made me think about that short film.
Jem:Do easy.
Jem:Have you seen that Gus van Sant?
Jem:It's actually, it's one of the, there's two videos on like our
Jem:staff training induction package.
Jem:One of them's do easy
Justin:I've got to watch that.
Jem:and the other one's 10 bullets by Tom Sachs
Justin:Oh, I've seen that.
Jem:yeah, do easy.
Jem:We we'll put it in the show notes.
Jem:That's really good.
Justin:of the watch that I haven't heard it.
Justin:No, I love the 10 bullets.
Justin:Is that that's the one where he like, goes through like kind of all
Justin:the rules for a studio or methods of making in a certain sense.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:I love
Justin:that movie.
Jem:The story goes that he got sick of training staff over and over again.
Jem:So by these sweet little films, there's one about plywood,
Jem:which is really good as well.
Justin:you share that recently?
Jem:With you?
Justin:Just somewhere, maybe on
Justin:Instagram.
Jem:On the internet
Justin:Oh, okay.
Justin:I thought it was you.
Jem:that I recall.
Justin:That's pretty good.
Justin:Like an old plywood or something like
Justin:that.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:So, sorry.
Jem:I'm late.
Justin:no worries.
Justin:I was saying on slack before we started that if I was in your
Justin:position, I would probably be late.
Justin:every time it would be terrible and I would also feel bad.
Justin:you're a better morning person than I, so no problem.
Jem:What's happening in your end today?
Justin:Well today,
Justin:notably, I suppose we finally got plywood this morning that, that I was kind of
Justin:discussing last time, The replacement for Baltic Birch in a certain sense.
Justin:It's like this Poplar PLI, it's got
Jem:The apple ply.
Justin:now.
Justin:It's just, called Garnica actually, out of Spain and.
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:It kind of came up a couple of different ways from a friend.
Justin:And then one of our vendors, when I was asking about like, what else we have
Justin:in the world, besides Baltic Birch.
Justin:And they brought up this stuff and it took about still a month to get it.
Justin:It seemed and we've been trying to get in different thicknesses, but it
Justin:came in the kind of 18 mil variety at this point, which is pretty commonly
Justin:used, but we wanted it in like a 12 and it seems that everybody else in
Justin:the world wants it at the same time.
Justin:So anything, they didn't have anything else in stock.
Justin:And apparently it's just like backlog now.
Justin:Cause there's trucker strikes in Spain as well.
Justin:I guess
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:So you've
Jem:got enough to keep you out of trouble.
Justin:we're testing with, it's only got a few sheets is probably a
Justin:mistake.
Jem:Okay.
Jem:Have you cut Poplar before?
Jem:And I find it challenging to get a clean.
Jem:edge
Justin:I've cut solid.
Justin:Well show you, they didn't show me some samples.
Justin:But it's, it's very blonde,
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:brighter, but I was impressed by the core seems pretty solid.
Justin:I, you know, everything else, always the Baltic always seems pretty
Justin:rough and at least here anyway, kind of soft and it's probably
Justin:going to be tough to cut I'm sure.
Justin:We keep joking about the glory days of Baltic Birch how now
Justin:we're just going to be completely ruined by everything else we try
Justin:and use.
Jem:Oh, totally.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Nothing will ever be so flat and stabile I haven't done much with public supply.
Jem:There's a distributor here that does a product called E ply, I think,
Jem:which is like a soy glues, zero formaldehyde really nice product.
Jem:and I've only cut a few samples but I find like, as you drop down, H H second, Nia,
Jem:it's really hard not to get sort of like quite big tear out on whichever way it is.
Jem:and I found new, super sharp carbide was kind of the only way to go with it.
Jem:If you had a dull cutter, he couldn't couldn't get away with it.
Justin:it's funny you say that they did like a, a chamfer You probably
Justin:can't tell from there, but it it tore out on the end grain on the top layer.
Justin:That's
Justin:not encouraging.
Jem:No.
Jem:And then we can wait, found, like, I can't remember what we must've done.
Jem:Because we had enough experience with edge Sandy and stuff.
Jem:We found like we'd almost have to cut it a millimeter oversize.
Jem:So you could edge sand at so much to get like a nice clean edge.
Jem:I'm probably scaring you now.
Justin:Well, I don't know strangely enough, like multiple vendors have
Justin:like had Baltic Birch in stock and enough to get us by and it's been
Justin:affordable somewhat affordable lately.
Justin:So I don't, I don't know.
Justin:I don't know if I've been getting like swindled into thinking it's
Justin:worse than it is, but who knows?
Justin:Anyway, that that was one notable.
Justin:How about, how about you?
Justin:What's your, well, your day is just starting.
Justin:So what are you going to do today?
Jem:We have got our workshop Lean day today.
Jem:So once a month we technically, it doesn't happen every month but
Jem:technically once a month we down tools And spend a full all-staff spend an
Jem:old, like a full day, just on workshop improvement, business improvement tasks.
Jem:yeah, it's typically a pretty fun day because everyone's got ideas
Jem:about what they want to improve.
Jem:So like we wrote a bit of a list yesterday, so this dispatch packing,
Jem:area's going to be rejigged with the shipping computer will get moved and
Jem:some new storage and stuff like that.
Jem:And yeah, this whole list of things, the things bits and pieces that people,
Jem:things that have been bugging people over the last while we haven't probably
Jem:missed the last two months because every day that it's fallen, we've
Jem:been like in the heat of production and it had to just kind of carry on.
Jem:a bit, little bit slower in production at the moment, as I mentioned last week.
Jem:And so we've got time to do.
Jem:today as we call it.
Jem:so that'd be good.
Justin:I love that idea.
Justin:I mean, a thinking about what we do is it's, I'm always for kind
Justin:of the fix it when you can kind of thing, like don't wait necessarily.
Justin:But like the idea of making it a whole dedicated day because typically it's
Justin:usually the after Christmas to new year's, it's kind of a weird dead zone.
Justin:If it's the same, like nobody really works.
Justin:one of two days that week we'll take just build wherever you want day.
Justin:So it's not really the same, but that's about as close as we get to
Justin:like a dedicated day for a lean day.
Justin:But I like that idea a lot.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:It's it's the one, that's the version of this that we've settled on.
Jem:So we've tried lots of different things over the years.
Jem:Like we used to try and do it by Fastcap style with like every
Jem:morning would do it for half an hour and, clean and, you know, do like,
Jem:I've forgotten all my lane terms.
Jem:It's been a while since I've watched any of those videos.
Jem:But like fix up, fix what bugs you cousin, like every morning, but it was just the 30
Jem:minute window was great for those little things, but it was never enough to do the
Jem:sort of bigger picture projects as cool.
Jem:The offcut storage is terrible.
Jem:We need to just like pull all of that out and like rethink it.
Jem:And that that's a full day project.
Jem:And so by scheduling it once a month, we found we could actually
Jem:make good progress on those bigger
Jem:picture things.
Justin:I really like, Yeah.
Justin:I mean, not to go too deep on the.
Justin:I like the idea that then it gives, cause even for myself, I always feel
Justin:like I can't take enough time off from what I'm doing to like fix those things,
Justin:even though it's pretty critical.
Justin:And I'm sh I'm assuming for the people here too, it'd be like,
Justin:oh, I've been waiting to fix that.
Justin:Now I've got that day.
Justin:That's okay to do, rather than like, oh, we're not getting the other stuff done.
Justin:I think we'll
Justin:definitely try that.
Jem:good.
Jem:yeah, that's, that's good.
Jem:Other than that, I've got a bunch of things I need, need to get done around
Jem:that in terms of just jobs flowing.
Jem:I'm feeling like a bit of a bottleneck this week We've been quoting so
Jem:hard over the last month and those jobs are starting to convert.
Jem:And so now as those jobs convert, that means there's a lot of information
Jem:in my head that needs to be extracted and tasks that need to be delegated
Jem:and drawings and needed to be done.
Jem:And, so I was a little bit stressed yesterday actually, as you know, as well
Jem:winning work, I was like, oh, there's a lot of suddenly, there's a lot to do.
Jem:And that's
Jem:a lot of it's on my list right now,
Justin:kind of connects to what we were talking about last time
Justin:of almost all of that that's custom work ends up being, let's say commitments
Justin:that you've made to the client that maybe aren't even notated outside the
Justin:person that's quoting his head sometimes.
Justin:And
Justin:it's like, oh, we need to go get this done.
Justin:And maybe one of the team will be like, oh great.
Justin:Let me jump into that.
Justin:And you're like, you can't, you know, you can't yet because
Justin:it's all stuck in my head.
Justin:And you're like, why don't I do this to myself?
Justin:But you jumped into the next thing, you know, before you got it out.
Justin:So you get another thing done thinking you had to.
Jem:yeah, exactly.
Jem:And that's, that's what we're trying to solve.
Jem:One of the things we're really actively trying to solve in the business at
Jem:the moment is that handover process.
Jem:So I've been really loving descript since you introduced me to it a couple of weeks
Jem:ago, the screen screen capture software.
Jem:Cause I've been, we've been using screen capture tool for a while now.
Jem:but I just love that descript, shortcut and it's immediately recording my
Jem:screen and I can send someone a link.
Jem:So our current practices, you know, if I'm the designer or I've
Jem:detailed a project, then before it goes to the machinist, John.
Jem:I have to do a handover video in Fusion you know, picking it apart, talking
Jem:through, you know, we need six of these parts and yeah, make sure you
Jem:do like a reverse thread on this part.
Jem:Cause that's different and blah, blah, talking through the project.
Jem:And any of that stuff, like you just mentioned that like little tricks or
Jem:things I might've committed to the client, that video then goes to John.
Jem:And then what we're trying to sort of in the next step is like cool right?
Jem:So John machines, the parts and then parts go to someone to process them.
Jem:Like, did they watch the same video?
Jem:But that was kind of more about machining.
Jem:How do we do like a video that sort of captures heaps of time?
Jem:But it does reduce those questions of instead of John coming to ask me
Jem:questions about the job and then Andy coming to ask me questions about the
Jem:job and like me always being node it's like sort of published that
Jem:information out of my head and yeah.
Jem:The job and flow through the system.
Jem:Seamlessly.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Work in progress.
Jem:Like everything,
Justin:I have two questions about.
Justin:I think I picked that up from the fast cap ideas of just recording a video
Justin:and Saunders talks about that too.
Justin:Like to record something it's easier.
Justin:Usually the weird couple things I find about it.
Justin:Where do you put the videos?
Justin:First of all?
Justin:Like where do you host them?
Justin:Do you have a solution?
Jem:Well, now I've just like used the script or other services like
Jem:that, where it's just like, boom.
Jem:It gets pinged up to the cloud with a unique URL.
Jem:And we can just share that your
Jem:URL they'd probably disappearing.
Jem:I don't know how long they last, but they last long
Jem:enough.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:There's one of the weird things of you prior would relate jumping
Justin:around from software to software, trying to find solutions to
Justin:things is, we finally landed on.
Justin:For the most part, keeping all of our knowledge in this, it's a help desk
Justin:ticketing, software called Freshdesk.
Justin:And I've used it for a long time for just basically the initial point was
Justin:I need to be able to handle people that contact me about Nack products
Justin:and, you know, I have a problem and it would just be stuck in my email.
Justin:And even though it was just me, I found that difficult to track
Justin:different customers and what they needed and you couldn't, you know,
Justin:I just wasn't good at organizing.
Justin:So it also allows you to FAQ's and that can be public or internal.
Justin:And so what we did with the CNC stuff is we made a giant
Justin:internal category and then has sub categories in that so that you can.
Justin:Store that stuff.
Justin:So it's great.
Justin:Except for things like this, where it's like, okay, well,
Justin:where do I put this video?
Justin:And I think the only thing I've come to is to put it on YouTube in some
Justin:fashion and make it either unlisted, if it's not super secret, which
Justin:we don't really have much of that.
Justin:And then you can link that in, but that's kind of the best thing we've
Justin:come up with at this point, it kind using a technique an air table where
Justin:everything's kind of hidden in one or not like dumped into one place.
Justin:And then you, you can search it pretty well.
Jem:Oh yeah.
Jem:I've been meaning to ask you about Freshdesk because I feel like
Jem:that's something that's lacking in terms of our software stack.
Jem:I'm sorry.
Jem:If anyone came here for CNC talk, it's just going to be software.
Jem:Like
Justin:It's a software.
Jem:w what, what apps are we using today?
Jem:I got, I got, told off at the start of the week for spending an hour
Jem:rebuilding my to-do list in Airtable.
Jem:Cause I got sick of Figma.
Justin:There you go.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:I thought it was beautiful when you showed me.
Justin:I was like, that's great.
Justin:You know, if if it makes you feel better about
Justin:getting your work done, then it actually does something then work on it,
Justin:you know?
Jem:That's right.
Jem:Well, I'd love to pick your brain on Freshdesk further, but yeah,
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:It's it's definitely not a perfect solution.
Justin:What's crazy about it is I've only used the free versions of it since like maybe.
Justin:And they have a really good free tier where you can have, they call the
Justin:people on your team like agents, like you're like an agent and you can have
Justin:as many as you want on the free tier, you can use emailing with customers.
Justin:And what I like in particular, one of the things else on the
Justin:list today was managing email and.
Justin:That just being such a big part of, I don't know, a lot of contemporary
Justin:businesses, even what we do, right.
Justin:it's it's communicating with clients, vendors, all those things happen that way.
Justin:Now it's the best way to track it.
Justin:So I've wanted fresh desk to be both are to kind of the, all in one solution,
Justin:but really it's only an outward facing thing with, with like clients in
Justin:particular, but it does work pretty well because we get one email it's
Justin:like, you know company@company.com and everything that goes in and out gets
Justin:filtered by their system, two tickets.
Justin:So that like, you know, customer a is ticket 1260.
Justin:And whenever they email, it goes into the same place.
Justin:And everybody that can see that category of like customer service.
Justin:Respond to it.
Justin:You can also respond externally from like your normal email app, if you're an agent.
Justin:And that goes into the ticket too, this is kind of nice.
Justin:You can make internal notes on that, you know, thing.
Justin:And then I think what's really awesome about it, which is pretty hidden, is you
Justin:can do what are called canned responses.
Justin:So any time we need to send a deposit form for a job, I have a thing that pops
Justin:that in and you know, everything they need to know about how to pay the deposit.
Justin:What's
Justin:how that works as well as then.
Justin:You can also do any of the articles.
Justin:The FAQ articles can be dropped into the email as well.
Justin:So Yeah, it's fun.
Justin:It's fun as the bad word for it.
Justin:It's very helpful.
Jem:sounds great.
Jem:I'll check it out.
Jem:Yeah, that sounds a little bit what's next on our Airtable development
Jem:list, which I was chatting so Jay works on all our air table stuff here.
Jem:And the next big ticket item that we're working on is quoting which we're
Jem:already doing a table, but then quoting output, like actually click of a button.
Jem:And the customer gets like a rich text email with like materials watches
Jem:and like all that information on how to pay and like quotes rough often
Jem:itemized with different material options at different price breaks.
Jem:And so like the dream is that the customer can get.
Jem:Rich email and go, oh yeah, no, I just want option a and C please.
Jem:And disregard option B and hit submit.
Jem:And then that pings back into our air table base and rebuilds the
Jem:quote and generate an invoice.
Jem:It's a huge amount of work, but I'm very excited about that at the moment.
Jem:But I have to remember that we don't have to build everything from scratch and
Jem:that.
Justin:As we continue down app talk.
Justin:The thing I stumbled into a while back is called Quotient and there's a few of these
Justin:out there, but it, it does a little bit of this it does nothing for you per se.
Justin:You have to enter all the stuff, and it's not like generating
Justin:time estimates or material estimates, but it saves everything.
Justin:You have templates and you can quickly send like optionable quotes, right?
Justin:So there something you can have images.
Justin:The funny thing in the last week that I've thought about I sent you that lady, on
Justin:tick-tock saying, well, if you, you know, if you were paid a thousand dollars an
Justin:hour, what would you do with your time?
Justin:Right.
Justin:As a business owner and you know, it kind of hit me like, yeah, I'm
Justin:doing a lot of stupid stuff that.
Justin:I shouldn't be doing.
Justin:One of which is quoting, I hate quoting.
Justin:It's such a time suck.
Justin:Right.
Justin:Because half the time, maybe you don't win the job the other
Justin:time, it just feels like in some fashion it could be more automated.
Justin:And I'm thinking like the thought came to me, why do we spend
Justin:any time on quoting anymore?
Justin:Like, there's, there's AI software.
Justin:Right.
Justin:And it's just not at the level where our size of companies can afford it
Justin:or have access to that thing in a certain sense, in a lot of ways, I feel
Justin:like,
Jem:You talking about the sort of Xometry model where it's applied files and yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:I think first straight CNC machining jobs that feels almost within our
Jem:grasp doesn't that fight or should be.
Justin:Yeah,
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:Have you heard of paperless parts?
Justin:They kind of do that, but they don't do any nesting.
Justin:I've gone back and forth with them a few times with like even
Justin:their CEO on a call one time.
Justin:And they kept promising me that they'd be able to do nesting and then they'd
Justin:be like, Hey, I guess we can't do it.
Jem:So that's for the more traditional machining, might
Jem:job shop
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:single part.
Justin:But it's brilliant for that.
Justin:Like, I've seen friends use it.
Justin:I've played with a of myself.
Justin:And if it's tempting, even, even though most of our jobs go into
Justin:a nested set up, you know, it doesn't really work, but Yeah.
Justin:I keep thinking if I was trying to tell you write other people.
Justin:Quote, or even spend my own time.
Justin:That feels like one of the biggest time sucks that obviously is
Justin:necessary, but that I would love to see some big improvements there.
Justin:Firstly, in a software
Justin:sense.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:And that's what we're trying to build in our table is not, not automated, but
Jem:like the skill quoting simple jobs to a point where anyone on the team can
Jem:just, you know, get the length, the number of parts off the sheet layout.
Jem:Pretty much plug that into air table.
Jem:We've dropped down menus and the materials selections and
Justin:Interesting.
Jem:Instead of, you know, Aaron and I sort of thinking about, oh, what
Jem:feed rate will this be based on that material and that thickness and going,
Jem:you know, plugging our feed right now.
Jem:I'm ready to go.
Jem:Now that cycle time doesn't feel right based on our experience.
Jem:Cool.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:If it'll fit all fit or like it's still way too manual for what it is, as you
Jem:say, it should, should be automated.
Jem:That, that simple machining quoting for sure.
Jem:Speaking of nesting.
Jem:what are you
Jem:Infusion fuel nesting.
Justin:yeah.
Justin:For the most part, it's the longest time I used rhino cam.
Justin:And then when they started
Jem:Oh really?
Justin:it's
Justin:pretty decent.
Jem:I've heard good
Jem:Things.
Justin:it's one of those, like buy it outright kind of things.
Justin:And I used that for a long time
Justin:and unfortunately, I dunno, trying to consolidate workflows when fusion
Justin:came out with, because all like 98% of our cam happens in fusion.
Justin:is there some weird thing that we can't do we use V par four or
Justin:typically it's like N V curve.
Jem:Engraving grabbing,
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Yes, exactly.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:I thought you were saying what does V carb, but No, Yep.
Justin:Yep.
Justin:That's it engraving.
Justin:And it's really good for, I don't know if you've used it all
Justin:for like just sheet processing.
Justin:If you have like just simple 2d parts, it's like, you can layerize
Justin:by like internal, external parts and it's just like plops out G code that's,
Jem:yeah.
Justin:you know, quick, but yeah,
Justin:it's all, all fusion.
Justin:I'm actually in a little insider program, so I've been helping them develop it
Justin:for, since they started with it, I
Justin:guess.
Justin:And
Jem:You're one of
Jem:those people.
Justin:well, you can blame me for
Justin:part of it, I guess.
Jem:I knew you had affiliate links with food with Autodesk.
Jem:I Very nice.
Justin:I guess, yeah, I've been, I've been trying to make it as good as it can
Justin:be.
Jem:Cool.
Jem:Well, we know who to blame now.
Justin:I think it's very complicated to solve in the sense that it's
Justin:always trying to process this huge timeline of things into parts.
Justin:And, you know, you got the timeline in the design space, and then it's
Justin:trying to filter all that into a nested solution in a different space.
Justin:And I don't love how the UI works.
Justin:I find it to be a little bit overpriced for what it is in
Justin:terms of the nesting extension.
Justin:And it's just a little tough to use.
Justin:Honestly, I think I get a lot of comments like that too, cause I've done some videos
Justin:on it and people are looking for answers and I'm like, I don't know how to tell
Justin:you how to do it very much better on us.
Jem:It's so much better than
Jem:it was 12 months ago, even.
Justin:Oh, Yeah.
Justin:No, it's, it's improving.
Justin:It's they're constantly working on improving
Justin:it.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:And that, that's what I've loved about fusion from the start.
Jem:It's just like whilst the, the weekly or whatever they are updates, we've got
Jem:to restart fusion and be irritating.
Jem:It's I just love how actively it's being developed and it's like, cool.
Jem:Like every time there's a bug sudden, this ties into my love
Jem:affair with continuous improvement.
Jem:I like this is a software
Jem:package that's being continuously.
Justin:It's not like a once a year, once every few years.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:That's, I'll give him that too.
Justin:Like the nesting fabrication nesting team I've been working with it's, they're very
Justin:responsive to not just me, but others too.
Justin:I just talked to a few of them.
Justin:They're very responsible.
Justin:This doesn't work, right.
Justin:It should work differently.
Justin:And they'll definitely listen to that.
Justin:And, you know, a decent amount of my comments have made it into real things,
Justin:which I appreciate for myself at least.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:I think, I think it's going to turn into something really good there it's still
Justin:new and they're trying to translate a different software package into fusion.
Justin:As most things are, have always happened, right.
Justin:It comes from somewhere else and they're trying to like, make it
Justin:work as best it can inside this app.
Justin:So, Yeah.
Justin:it's, I, we often use, if you're asking the specific
Justin:tool we use a range most often,
Justin:and that kind of like what you see is what you get kind of version of nesting.
Justin:And I've been slowly training people here on how to use the more advanced
Justin:manufacturing advanced nesting.
Justin:It's that's the one I think is, is the least few.
Justin:Centric.
Justin:Right.
Justin:It's I always describe it as it feels like you're trying to
Justin:nest inside of a spreadsheet.
Justin:Like it's, it's very like type stuff in and make sure it's the right way.
Justin:And then you get to see it kind of one sheet at a time.
Justin:So
Jem:But it is so powerful though.
Jem:So large.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Where there too.
Jem:So John, we've just got one advanced manufacturing license for the nesting.
Jem:And John and I just ping other as required.
Jem:It's pretty much always out with John on the machine.
Jem:But I pull it back when I need it for.
Jem:'cause I find it really powerful for quoting big jobs.
Jem:Like I love being quite at a job recently about 90 sheets of Baltic Birch don't
Jem:know where they're getting that from.
Jem:And it was great to be able to, you know, click it that takes a little bit
Jem:of time to set up, but then it nests, you know, hundreds, if not thousands
Jem:of parts so quickly, and being able to go back to the customer and say, oh,
Jem:actually, you know that that 90 sheet estimate that you have, it's actually
Jem:like 75, like being able to save ourselves or a customer like huge amount of
Jem:material, has been my experience with it.
Jem:I had a friend Rachel recently asking me about the pro nesting.
Jem:He's a fusion user, but hasn't invested in the extension.
Jem:It was kind of coming in hiring and cause they dropped mat boards no longer
Jem:works with the new version update.
Justin:Oh, I didn't know that.
Jem:That that's put a lot of the, the small operations.
Jem:I think that's put them in a tricky spot where they they've only got
Jem:a rain, like single feed arranged.
Jem:Now, anyway, he was asking about, you know, whether it's worth the money.
Jem:And I was like, to me, yes, obviously it's going to be different for everyone.
Jem:But I think about like how much time you might spend per year, manually pushing
Jem:parts around and trying to like optimize sheets versus just having that instant
Justin:Yeah.
Jem:Generation.
Jem:And so for me, it's a no brainer, but yet understand that it is a significant
Jem:expense to a small business.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:It's decent
Jem:so
Justin:I mean, you can get their range for the commercial license.
Justin:You just can't control much.
Justin:The thing I know, you've probably explored this one year in the, I don't
Justin:know what to call it better than in the manufacturing version of nesting, the.
Justin:Once you do it actual nest, you can right click on the node and do compare
Justin:and it'll
Justin:generate this like
Justin:thing.
Justin:part of the problem.
Justin:It's very hidden.
Justin:You click on the node and you'll get a pop-up that.
Justin:shows you all the sheets at once, which I find really useful to screenshot and
Justin:then drop into like my internal notes for
Justin:quotes.
Jem:I haven't seen that.
Justin:It's really useful.
Justin:There's also one, I think it may
Justin:be report where you can get like the entire nest.
Justin:And if you save that.
Justin:out, you can say, see, like which parts didn't make it on the sheets.
Justin:What's the efficiency.
Justin:And you know, if you've got your pricing in there, it's brilliant.
Justin:Right?
Justin:You can see here's what actually what this material is going to cost
Justin:and what these each part could cost.
Justin:So I think it's really powerful.
Justin:A lot of what I want to see is around the workflow of using it.
Justin:The nesting is great itself.
Justin:The actual solutions are awesome.
Jem:That's all right.
Jem:Yeah,
Jem:That comes back to the automation question.
Jem:I wonder if we'll get to a point where there's an API for it and we can
Jem:have customer submitted files being
Jem:nested in the cloud.
Justin:I know, I don't know where they're at with it, but I know API
Justin:is high on the list of development for, to use it in other places.
Justin:So I don't, I don't actually use it.
Justin:Do you do that coding or is it somebody on your team do that kind of stuff for you?
Jem:Jay is, I, I can't code, I can write G code that's because I have
Jem:to for the pencil out and I, but No, Jay on our team is the coder
Jem:yeah.
Justin:That's
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:I've always wished wished I could, it's a skill of life, but yeah, I've never done.
Jem:I said and I can copy and paste and kind of work out, you know, a
Jem:little bit, but that's about it.
Justin:I really that's.
Justin:What's fun of mine.
Justin:I kind of skipped it.
Justin:the last two years cause I was too stressed with the pandemic stuff,
Justin:but I usually try and do some version of it, annual theme of goals.
Justin:And I've really wanted to learn Python for awhile.
Justin:And I have done nothing on that so far this year, but even if it's
Justin:just something, I think it's, I've always find it valuable to keep
Justin:learning new things like that.
Justin:So I there's a lot you can do with it potentially even
Justin:with the current fusion API.
Justin:for one example,
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Cool.
Jem:I mean, yeah, learning new things is pretty much the reason I'm still here.
Jem:I think it's such an important.
Jem:Part running a business, being a creative of any form.
Jem:I think, I dunno.
Jem:It's intrinsic to making stuff and learning new things.
Justin:sure.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Keeps your mind
Justin:fresh.
Jem:yeah.
Justin:I think, I think we both relate to that.
Justin:Like I find in interviewing people for, to work here, I find that being able
Justin:to communicate with them about problem solving and you can't really necessarily
Justin:solve that in an interview, but being able to just communicate well right away is
Justin:pretty crucial because of how much we end up talking about solving problems here.
Justin:If it's not easy to converse, if there's some type or need to be
Justin:right, or something like that, it's pretty much an automatic aid, you
Justin:know, like it's not gonna work out.
Justin:Cause we talk through everything when there's a problem.
Justin:He needed some conflict in that too, but you gotta be able to get past ego.
Jem:Yeah, I think help
Jem:healthy friction Yeah, friction can be beneficial if it's yeah.
Jem:If it's stripped of ego and it's yeah.
Jem:What plays into that problem solving thing.
Jem:Have you are you familiar with the Netflix culture
Jem:deck,
Justin:no, no, I just saw your
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Link or we'll pop it in the show notes, but it's a super interesting, it's
Jem:basically it's out of date now, but it's a version of Netflix's, HR document,
Jem:cultural document, and the woman that co-wrote, it is Patty McCord, And it's a
Jem:really interesting document for any anyone in business that sort of came through.
Jem:Like if you're, I think, you know, if you employ people,
Jem:I think it's super relevant.
Jem:Super interesting.
Justin:What's the book called
Jem:It's got a subtype powerful.
Jem:There's a subtitle, which I can't
Jem:remember, but
Jem:yeah, basically that's the trouble.
Justin:I was reading another one, I think from her
Justin:that's like
Justin:really notable.
Justin:I don't remember the name, but anyway.
Justin:No, I haven't seen that.
Justin:It's what was, what was your thoughts on that?
Justin:Other than that was an interesting thing in itself, or you're like, is
Justin:this a problem you're dealing with or
Jem:It really, it
Justin:you not want to talk about it?
Jem:not enough as actually.
Jem:Because something that came up, so I don't think I've talked about
Jem:this, but I do business coaching.
Jem:Like I'm in a program at the moment have been for about five months, getting
Jem:help with business coaching stuff.
Jem:Anyway, I was in a session on Monday night and that would drumming into
Jem:into us again, like the, this thing they say where like the standard you
Jem:walk past is the standard you accept.
Jem:So if someone's doing this.
Jem:And you don't talk, don't mention it.
Jem:And it just becomes the new standard that everyone's two minutes like,
Jem:oh, that person is two minutes late.
Jem:And I was just looking really torn on the zoom call, I think.
Jem:And we got into this discussion about like, yes, I totally understand that.
Jem:And while it really bugs me, when someone's two minutes late, I also
Jem:have a team who's incredibly loyal and dedicated and will stay back at the
Jem:end of the day and just get it done.
Jem:And so my fear is like, if you play hardball and go, Hey, you're two minutes
Jem:late and it gets to the end of the day and they're like, oh, Hey, it's 4 25.
Jem:See you later.
Jem:Like it goes both ways.
Jem:So I find that a really challenging area to think about.
Jem:And I don't really know where I stand.
Jem:Other than that, this Netflix culture deck is a really
Jem:interesting resource around that.
Jem:Cause I have like.
Jem:Crazy policies around like lave.
Jem:Like they don't have a leave policy.
Jem:Like people just take time off whenever they, you know, with approval, but
Jem:they take time off when they need to, that's kind of east spend the
Jem:company's money when you need to.
Jem:Everyone's kind of got that responsibility to do great work and
Jem:serve the company as best they can, but they're not sort of being held to,
Jem:you know, really strict HR policies.
Jem:I love that idea.
Jem:And yeah, it's an interesting sort of thing to wrap my
Jem:head around, but yeah.
Justin:Yeah, I think that Patty McCord, if that's the same person I'm
Justin:thinking of kind of well wrote the book right on, on some of the stuff.
Justin:And I, I didn't make it through the whole thing yet, but I did find a lot of good.
Justin:And just part of what I've always wanted from our company is I want to trust
Justin:everybody here, like they're adults and they can make decisions that are
Justin:right for them and the company, right.
Justin:That I'm not going to sit there and make sure that they're here
Justin:on time in a certain sense.
Justin:I think it probably like you're saying it's the standard you walk past.
Justin:I unfortunately ended up being late or I don't have a good sense of time,
Justin:honestly, a spat excuse, but I just don't.
Justin:So I don't also believe that I'm going to sit there and like, like there's
Justin:traffic there's I couldn't get up.
Justin:You know, I was tired this morning.
Justin:I didn't feel it feel very good.
Justin:And I would rather have that discussion then, you know, make sure that somebody
Justin:is here at nine every day, because I think it's way more humanizing.
Justin:It's way more like, I want to have that mutual respect that I can
Justin:say, I felt like shit this morning.
Justin:So I didn't get here, you know?
Justin:And that, like, you're sitting at the end of the day, nobody's ever walking out
Justin:because they've got to get out, you know, like those people don't stick around.
Justin:They don't want to be a part of the same thing.
Justin:It's like, I'm going to stay.
Justin:The same as the next person.
Justin:I just believe flexibility is really important and it's pretty uncommon
Justin:at least here in the states to have flexibility in manufacturing jobs.
Justin:It's very like, you're here for a shift, right.
Justin:Like you don't get a leave, you don't have doctors, but you know,
Justin:it's, it's very locked down.
Justin:And I guess probably from being outside of that, coming from outside
Justin:of that, you know, is education-wise, I just don't subscribe to that.
Justin:It's not healthy.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Well, I suppose if you've come from the sort of architecture,
Jem:there's a, there's there's other unhealthy work habits I'm sure
Justin:I've had to Yeah,
Jem:you go
Justin:no, I was going to say you're absolutely right.
Justin:Like I don't eat lunch typically.
Justin:And I've had team members mimic me and I'm like, you need to eat,
Justin:do what you need to do because.
Justin:I am not healthy to follow in some of these things.
Justin:Like I'll just sit here and work all day.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:We had a, a young guy years actually.
Jem:And he was at architecture school during some of that time.
Jem:I don't know if I've had other stuff previously you've made through
Jem:architecture and just, yeah, I'm amazed, slash slightly shocked at
Jem:the sort of the culture and the work ethic that comes out of that.
Jem:It sounds unhealthy at times.
Jem:It's a bit like a sort of guilt, you know, it's got that sort of archaic
Jem:guild like sense of like, these are the systems you will adhere to
Jem:and you will work all night if you
Jem:have to like,
Justin:I don't know if It's changed.
Justin:Honestly, I haven't been too tied in because our school is
Justin:in the middle of the states.
Justin:Right.
Justin:And we live on the west coast.
Justin:if you stay around your school, usually you can be a part of it.
Justin:Right.
Justin:You can do reviews And I do miss that a lot.
Justin:haven't really gotten you know, I enjoy that scholarly kind of refresher
Justin:and keeping abreast of what's going on, but there was a pretty active
Justin:movement when we were in school, even to kind of try to squash down.
Justin:Honestly, a lot of it was kind of the old, or guard of the educators pushing
Justin:like, you know, way too much expectation on like what you need to get accomplished
Justin:in a week or something like that.
Justin:So you ended up staying up all night.
Justin:Anyway, not really what you're here to talk about, but yeah,
Justin:it's definitely unhealthy.
Justin:And it took a few years to kind of unwrap, especially since my
Justin:wife and I both came from it.
Justin:It was like almost like a codependency with an education I'm interested
Justin:in your business coaching, you are both receiving and giving
Justin:coaching or is it one way or the
Justin:other.
Jem:nah, just receiving, and it's something that was recommended from a
Jem:fellow maker last year, it was doing it.
Jem:And yeah, started that program sort And it's been really good.
Jem:It means my brain is just like always in overload bandwidth, totally
Jem:maxed out because I'm trying to do my job, trying to run the business,
Jem:but also trying to think about all these high level stuff all the time.
Jem:If like there are a million things I need to improve in the business.
Jem:So I just, like, I've really noticed that in the last sort of,
Jem:since I started really, it's just not, not any Brian spice lift.
Jem:Like I've got home, home kids in one segment and then.
Jem:Coaching business improvement in this other segment.
Jem:And it's like, there's nothing else.
Jem:I've got no more capacity.
Justin:Yeah, I don't, I, every small business owner friend that I have
Justin:says the same thing and I, I, don't know how to do it differently, but I
Justin:have the same it's yeah, you always, you always asked me, especially,
Justin:cause we're so different in time.
Justin:You're like, I remember getting the noise.
Justin:Do you always, are you always online?
Justin:Are you always working?
Justin:And I'm like, well, I hope not, but probably, you know, and some of it's
Justin:like, I just don't sign out a slack ever.
Justin:so it's just there.
Justin:no, I would love to figure that whatever that thing is out too, because
Justin:I have that same thing yesterday about what is it about Tuesday slash
Justin:Wednesday, I guess, where I was just overwhelmed yesterday as well.
Justin:And luckily I was chatting with Ricky on our team and he is a good
Justin:listener and he basically, it was just kind of repeated to me what I said.
Justin:And I was like, oh yeah, I can solve those problems.
Justin:You know, like
Jem:Yeah,
Justin:it was all too many, too many problems to solve at once.
Justin:And I don't know, hire more good people, I think is probably the best solution.
Justin:If you can afford it.
Jem:absolutely.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Build a great team help you spread those problems out.
Justin:Yeah, definitely.
Justin:one of the things I definitely wanted to hit because I've been waiting on it for
Justin:three months and it's going to be a game changer is we got a new air compressor.
Justin:That's not hooked up yet, definitely exciting.
Justin:And I like, I've been joking with people.
Justin:It's like, I didn't know.
Justin:I could be this excited about compressed air, but apparently I can,
Jem:What are you upgrading from?
Justin:Basically a big box store, a brand called Kobalt from Lowe's I bought
Justin:it when I bought the router, basically it's like, what's a 60 gallon compressor.
Justin:That's not over X amount of dollars.
Justin:And I think it was 500 bucks and I got the extended warranty.
Justin:Cause I was like, it's going to blow up and it's gone.
Justin:Hard since 2017, just with the one machine.
Justin:I didn't realize slash didn't put enough effort into paying
Justin:attention to this kind of thing.
Justin:Cause it was just like not the important machine in my head then,
Justin:but I didn't do oil changes on it for like the first year and a half.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:And I have.
Justin:As we were waiting for this, To get here, we
Justin:ordered it the end of January.
Justin:It was supposed to be two weeks.
Justin:And somehow that turned into almost three months and the whole time
Justin:th th the big change happened because we got this YCM mill.
Justin:It doesn't continuously need air like the router does, but you blow off
Justin:the coolant off the, you know, the parts, A handful of things, mostly
Justin:air, air blast really sucks air, and it was just destroying the old Kobalt.
Justin:Like it would just run constantly.
Justin:And to one point it's in this back room, it was setting off the smoke alarms
Justin:because it was running so hard and we're like, what are we going to do here?
Justin:This is terrible.
Justin:So that was kind of the trigger point for me.
Justin:Once we finally got both machines going, was there needs to be a change here
Jem:So that looks like a proper screw compressor with a dryer.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Yeah, for sure.
Justin:It's really awesome.
Justin:Upgrade for us anyway.
Justin:I'm sure there's crazier out there, but the it's a Kaeser Airtower 7.5c and it
Justin:can do 28 CFM of continuously, but it's also super variable, which I loved.
Justin:And a lot of them, you have to hit, I'm no expert on this, but a certain.
Justin:What do they call it?
Justin:Duty cycle, right?
Justin:So a certain amount of time on certain amount of time off.
Justin:And supposedly according to the rep I've been talking to, they don't care.
Justin:This Kaiser machine can run as little or as much as you want it to.
Justin:And it's fine.
Justin:I
Justin:guess
Justin:they're expensive, but I just saw it is a good insurance policy
Justin:of this one kind of lifeblood.
Justin:Unlike my understanding of the cobalt when I first bought it.
Justin:Now I'm super tuned into how important this is for us, especially that it's dry.
Justin:We don't have a dryer either Yeah.
Justin:it's pretty, pretty awesome.
Justin:My friend, Nick of P 3d and Florida had just gotten one.
Justin:He talked to me basically into getting it, cause it was such a.
Justin:It seems like such a good deal.
Justin:Cause they're really compact too.
Justin:It's like kind of upright versus a horizontal and we
Justin:just don't have a ton of space.
Justin:it's quiet.
Justin:I don't know if it fits a lot of checks, a lot of boxes.
Justin:Right.
Justin:I'm excited to get it wired up in the next couple of days.
Jem:Fantastic.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:I think we're going to need something similar.
Jem:Maybe a year's time over the next year.
Jem:We're still running our original compressor from probably 2007,
Justin:Whoa,
Jem:Piston the big, you know, in an industrial sized compressor, but
Jem:an old piston unit and same thing.
Jem:We didn't service it properly for the arc.
Jem:And the first eight years, before we before we became a company, we just didn't
Jem:know that we had to, and then we became a car company and we had like more stringent
Jem:work, work, safe insurance requirements.
Jem:We're like, oh yeah, you compress.
Jem:It has to be serviced every six months, like, oh, oh really?
Jem:Okay.
Jem:but yeah, that's sitting outside at the moment and it's it's aging.
Jem:Since we moved to the new workshop three years ago, it's
Jem:aging much more rapidly tinge.
Jem:But we've got an air dryer inside and yeah.
Jem:Anyway, the reason I know it's probably up for replacement is because every year
Jem:or maybe every two years someone comes and scans the tank for do like a, a
Jem:ultrasound on it and then measure, they measure the thickness of the air receiver
Jem:to see how much it's corroded and how much steel's left before And so the guy
Jem:that came last week was that it's dropping off more quickly now, I think, you know,
Jem:you've maybe got another year in the
Jem:tank before point mate standard.
Justin:Whoa.
Justin:That's crazy.
Justin:That must.
Justin:So That's like some form of like worker safety.
Justin:You said like a
Jem:yeah.
Jem:That's tied, tied worker safety
Jem:insurance.
Jem:Yeah,
Justin:oh, the safety standards are better where you live, I think
Jem:I think they're are a little bit different.
Jem:Yeah.
Justin:bit better.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:I've never heard of that.
Justin:Like yeah, nothing like that, that I'm aware of, but maybe I just don't know,
Justin:like changing oil and air compressors.
Justin:You're supposed to do that, I guess, but yeah, I'm pretty,
Justin:pretty stoked about that.
Justin:It, you know, I think it will get started and we probably won't think about it.
Justin:Right.
Jem:That's
Justin:A couple of months, but I, I would walk I know you've
Justin:probably had this experience.
Justin:Uh, we used to have another couple of people on staff and somebody
Justin:would be running the mill, right.
Justin:Somebody would be running the router and then, you know, the routers constantly
Justin:dumping five CFM to cool, the spindle.
Justin:And I just noticed, I was like, Pam, that air pressure is just running a lot.
Justin:And I go back there.
Justin:It is just scalding hot, like, and ever since then it would both
Justin:those, the machines were running.
Justin:I'd just be in this like semi panic mode of like, when's it?
Justin:going to die?
Justin:Like it's going to die.
Justin:Oh, no.
Jem:Yeah, yeah.
Jem:Waiting on electrical to
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Supposedly Tuesday excited about that.
Justin:going supposedly it's pretty quiet, which I'm excited about.
Justin:Cause our other one is just like, like a crazy runaway truck, you
Justin:know?
Jem:Oh yeah, you went now yourself with a proper
Jem:screw compressor.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:Salesperson said it was similar to a washing machine and also
Justin:compared it to our Prusa 3d printer.
Justin:And I was like, I don't know if that's accurate, but I'm sure it's quiet.
Jem:Yep.
Jem:Cool.
Justin:anything, you're looking forward
Justin:to in the next week?
Jem:next week.
Jem:Long weekend to you is the Easter long weekend about to hit as a small
Jem:business owner, I always forget about public holidays and they
Jem:creep up on me and I go, oh, oh,
Justin:I do the same thing.
Justin:And my wife has always like, how do you not know it's this day?
Justin:And I'm like, I, I got to work easier than normal.
Justin:There was less traffic.
Justin:And then I noticed it was weird.
Jem:Yeah.
Jem:One of my favorite things, actually, if I can wrangle it is coming to work
Jem:on a public holiday and getting the workshop to
Justin:Same here.
Jem:It's a beautiful feeling.
Jem:The phone doesn't ping.
Jem:It's fantastic.
Justin:Great.
Jem:now what's yeah, and I next week will be good.
Jem:We've got a bunch of material arriving on Tuesday, hopefully
Jem:to rip into some of these bigger jobs that are starting to land.
Jem:yeah.
Jem:Get production flowing yeah.
Jem:What about you?
Justin:Sounds
Justin:good.
Jem:on
Justin:I'm getting the Kaeser going.
Justin:I gotta run.
Justin:Oh my update.
Justin:My last update, I guess I got the stupid YCM and to work off a CF card, which
Justin:is like, I literally, I don't, I don't usually run into the shop screaming for
Justin:the excitement too often, but it had been months of like trying to figure this
Justin:stupid problem out and basically came down to, I use the actual CNC machine
Justin:and like a safe mode reboot to format the card itself, not in the computer.
Justin:It had to happen inside itself in a safe mode.
Justin:And I did that before and it didn't work for some reason.
Justin:Just one time it worked.
Justin:This is like one of those things that's just like, doesn't exist on the internet.
Justin:Like you cannot find tips to how to do this.
Justin:Somebody on our machine is discord was finally like, you
Justin:should try the safe mode reboot.
Justin:And it was like an Indian post, I think, like of the country of India.
Justin:And I dunno if I had to translate it or what, but there was like one
Justin:small section that was like, try and do these steps on a FANUC machine.
Justin:Not even like my type of machine and it worked.
Justin:And I was like, okay, Awesome
Justin:So I got to run some parts on that thing
Justin:now.
Jem:game on my full 3d adapters and finishing strategies coming right up.
Jem:Right?
Justin:Megabytes of code anytime I want.
Jem:Good.
Jem:Get it.
Jem:Awesome.
Jem:Well, I look forward to seeing
Jem:some shiny element in pods.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:I think I'm cutting brass actually, which is kind of fun.
Justin:I haven't done that
Justin:yet.
Justin:Yeah.
Justin:That's my excitement.
Justin:And hopefully it goes well, I'm sure I'll post something.
Jem:Look forward to it.
Justin:Yeah.
Jem:Awesome.
Jem:Alright, thank you.
Jem:Great
Justin:time