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4 - Nice Biscuits!
Episode 4 • 3rd May 2022 • Parts Department • Justin Brouillette & Jem Freeman
00:00:00 00:47:42

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A full array of topics from cutting 40,000 half-inch holes, Incentivizing Innovation, Quoting with Quotient, 5-Axis CNCs, NDAs, and the Default Diary.

DISCUSSED:

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  • Both making "Pegs"
  • Incentivizing Innovation
  • Like Butter product development - Royalty to team member
  • Alexei Sayle clip on "Nice" - Dire Straits according to Alexei Sayle
  • Drilling 40 thousand 1/2" holes in birch ply?
  • Quoting with Quotient!
  • Growing Wood Parts
  • Feeds & Speeds are tough to acquire when starting out
  • Use the Onsrud Production Routing Guide PDF
  • NC Pocket's new 5-axis Alpha 4 (omg want)
  • NDAs
  • Balancing R&D vs Production - Jem works pre-production on R&D
  • Default Diary - Break down planned blocks with space between for flexibility; Dedicated quoting block linked with the business manager has been really productive.

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Show Info

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HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter | Instagram | More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC | Instagram | More Links

Transcripts

Justin:

Hey, how are you?

Jem:

How are you?

Justin:

probably been better.

Justin:

It's been a little bit stressful since the compressor thing

Justin:

kind of continued for days.

Justin:

let's just say they weren't easy to work with after the fact.

Justin:

We've had a little bit of a residual problem where it

Justin:

seems the breaker may be shot.

Justin:

it's kicked on to run a couple of times.

Justin:

hit the breaker and the breaker goes out.

Jem:

The compressor or the breaker on the street?

Justin:

no, the breaker and our panel, the power surge, the electrician hasn't

Justin:

come look at it again, but thinks that it could be the breaker's bad now

Justin:

because it did go through the breaker.

Justin:

When it surge, you hear it.

Jem:

I can hear a machine.

Justin:

That's the compressor.

Jem:

That's the compressor

Justin:

It's kind of this weird wine.

Justin:

I say it sounds like an ATV starting up.

Jem:

louder than uhh Prusa

Justin:

to hold dowels.

Justin:

We need something.

Justin:

That's like a hook or a peg for the Nack Wall behind me.

Justin:

We've haven't

Jem:

Yep

Justin:

And I.

Justin:

think

Justin:

stumbled onto something there.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

And I had the good morning on the Pencil Sharpener and they yesterday

Jem:

trying to get a production version of our 25 mil threaded peg happening,

Jem:

because I've wanted to do, we've made peg symbol pegboards boards for years, just

Jem:

like a dumb one inch dowel in a hole.

Jem:

that's been a reasonably successful product over the years.

Jem:

You know, peg boards, I don't know about over there, but

Jem:

peg boards kind of everywhere

Jem:

here

Jem:

Yeah

Jem:

for ever dowel diameter is really inconsistent.

Jem:

And every batch

Jem:

we get, is it.

Jem:

Diameter subtly.

Jem:

And so we, machine holes to suit basically batch by batch almost product by product.

Jem:

And so someone buys a peg board with 10 pegs and then, you know,

Jem:

a year later they want more pegs.

Jem:

There's always this just like, oh, wait, I don't know if these

Jem:

are actually going to fit.

Jem:

They're going to be too tight or really sloppy and hang down in the hall.

Jem:

Ever since I started threading stuff, I've wanted to do a threaded peg

Jem:

board just to get rid of variation and just have everything a machined fit,

Jem:

get rid of all of that sloppiness.

Jem:

It's been one of those products that's kind of been on the

Jem:

back burner for years now.

Jem:

Finally making some progress on that.

Jem:

John cut some prototype

Jem:

panels recently, and yeah, I've been working on the version

Jem:

of the dowel peg on one end.

Jem:

I'm making some progress there's a bit of product development

Jem:

happening at the moment.

Jem:

It's been good and everyone's kind of bit

Jem:

fired up and

Jem:

working on new things.

Jem:

Cause it's been a while since we had some fresh product to come through,

Justin:

Those are I find those to be very invigorating times.

Justin:

I knew that's what I wanted, but once people here the team got

Justin:

a taste of product development to lights fire everybody.

Justin:

smiles, it's more

Justin:

exciting there's less stress.

Justin:

curious?

Justin:

Would you replace the existing version you have a

Justin:

dual

Jem:

I would scrap the old one completely..

Justin:

Yeah

Jem:

And I

Jem:

think, you know, some of those pegboard products that we've got may

Jem:

be replaced with a threaded equivalent.

Jem:

some of them may go altogether and just get replaced with something

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

fresher, rethought, because there's lots of legacy, we've

Jem:

been designing plywood products for over 10 years, I think.

Jem:

So there's a lot of like weird legacy hangovers from previous products

Jem:

or previous ways of doing things.

Jem:

And those little legacy decisions just survive for like ages.

Jem:

I mean, you have to consciously sort of go and cut them out and trim, prune them

Jem:

from time

Jem:

to time, I think.

Jem:

but yeah, it's a really nice vibe when everyone's jazzed

Jem:

up about product development.

Jem:

We've got a sort of semi-formal scheme here where, any staff can bring.

Jem:

Products to the table.

Jem:

And then we have a sort of royalty system.

Jem:

If they become a Like Butter product than we pay royalties on to whoever

Jem:

designed them as a way of trying to sort of encourage people to

Jem:

spend time

Jem:

thinking about product development.

Jem:

The current system is that if you, bring a product to the

Jem:

table that you've kind of developed

Jem:

in your own time, off the clock, so to speak, and we look at it and go, cool.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

that suits the butter family of products kind of get approval

Jem:

to then develop it further.

Jem:

and it becomes one of our products.

Jem:

And then I think 5% of sales, or gross revenue on

Jem:

then goes back the designer.

Jem:

So it's been

Jem:

a really nice system the years

Jem:

most people on now have a product.

Jem:

On the website through at the moment, which has been really cool.

Justin:

Yeah, that's awesome.

Justin:

Yeah, I've,

Justin:

always

Justin:

wanted everybody to have a hand

Justin:

in designing things

Justin:

and there was hesitation early I

Justin:

think,

Justin:

for people to think that were

Justin:

That they could contribute to

Justin:

that.

Justin:

especially because think maybe you've had a

Justin:

similar thing where like, we

Justin:

went to school for something like that And it feels like

Justin:

maybe it wasn't same or I wouldn't but no, that's, I think to this

Justin:

point that's changed dramatically and I'm happy about that.

Justin:

That, not that we have very many products, but that everybody's ideas are equal.

Justin:

It's my goal.

Jem:

Yeah

Jem:

too.

Jem:

I was just going to say with, people haven't come through design school, you

Jem:

know, have been here for years and have learned so much on the job about design

Jem:

and

Jem:

manufacturing that their

Jem:

ideas are as valid and, you know, can be cleaner in some ways

Jem:

because they don't have that sort of, some of that, design language

Justin:

I would say

Justin:

my

Justin:

requirement to

Justin:

that have to have an opinion.

Jem:

Yes

Justin:

you

Justin:

can't

Justin:

bystander at any

Justin:

You have to have

Justin:

to have a strong, like, fight

Justin:

this feature thought but like, you

Justin:

can't, you somebody what do you about can't even say so it's

Justin:

That's not helpful.

Justin:

none of that.

Jem:

There is great Alexei Sayle clip on the word "Nice"

Jem:

time the cycle between the holes for me?

Jem:

so it was good to get just like a little real time data point on that,

Jem:

but still when there's that many, the potential for blow out is high.

Jem:

So yeah, I'm interested in how you tackle stuff

Jem:

like that

Justin:

it's not 40,000 a sheet it's over the project.

Justin:

held project yet.

Justin:

Okay.

Justin:

We've had interested people asking us to quote jobs where it's like, sorry,

Justin:

just going to shut that off in a sec.

Justin:

we've had people ask us to do, I think it was over a thousand holes in a

Justin:

sheet, like many, many thousand holes.

Justin:

And the takeaway I got too is they budget would never like their project

Justin:

budget never made

Justin:

sense for how

Justin:

holes we needed to make them I did the same thing.

Justin:

I tried to use cam to estimate time and

Justin:

love

Justin:

your fusion.

Justin:

Never accurate, not even close I maybe if you somehow get

Justin:

in kinematics perfectly and

Justin:

optimize it somehow get but closer on Surprisingly.

Justin:

I think some of that has to do

Justin:

of

Justin:

the works

Jem:

well and Fusion's built around mills.

Jem:

So sense.

Jem:

Yep.

Justin:

Then I use VCarve to try it and then we've tried just physical that.

Justin:

And I think the testing is as close as you're going to get in my opinion.

Justin:

You can get

Justin:

crazy if you can somehow hold the part and then stack sheets.

Justin:

That's one of the ways you could really speed it up, right?

Justin:

Like if you could somehow keep, I don't know how important the whole alignment

Justin:

and all that is, but it's decorative.

Justin:

You can try that, it's tough.

Jem:

that stuff.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

We're going to look at, shade stacking

Jem:

see can do something

Jem:

that.

Jem:

We've done that on jobs in the past with thin stock where it's six mil

Jem:

Birch and we've stacked three or four sheets with really good results.

Jem:

but this one don't know if that's going to work because there's

Jem:

a bunch of those rebates in the surfaces of some of those sheets.

Jem:

I we'd have to do like an op why not two on

Jem:

separate machines

Jem:

change over between the cycles and then the drilling cycles.

Jem:

And then, yeah, but we'll try.

Jem:

I think we will try stacking if we can,

Justin:

I don't know, this is a first what's a rebate.

Jem:

I think you call them.

Justin:

Oh, sure.

Justin:

Okay.

Justin:

Yeah, yeah,

Justin:

Much to our amusement over here

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

I know.

Justin:

It's the same.

Justin:

Somebody commented on.

Justin:

I think it was the,

Justin:

Laundromat Manufacturing commented post.

Justin:

And he re posted something and called it a taster.

Justin:

I really, really

Justin:

that Cause we like a teaser

Justin:

for a trailer

Justin:

video

Justin:

and we've only had a couple of

Justin:

those so far, our, our enjoyment of each other's language,

Jem:

How are you I'm

Jem:

in what tools you're using for quoting.

Justin:

like actually sending the quotes.

Justin:

We use that Quotient mostly that quotient program.

Justin:

it's not perfect.

Justin:

I wish I could modify a few things, but I would say from

Justin:

the client's side, they love it.

Justin:

it is hands down a win in terms of, we always get compliments on that process.

Justin:

And I think that's really important.

Justin:

I wanted to really improve that as part of having faced, the opposite where it was

Justin:

like somebody sends you an email with like

Justin:

six

Justin:

numbers and tab you know, to

Justin:

different.

Justin:

Columns and it doesn't work.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Cool

Jem:

I need to check it out.

Jem:

I was chatting to Jay about it yesterday here, and Jay had

Jem:

listened to the and had you

Jem:

Quotient and Jay was like

Jem:

I, I literally, I don't want to even open it in a browser tab

Jem:

cause I know I'm just going to go

Jem:

Uh, a

Jem:

hole of

Jem:

looking

Jem:

more options.

Justin:

there's a, there's other stuff out there and I haven't

Justin:

looked, I started using it like 2018,

Justin:

I'm

Justin:

guarantee there's alternatives, but what's, it's a flexible

Justin:

system that allows you to kind of templatize things, templatize quotes.

Justin:

for example, when pricing material is more reliable, like you could have

Justin:

your four B Baltic Birch price in there with an image, a description of what

Justin:

it was, who had sourced from that's.

Justin:

Some of that's private, some of it's.

Justin:

And then markups quantities, and you can drop those into

Justin:

any quote them in a template

Justin:

and then

Justin:

make them optional

Justin:

multiple choice or

Justin:

And then it tabulates at the bottom and they get all that live through a web view.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

So they get like an interactive view of that quote the customer end.

Jem:

can I select options?

Jem:

Yup

Justin:

Yup, yup.

Justin:

Yes, you don't want it's good.

Justin:

so you'll

Justin:

also the part

Justin:

maybe I have buried

Justin:

lead

Justin:

here.

Justin:

haven't into projects in

Justin:

Airtable so it dumps all that information from the

Justin:

quote once won straight into an Airtable project and creates it.

Jem:

Okay Oh stop.

Justin:

It's not perfect

Justin:

way implemented it

Justin:

but it saves

Justin:

the step of taking the project name

Justin:

Copying it over and

Justin:

all that kind of stuff

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

I think we have to look at that.

Justin:

It's it's satisfying for sure

Justin:

And I forget, I asked before it is Zapier.

Justin:

So yeah, it

Justin:

handling in between, and they've of integrated pretty

Justin:

So you could potentially start front end by

Justin:

entering client information and stuff

Justin:

probably automatically.

Justin:

It also integrates

Justin:

with So big loop They're

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I think we should look at something

Jem:

before we spend months building our own version of that in our Airtable.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

sure.

Justin:

It's pretty affordable.

Justin:

bucks a month.

Justin:

I think.

Jem:

So I had another fun thing happened on the Pencil Sharpener this week.

Jem:

when I was on the tools last week, I ran the Pencil Sharpener and the heaps

Jem:

just running the little bolts and caps that we make for the KittaParts system.

Jem:

Just components, they automatically cut off.

Jem:

So you can kind of just load stock set and forget for awhile

Jem:

and towards the end of the week.

Jem:

Cause you know, doing my little spot check, quality control and putting that.

Jem:

The Vernier on them.

Jem:

And now like these, some of these dimensions of growing and

Jem:

like checking them in the bore that they're designed to fit in.

Jem:

I was like, yeah, these are getting dangerously tight like

Jem:

they're almost out of spec.

Jem:

I was a bit perplexed.

Jem:

And I was like, cause I've had some buy me stuff happened with the pencil sharpener.

Jem:

Like it lost all its WCS as once.

Jem:

And there's been a few little things which have made me distrust

Jem:

it's computer a little bit

Justin:

That's the fun part.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

fun, fun.

Jem:

So I was like, maybe it's a code issue, but that doesn't really make sense

Jem:

because everything else is running fine.

Jem:

I was a bit Plex and I thought at one point I remember thinking, oh,

Jem:

maybe it's tool where maybe it's just like tools cooked, looked good.

Jem:

It felt sharp.

Jem:

I got to, it started this week and I was like, cool.

Jem:

First thing I need to do is just put a fresh tool in there.

Jem:

Change the tool.

Jem:

Perfect.

Jem:

That goes back to absolute numbers.

Jem:

The threading tool

Jem:

on the parts?

Jem:

No, the cutting

Justin:

cutting tool.

Jem:

So the three flute up spiral that does

Jem:

the roughing basically before the threading

Jem:

comes in and just that tool change just took the parts back from like

Jem:

29.5 back to So like a half millimeter across the diameter.

Jem:

you

Justin:

do you use a microscope at all?

Justin:

Like one cheap

Jem:

Nah,

Justin:

you

Jem:

I've got, one, but I lent it to my mother-in-law to look at

Jem:

insects and I haven't got it back.

Jem:

yeah, I found that really interesting while we had looking at tools, whether

Jem:

was cool, yeah, just really interested where it was making such a big difference.

Jem:

Cause I, I guess it's reflective of the machine in that it's has, it's

Jem:

not a mill you know, it's, it's still effectively a D I Y machine.

Jem:

So I guess there's probably enough deflection in those cheap Makita

Jem:

spindles and the whole thing that means that when a tool starts getting

Jem:

dowel, that it really can just like just doing this, like waggling around.

Jem:

like we can tools a lot further on the CNC ma like sorry on the routers

Jem:

really push tools until they're dead with minimal repercussions.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I don't know if you've found this.

Justin:

I've always

Jem:

cutting anything circular be

Justin:

tough to hold

Justin:

Hm

Justin:

or it's harder on the router.

Justin:

I'd have much experience with the mill yet, but it just

Justin:

always seems a tougher cut that.

Justin:

I think it's just the constant opposing forces.

Justin:

Any, you get a nice result typically, but I could see that being part of it

Justin:

where it's constantly being kind of pushed out as well as you could try

Justin:

something, maybe you do this already.

Justin:

I've watched some of your operations do your roughing and then do one

Justin:

or two cleanup spring passes.

Justin:

And that may give you a little bit more it may solve some of that.

Justin:

Like where at the end, can you do compensation on that, on that.

Jem:

you can.

Jem:

That's a good idea about stretching the tool life for the spring pass.

Jem:

I should look the that

Jem:

He can come on the master.

Jem:

It's really nice control, like way more involved than any

Jem:

control I've ever had before.

Justin:

But

Jem:

because of the weed way of

Justin:

programmed there's no

Jem:

I'm not tools in the control.

Jem:

I'm using

Justin:

TBI

Jem:

I'm

Justin:

using WCS

Jem:

as tools.

Justin:

So tool one is

Jem:

55, till two is 2 56, et cetera.

Justin:

yeah,

Jem:

I don't know.

Jem:

I can't even remember why I set it up like that, but I, because

Jem:

there's, there's effectively five tools, but no tool changer.

Justin:

yeah,

Jem:

So that was kinda my work around of like

Jem:

having five tools that can potentially all be working at the same

Jem:

time like

Jem:

absolute best case scenario.

Jem:

I don't think I'd ever do that, but theoretically possible.

Jem:

And so having each one assigned to a WCS, kind of just made sense and has

Jem:

worked quite well, but it means I've.

Jem:

means I don't have options like compensation.

Justin:

I have two very opposing systems and they have very different,

Justin:

ways to do some of that stuff.

Justin:

Like we've never done compensation on the router.

Justin:

think we had one employee that ran a lot of different types of

Justin:

machines before he worked here.

Justin:

And he was the first one to try compensation.

Justin:

He was like, that works great.

Justin:

You should use that more often.

Justin:

I was like, ma nobody cares.

Justin:

It's a

Justin:

You know, like,

Justin:

Not, not that we're like knowingly parts

Justin:

joke we always have a lot the who make stuff

Justin:

like as long as it's within a 16th

Justin:

of an inch, which is like

Justin:

inches

Justin:

It's like a mile.

Jem - EQ:

I just realized my backup audio.

Jem - EQ:

Wasn't rolling.

Jem - EQ:

And it stopped two minutes in,

Justin:

Hmm.

Justin:

Interesting.

Justin:

Uh, I, Hmm.

Jem - EQ:

I mean, so there's only what's in zoom.

Justin:

Okay.

Jem - EQ:

It's rolling again now.

Jem - EQ:

Damn

Justin:

that'll happen.

Justin:

tool where yeah.

Justin:

Oh, it's interesting that.

Justin:

We always find that whenever there's like a knick in a tool or we get some bad edges

Justin:

you know, whoever's running the machine and be like, I just changed that tool.

Justin:

And then like, you look at it under a microscope and there's a Nick, right.

Justin:

Where you think you don't expect it and you can't see it by eye.

Justin:

And it's like ruining your top surface basically.

Jem - EQ:

Are you using compression cutters?

Jem - EQ:

Typically

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Anything layered?

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah

Jem - EQ:

we've over the years we've used, pneumatic bred guns or nailers

Jem - EQ:

to help with vacuum holes.

Jem - EQ:

down

Jem - EQ:

On shades where like we're cutting thin strips or something.

Jem - EQ:

And there's not enough fact empower.

Jem - EQ:

We're like pop a couple of C1 Brad's along the top edge or

Jem - EQ:

on the corner of the sheet and

Jem - EQ:

things like that And

Jem - EQ:

like that.

Jem - EQ:

And they just destroy compression cut is when you hit one, unfortunately

Jem - EQ:

it's tiny bit of steel, but it's enough to kill a cutter, but I've always

Jem - EQ:

wanted to buy one of those plastic.

Jem - EQ:

bradders have you seen those?

Justin:

I was going to say, yeah.

Justin:

I have not bought one but I've seen peopel use them

Justin:

I saw it at a show one time too, but it sounds smart.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Jem - EQ:

Can just cut through them as

Jem - EQ:

you need.

Justin:

I'm pretty sure that most of our chip tools like that

Justin:

come from vendors, stapling in crap to the side of the plywood

Jem - EQ:

and

Justin:

when you don't catch it, we have like one of those cheap,

Justin:

like security wands that like

Justin:

and it won't get, it'll get like a full staple, but if it's just one

Justin:

leg of a staple, it doesn't catch it.

Justin:

And we've had too many times where a brand new, a hundred dollar

Justin:

compression cutter gets nicked.

Justin:

And then it's basically useless.

Jem - EQ:

you

Justin:

when I would make mostly run the machine.

Justin:

My solution was to use screws into this world board

Justin:

often

Jem - EQ:

such a mess of the spoil board though.

Justin:

You can't do it more than once and that spot, or it's just trashed,

Justin:

but you know, you get that really warped piece of material that won't go down.

Justin:

You got to cut side up.

Justin:

It's like, what are you going to do?

Justin:

Stand on it while it's cutting.

Justin:

I haven't done that.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I have to.

Justin:

is that your tool management concerns, uh, more thoughts

Justin:

on

Jem - EQ:

my tool management concerns.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

Look, I hearing people talk about real mills tool, life tracking and stuff makes

Jem - EQ:

me wish our machines had that function.

Jem - EQ:

same,

Jem - EQ:

But it just doesn't seem to be a thing with timber

Jem - EQ:

Machining

Jem - EQ:

controls.

Jem - EQ:

They don't seem to bother putting into life management or like time

Jem - EQ:

in the cart and stuff like that.

Jem - EQ:

I would love that data on our machines,

Jem - EQ:

Shane's,

Justin:

in the states that will change tools based on how many sheets they run.

Justin:

So this

Justin:

you know, you're cutting a cabinet, you're only cutting like five to 15 parts

Justin:

on a sheet, you know, like it's pretty.

Justin:

And so they'll run them for a certain amount of time and then change them.

Justin:

we've never done anything to manage.

Justin:

It's just a keen operators, right?

Justin:

Like watching QA the surface, like how to look like, does it look like it's fuzzy?

Justin:

Is it we've always really optimized to do as much as we can to get the

Justin:

best edge off the machine rather than post-processing and, just prided

Justin:

ourselves on making good clean parts so that, I don't know, they just look good.

Justin:

Seems like the way to do it in my opinion,

Jem - EQ:

for years, I think we were just running pretty generic feeds and speeds.

Jem - EQ:

Without

Jem - EQ:

too much consideration.

Jem - EQ:

I think we'll just like chasing edge quality and we're

Jem - EQ:

like, yeah, that looks good.

Jem - EQ:

Fine, fine, fine.

Jem - EQ:

And then at some point we started sort of clothing into the fact that we could get

Jem - EQ:

twice as much time out of our tool life.

Jem - EQ:

If we increase the chip load and slowed the spindle down and like got bigger

Jem - EQ:

cooler chips and that was a game changer.

Jem - EQ:

just by changing our spindle

Jem - EQ:

spindle

Jem - EQ:

speed and our chip load, we suddenly were getting way more tool life.

Jem - EQ:

was just a game.

Jem - EQ:

It was just one of those legacy things.

Jem - EQ:

We just started with certain settings when like, cool.

Jem - EQ:

This works.

Jem - EQ:

If we go,

Justin:

I had a hell of a time trying feeds and speeds

Justin:

but if you're cutting metal, every manufacturer has an aluminum

Justin:

cutting guide and Chiplan chart.

Justin:

And the only one that I really trust here in the states is Vortex tool.

Justin:

Like we use a lot of their tools and the rest of them are like, I'm just

Justin:

going to say, it's not that too many people listen to this, but Amana tool,

Justin:

feeds into, see charts are trash.

Justin:

They are horrible.

Justin:

Like they literally are too slow, almost always to the point where

Justin:

you're damaging the tool by using their suggestion feed rates.

Justin:

And , I don't understand.

Justin:

And you only learn that by running through a lot of tools, right?

Justin:

Like you're burning them up and you're like, what's wrong.

Justin:

I just find that frustrating that it's not better yet.

Justin:

I guess maybe it's up to us to make some of that change or something.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, look, I, I feel some responsibility to

Jem - EQ:

communicate that stuff for sure.

Jem - EQ:

there's a really good, document from Onsrud . I'm not sure how you say it

Justin:

Maybe Onsrud I'd guess

Jem - EQ:

Onsrud.

Jem - EQ:

There's a great PDF that I've referenced for years, which is the Onsrud

Jem - EQ:

production routing guide or something.

Jem - EQ:

It's mainly like a 50 page PDF and it goes deep into carbide and what destroys

Jem - EQ:

carbide and how to look after it.

Jem - EQ:

that's a really good sort of primer

Jem - EQ:

for

Jem - EQ:

anyone who's running a machine to read through about six times before

Jem - EQ:

you understand what it all means.

Jem - EQ:

But, I've found that a really useful document for us internally,

Jem - EQ:

anyone who's running machines to be across to some extent.

Justin:

Yeah, I think, I think that's totally right.

Justin:

I didn't know about that one.

Justin:

I come to understand that there some of the top routing experts.

Justin:

And the world, they make their own machines.

Justin:

They make tooling, they make everything.

Justin:

And it seems like respected

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, they built some pretty sweet machines.

Justin:

double gantry.

Justin:

Five-axis craziness.

Justin:

Speaking of five-axis,

Jem - EQ:

I

Justin:

sent this to you, I think earlier, pocket's NC

Justin:

founder has been working on this.

Justin:

I don't know what to call it larger, but not full size.

Justin:

Five-axis machine medium.

Justin:

Medium-sized five-axis maybe he'd call it.

Justin:

And I have been watching this cause he's just kind of been posting it on his

Justin:

Instagram, which is inventor captain.

Justin:

I'll put a link to it it looks I've, you know, I've always wanted a five axis

Justin:

machine and I don't see having a $150,000 machine anytime soon, but this thing is.

Justin:

Very appealing to me.

Justin:

I think it's just well-designed to, from an aesthetic point of view.

Jem - EQ:

small footprint machine.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

It's man, I don't even know like a decent size office printer.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

Okay.

Justin:

it's not that

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

So in this sort of pocket in pocket,

Jem - EQ:

NC

Jem - EQ:

NC family, in terms of scale, like a desk top machine.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I think he could probably consider it that it feels a little it's price is

Justin:

60 to 70,000 is what they're it at.

Justin:

So it's still not cheap.

Justin:

I think it's areas probably looks like about six by six by six.

Justin:

So I don't know what that I can never, maybe you can translate the

Jem - EQ:

One 50 by one 50.

Justin:

bad with my translations.

Justin:

It feels like there's really not a, maybe I'm just not aware of competing

Justin:

machine in this place, price point, this, going to be a big step up from

Justin:

the actual pocket, NC original machine.

Justin:

I think

Jem - EQ:

What would you make on something like

Justin:

my wife and she said the same thing.

Justin:

Like what, why,

Justin:

why would you that?

Justin:

I think we need a new rule about machines where it's one in one out.

Justin:

And I was like, I don't know if that's how it works really, but

Jem - EQ:

that rule.

Justin:

I get your sentiment.

Justin:

I could see prototypes.

Justin:

I mean, it is surprising how much you can make on even our mill with a pretty

Justin:

small footprint or work envelope.

Justin:

It's not that far off.

Justin:

I would imagine from some of the Kern work areas, like some

Justin:

of those are pretty small.

Jem - EQ:

made me think of a Kern when I saw it the way it's styled.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Justin:

Kern mixed with like a DMG Mori.

Justin:

Maybe

Justin:

They look like they're made for the, for the contemporary times, rather

Justin:

than most machine tools look like they're made by like somebody bending

Justin:

sheet metal in like the sixties.

Justin:

I

Justin:

don't know

Jem - EQ:

yeah, look, I, I find things like that appealing as well, but I

Jem - EQ:

really don't know what I put on them.

Jem - EQ:

Like what, what's the little, the newer five-axis house.

Jem - EQ:

Gold.

Jem - EQ:

yeah, that UMC.

Jem - EQ:

UMC Jem:

Justin:

Yeah, I think they might have a smaller one than that now three 50

Jem - EQ:

or 300

Justin:

but yeah, 500 is 701,000.

Jem - EQJem::

Yeah, that's right.

Jem - EQJem::

This is the seven 50.

Jem - EQJem::

And then the 500.

Jem - EQJem::

I remember when the came out and for a while, a few weeks there,

Jem - EQJem::

I was just lusting after it, this little compact five-axis mill, but

Jem - EQJem::

there was only like, I could only think of one part that I'd make on

Jem - EQJem::

it.

Justin:

yeah,

Jem - EQ:

And

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

it Jem

Jem - EQ:

But as with all machines, like, I love to be gutted by the machine

Jem - EQ:

and the process and what's available.

Jem - EQ:

So, you know, my justification on such things is always just, just

Jem - EQ:

get it on the floor and we'll find out what we can do with it.

Jem - EQ:

But that's very hard to justify to, uh,

Justin:

That money.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

business partners when, uh,

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

it's that much

Justin:

money thinking about buying this mill, it took about a year

Justin:

from the time of first started talking about it until was in our

Justin:

shop, maybe a little bit longer.

Justin:

once we even had it, I still had this like, creative block about

Justin:

like, all right, we've got this tool.

Justin:

What can I make with it?

Justin:

I think from not being around metal making machines, like that are mostly

Justin:

metal, but the precision, the accuracy, the kind of speed and capability of it.

Justin:

I just, it took me quite a while before I finally started like, oh, I can make

Justin:

that part, you know, on it like this.

Justin:

And I could reliably change the setup or palletize or, you know, any of

Justin:

these things that most people that work in the, with these machines kind

Justin:

of come to realize it took me a bit.

Justin:

And that's a shame to that.

Jem - EQ:

terms

Justin:

I, this brass part, this is my damage.

Justin:

kind of changed my game, honestly, for feeling confidence.

Justin:

And just even like setting work offsets was like pretty

Justin:

stressful and I didn't trust it.

Justin:

And I always felt like I was going to crash all the time.

Justin:

Cause I just didn't understand what I was doing as well.

Justin:

And so yeah, now that I have a better grasp, I think I released

Justin:

the stress of working with it and now I can use it more like a tool

Justin:

than an opposition or something.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

Cool.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, I can relate to that.

Jem - EQ:

I think plays with any new tool.

Jem - EQ:

There's a period of time there where.

Jem - EQ:

ideally for me, it just needs to be an sort of an exploratory time and

Jem - EQ:

it helps doing other people's jobs, I think, because you're forced to do

Jem - EQ:

things that you may otherwise avoid.

Jem - EQ:

Y you know, that, that part that you just showed me, like, I don't

Jem - EQ:

know how many setups that was, but it looks like two or three, at least

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem - EQ:

two to

Jem - EQ:

to get all those faces done.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

Nice.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

Cool.

Jem - EQ:

So it's nice to be forced into doing

Jem - EQ:

things

Jem - EQ:

for sure by doing client work, but also I think there's the other

Jem - EQ:

side, too, of having just playtime.

Jem - EQ:

Exploratory playtime sort of

Jem - EQ:

as

Jem - EQ:

as off the clock as possible in terms of the feel,

Jem - EQ:

not feeling accountable to how much time you spending faffing around trying to work

Jem - EQ:

out, work offsets and stuff like that.

Jem - EQ:

And just playing, I find that space really valuable as well.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I think I've been inspired by you talking about, I haven't done that as

Justin:

much, and I liked your it's taken me a long time to move into this idea of

Justin:

I could get up earlier than I need to be somewhere, especially like work.

Justin:

That was just not me for most of my life.

Justin:

And now something shifted weirdly in the pandemic where I just started waking up

Justin:

at like 6:00 AM and I was like, oh, okay.

Justin:

I guess I could use this time.

Justin:

And you were talking about coming in and like using that time to do R and D stuff.

Justin:

And I definitely liked that idea.

Justin:

I think I may try that on for myself.

Justin:

It sounds like a good, I usually end up doing that stuff like late in

Justin:

the day and then I'm tired and you know, I don't get as much out of it.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, I

Jem - EQ:

I find it a really good window for that Headspace.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, if you

Jem - EQ:

you can get out of bed, that's

Jem - EQ:

that's the

Jem - EQ:

hard bit

Jem - EQ:

bit

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

I struggle with that too.

Jem - EQ:

say what's going on with these NDAs.

Jem - EQ:

I NDAs.

Justin:

is, I've never liked them, honestly.

Justin:

That's

Jem - EQ:

kind of it is

Justin:

feel like I'm not knowledgeable enough about could

Justin:

be in them that I'm signing myself up for something that I don't

Justin:

knowingly want to sign myself up for.

Justin:

And honestly, I think we've done.

Justin:

Maybe let's say I've signed 20 NDAs for potential client work.

Justin:

I bet we've done two to five of those jobs in the end.

Justin:

And they might have offset time for what, because they're

Justin:

not really that common here.

Justin:

Maybe when you're working with, you know, some of these giant

Justin:

companies, those, I understand.

Justin:

And honestly, I just kind of under that I'm getting screwed in any circumstance.

Justin:

They're like, I'm not going to fight them in a legal battle like this.

Justin:

Maybe just the very un-American thing, I guess, too.

Justin:

We're all about our lawsuits.

Justin:

not that I, not that I am, yeah, I just saw it.

Justin:

It might be an interesting piece of conversation that I, I was trying to

Justin:

think like, how do I disincentivize this?

Justin:

And one of the thoughts was like, maybe I could charge somebody to sign it

Justin:

their NDA before we started the work.

Justin:

Like, yeah, we'll, we'll sign your NDA.

Justin:

If it's a hundred bucks, you know, like I gotta read thing.

Jem - EQ:

I think there's a solid argument in

Jem - EQ:

that like yes.

Jem - EQ:

On one level.

Jem - EQ:

They're not that much work.

Jem - EQ:

You can just go.

Jem - EQ:

Cool.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, it's just another NDA sign, flick it back.

Jem - EQ:

It's like one extra email, but at the

Jem - EQ:

the same time, it's a legal contract and

Jem - EQ:

you could easily argue, Hey, I'm going to send this to my lawyer first, just

Jem - EQ:

to take five minutes to look at it.

Jem - EQ:

And that's that's money.

Jem - EQ:

And it's probably better practice to be doing something like doing due diligence.

Jem - EQ:

I'm not going to say probably it would be better practice to

Jem - EQ:

be doing that due diligence.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, I find myself now within NDAs, I don't do that many of them, but you know,

Jem - EQ:

maybe half a dozen a year or something,

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

and I'm, you know, I'm pretty sloppy with them.

Jem - EQ:

I do read them, but you know, I'm skimming the fine brand

Jem - EQ:

and I'm like, yep, yep, yep.

Jem - EQ:

Standard standard, whatever Cole sign, they go.

Jem - EQ:

And interesting to hear you say that a lot of those jobs don't convert.

Jem - EQ:

Cause I hadn't thought about that.

Jem - EQ:

But thinking about that now, I reckon we're in a similar position where very

Jem - EQ:

few of them have ever gone anywhere.

Justin:

Yep.

Justin:

I usually am pretty pushy.

Justin:

Or I'm demanding of that.

Justin:

I get a generic description of the project before signing it, because that

Justin:

usually cuts a good portion of those too.

Justin:

Like, Hey, before I know, I understand you don't wanna send me files.

Justin:

Totally get that.

Justin:

I mean, I've asked people to sign NDAs kind of before I really understood what

Justin:

I was doing, you know, when I was younger and dumber that usually works pretty well.

Justin:

Cause it's like, oh yeah, we're not going to end up doing a tiny, when we

Justin:

only had the router, like we're not going to do a aluminum mold for you.

Justin:

You'll probably sorry, like that doesn't make any sense.

Justin:

just, it's easy to kind of have those off, not liked him that much.

Justin:

a

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, It's

Jem - EQ:

it's interesting.

Jem - EQ:

I find

Jem - EQ:

clients there's

Jem - EQ:

you want that nice cultural fit with your clients?

Jem - EQ:

I think so when.

Jem - EQ:

The best clients that we have that could have totally served,

Jem - EQ:

served us sending very officious.

Jem - EQ:

The totally could have asked us to sign an NDA

Jem - EQ:

because

Jem - EQ:

they were, you know, developing a new product or something that they

Jem - EQ:

wanted to keep under the radar,

Jem - EQ:

the

Jem - EQ:

the best clients I've had in that space.

Jem - EQ:

We've just had a very Frank conversation of like, Hey,

Jem - EQ:

what do you think about NDAs?

Jem - EQ:

And, IP

Jem - EQ:

know, gripey protection and stuff like that.

Jem - EQ:

And we've just had a Frank conversation with like, you

Jem - EQ:

know, co well, in my opinion, we don't look for our own products.

Jem - EQ:

We don't deal with any of that stuff.

Jem - EQ:

Cause we don't want to spend time or money protecting our products.

Jem - EQ:

We'd rather spend that time and money developing new products.

Jem - EQ:

And if the client is on a similar sort of trajectory and thinking,

Jem - EQ:

then it's like, it's a nice match

Jem - EQ:

there in terms of energy and thinking,

Jem - EQ:

and

Jem - EQ:

maybe that's silly, but I'd much rather work with people who are

Jem - EQ:

kind of on a similar page to us and.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

Those relationships are easier and tend to get better results.

Jem - EQ:

So,

Justin:

Yeah, for sure.

Justin:

I think if I had to boil it down, It's time that it takes, and then

Justin:

you'd sometimes, it feels like we're not winning most of them.

Justin:

The second part is I it's the fear of not or apprehension that I'm not

Justin:

understanding what I'm signing and then

Justin:

Jem

Jem - EQ:

Yes.

Justin:

I should send this to a lawyer, but I don't know, like

Justin:

it's going to cost me money.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

And all that stuff about like any material that's kept on your

Jem - EQ:

servers and blah, blah, blah.

Jem - EQ:

It's like, cool.

Jem - EQ:

This job's not going to go anywhere.

Jem - EQ:

What am I going to do with these quoting files?

Jem - EQ:

Probably not going to do anything with these quoting files

Jem - EQ:

when the job disappears, but technically I should destroy them.

Justin:

I don't know about you, but every time we end one

Justin:

of those, I burned my servers

Jem - EQ:

Oh yeah, me too.

Justin:

Every time so that they know for sure I film it that way.

Justin:

They know I'm destroyed their products, their, IP

Justin:

Yeah

Jem - EQ:

we just clear the Dropbox.

Justin:

start over.

Jem - EQ:

have a server.

Jem - EQ:

Are you running cloud?

Justin:

I need to get something, but yeah, mostly we use almost all Dropbox,

Justin:

Google drive, kind of a combination

Jem - EQ:

Yeah,

Justin:

Sneaker net for the mill.

Jem - EQJem::

Yeah, Yeah, I remember.

Jem - EQJem::

at

Jem - EQJem::

The cost of servers years ago when we were thinking about upgrading

Jem - EQJem::

to the highest level of Dropbox, and it feels like a lifetime commitment

Jem - EQJem::

going to that level of Dropbox.

Jem - EQJem::

Cause you're like, I'm going to load my whole existence into this platform and

Jem - EQJem::

I'm probably never going to extract it.

Jem - EQJem::

At the

Jem - EQJem::

the time we thought, yeah, that was the way to do it rather than

Jem - EQJem::

trying to maintain our own servers.

Jem - EQJem::

We've got like a, an old PC at home with lots of hard drives in it that is called

Jem - EQJem::

cold storage and we just turned it on every six months and just let Dropbox

Jem - EQJem::

sync and then we turn it off again.

Jem - EQJem::

So we've got like a hard copy of

Justin:

what's your balancing?

Justin:

R and D and oh, I wrote that bouncing R and D and production or something I

Justin:

who wrote this.

Justin:

I feel like, I mean, there's just a lot more of you over

Justin:

there working in your company.

Justin:

So I'm usually the one trying to figure out how to, how to balance these things.

Justin:

So I'm curious, I find a lot of value in working on, like, we're

Justin:

just talking about new products or, or anything like that, but it also

Justin:

usually doesn't make money for a while.

Justin:

How do you all split the time on your machines?

Justin:

Is there a agreed system or it just happens between like a R and

Justin:

D versus a production time slot.

Jem - EQ:

We, trying to chase as much production time as we can at the moment,

Jem - EQ:

because after many years of flying pretty blind boy, finally sort of at a

Jem - EQ:

point where we understand our numbers and our break even, and all of these

Jem - EQ:

like nitty gritty financial details that we never understood previously.

Jem - EQ:

We we know what our billables need to be.

Jem - EQ:

So we chasing that.

Jem - EQ:

In terms of R and D budgets, you know, that's, for me, that's why I come

Jem - EQ:

in early and do it pre production.

Jem - EQ:

That's kind of my, time slot for that sort of work.

Jem - EQ:

and then we've rolled out a thing.

Jem - EQ:

They see a cold default diary, which is basically.

Jem - EQ:

For me and Sarah.

Jem - EQ:

Sarah is our business manager.

Jem - EQ:

It's kind of most structured with us where our time is broken down

Jem - EQ:

into quite rigid segments every day.

Jem - EQ:

And each day is pretty much a copy of

Jem - EQ:

the

Jem - EQ:

the previous one.

Jem - EQ:

And in some, you know, on Wednesdays, there might be one thing that

Jem - EQ:

happens in the afternoon and there's some unique stuff that

Jem - EQ:

happens during the week, obviously.

Jem - EQ:

But for the most part, we have a very structured default diary.

Jem - EQ:

And for me, that sort of 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM is my R and D slot.

Jem - EQ:

And then, John has a

Jem - EQ:

has a

Jem - EQ:

bit of a default diary happening as well, and he's got an hour and

Jem - EQ:

day slot, on Thursday afternoons.

Jem - EQ:

that's kind of how we're

Jem - EQ:

doing it at

Jem - EQ:

it at the moment in a sort of a, I guess, a very structured.

Jem - EQ:

And you know, I'll be honest I don't get in be honest.

Jem - EQ:

I don't get in at 6:00

Jem - EQ:

AM every morning.

Jem - EQ:

If the kids have slept terribly, we've had a rough night, I'll definitely

Jem - EQ:

preference mostly and getting just for

Jem - EQ:

night

Jem - EQ:

Yeah

Jem - EQ:

preference more sleep and getting just for the

Jem - EQ:

the normal time.

Jem - EQ:

That's how we're balancing it.

Jem - EQ:

Because we know our

Jem - EQ:

what our billables need to be.

Jem - EQ:

We're really chasing that as hard as we can at the moment.

Jem - EQ:

But at the same time, know how important R and D and product

Jem - EQ:

development is to a business.

Jem - EQ:

So making sure that that time is allocated and

Jem - EQ:

allowed for and giving permission to people to do that.

Jem - EQ:

what's your thinking around that?

Jem - EQ:

You just slotted in

Justin:

just hoping you'd say something like, I don't have a

Justin:

plane cause it make me feel better.

Justin:

But,

Jem - EQ:

Sorry.

Jem - EQ:

Nah, this is, you know, just the last six months for us.

Jem - EQ:

It's very fresh.

Justin:

The amount of help I have at the moment, which isn't,

Justin:

don't think we have enough help.

Justin:

It's been tough to hire here.

Justin:

wages have gone up unemployment's at record lows, and people either happy or,

Justin:

just, I used to get, just for example, when we'd hire like a shop operator kind

Justin:

of position, we get like 30 applicants now it's like five maybe, they're either

Justin:

not qualified or just not a good fit.

Justin:

And so it's been a little, frustrating that's a backwards way of saying

Justin:

I haven't managed my time as well as I'd like, I'd like to have more

Justin:

of a reliable schedule like that.

Justin:

And I definitely feel like I've been

Justin:

well, the, the way I've always described as I feel like a firefighter

Justin:

too often, where I'm like trying to put out the fires of the day rather

Justin:

than, oh, I'm coming here to work on X, whether it's a new product.

Justin:

quoting something or whatever that is.

Justin:

It always feels like I'm just kind of like playing whack-a-mole.

Justin:

I'd like to think if I had, you know, a couple other people in certain

Justin:

positions that that would change, but also, like I said, in the past,

Justin:

I'm not the greatest planning time.

Justin:

It's not my strong suit.

Justin:

So maybe, maybe I like that idea though.

Justin:

if you could elaborate a little bit on your own, I'm curious about this, like,

Justin:

unplanned

Justin:

times of the week?

Jem - EQ:

ideally it's not fully planned because you need space for

Jem - EQ:

the all the unplanned things that

Jem - EQ:

that happen.

Jem - EQ:

The concept is that you have planned blocks with space between them.

Jem - EQ:

So that, so for me, it's R and D in that first two hour block.

Jem - EQ:

And

Jem - EQ:

then I've got, I think an hour and a half for sort of production

Jem - EQ:

management, coming in, I'm like, cool.

Jem - EQ:

What are we up to on that job?

Jem - EQ:

Or that new job needs to be allocated to you, blah, blah, blah.

Jem - EQ:

that's a pretty whack-a-mole sort of time of like running around.

Jem - EQ:

just like

Jem - EQ:

Keeping everything flowing in the morning.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

after morning tea, I have a two hour quoting block, which is just

Jem - EQ:

like my dedicated coding time per day.

Jem - EQ:

And that's been really effective because Sarah is quoting block is after lunch.

Jem - EQ:

So like I'm accountable to her in that pre-launch slot to get all my

Jem - EQ:

calculations done so that she has something to process after lunch.

Jem - EQ:

That's been super powerful, that little accountability link.

Jem - EQ:

But also just having a structured time every day to get through quotes.

Jem - EQ:

Because prior to that, I was just like inbox overflowing.

Jem - EQ:

It's like, oh, what am I going to quit today?

Jem - EQ:

Maybe that one, maybe that one, maybe nothing

Justin:

encouraging that that works because I have the exact description of

Justin:

what you just said is, well, some days you get a lot, some days you don't and

Justin:

then I just deal with it as it happens.

Jem - EQ:

yeah

Jem - EQ:

so yeah, having that structure has been really good and then afternoons are a bit

Jem - EQ:

more sort of all over the place, but yeah, I've got a block for sort of marketing

Jem - EQ:

time and a block for just like business.

Jem - EQ:

I call it business owner time.

Jem - EQ:

It's just like trying to stop and think more deeply about whether it's

Jem - EQ:

financials or staffing stuff or systems.

Jem - EQ:

I find it harder to be disciplined on those sorts of time slots there.

Jem - EQ:

It's easy to just let the most pressing fire of the day, get your attention.

Jem - EQ:

And yet there's always stuff that's happening that you have to solve.

Jem - EQ:

Reschedule around, but having that, I guess that's why it's called a

Jem - EQ:

default diary because you always swing back to that default position of cool

Jem - EQ:

I'm this is my quoting block now,

Jem - EQ:

Right

Jem - EQ:

and that's what I'm going to do for the next two hours and try and focus on that.

Justin:

Yeah, I like that.

Jem - EQ:

It's been, it's been really effective

Jem - EQ:

for

Jem - EQ:

for me

Jem - EQ:

cause I'm yeah.

Jem - EQ:

I don't think

Jem - EQ:

cause I'm yeah I don't think I'm good at time management by any means.

Jem - EQ:

I'd say I'm

Jem - EQ:

I'd say I'm

Jem - EQ:

pretty terrible

Justin:

I think some of that comes from giving myself an out, I guess, is

Justin:

like that creative process for me is best when it's in kind of chaos mode.

Justin:

Like

Justin:

the ideas don't come for anything, production, fixturing, When I have to

Justin:

sit there and you know, like stare at

Justin:

like I'm walking, I just went to the dentist and I had an idea for

Justin:

how to solve bustling in the chair.

Justin:

It's like, you don't, you don't get to choose those things.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

That's right.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Justin:

Cool.

Justin:

Thanks for sharing.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, no

Jem - EQ:

no worries.

Jem - EQ:

what's on for you

Justin:

we've been 3d printing and that's been really successful actually.

Justin:

We were debating whether we could just make the part like that it's a

Justin:

little clamp piece that goes behind the wall, so you can thread stuff to it.

Justin:

I don't trust it.

Justin:

So it's always been intended to be an aluminum part and

Justin:

I need to just make that.

Justin:

It's not too far off.

Justin:

It's actually a pretty easy part.

Justin:

I just need to go test thread milling different ways and probably

Justin:

break some taps at some point

Jem - EQ:

that's

Jem - EQ:

because I

Justin:

know the machine has it and I've been advised that that's the better way to

Jem - EQ:

know.

Justin:

I would like to try both, honestly, just to understand them both a

Justin:

little bit better, once it's a reliable same product process, I think it seems

Justin:

thread milling is the better choice.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Jem - EQ:

I'll admit with my thread milling stuff.

Jem - EQ:

I've been pretty lazy because I've made

Jem - EQ:

all the parts that relate to each other.

Jem - EQ:

I've been pretty sloppy in terms of trying to actually hit

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem - EQ:

real tolerances.

Jem - EQ:

So it's not like I've, I've kind of loosely based it on a name 22

Jem - EQ:

thread, but I've

Jem - EQ:

I've never gone and bought some M 22 hardware and gone, oh, does it fit?

Jem:

Because it doesn't need to relate to that specifically, but

Jem:

I imagine it gets way more finicky and harder to find June when you're

Jem:

actually trying to match hardware.

Justin:

That's the best part about making your own products is they

Justin:

only work for your own products

Jem - EQ:

Yeah.

Justin:

How about you?

Justin:

What's your or, or the day you got, you got R and D right now until eight and then

Jem - EQ:

planning block

Jem - EQ:

my R and D.

Jem - EQ:

Okay.

Jem - EQ:

This, this is my R and D slot.

Jem - EQ:

Really?

Jem - EQ:

the month is winding up, spend the morning trying to push as many quotes

Jem - EQ:

and follow-ups, as I can to try and hit our sales target this month,

Justin:

Ah,

Jem - EQ:

pressure's on, because tomorrow's Friday

Jem - EQ:

and my closed on Fridays.

Jem - EQ:

So I've really only got one business day left to try and close out the month sales.

Jem - EQ:

We're doing okay, but I'd like to get it across the line a little bit further.

Jem - EQ:

see how we go.

Jem - EQ:

bunch of other stuff too.

Jem - EQ:

I've got some production drawings to do.

Jem - EQ:

We're making some call, American Oak tables that are coming up, which this

Jem - EQ:

will be a fun one to chat about later, but

Jem - EQ:

I'm

Jem - EQ:

mounting, I made this years ago, but I'm going to use it again.

Jem - EQ:

It's a fixture to Mount a really simple axis hanging off the front of the machine

Jem - EQ:

and do turning with the, with the CNC.

Jem - EQ:

So like put round, stocky and then turn it.

Jem - EQ:

Hopefully setting that up again next week and getting that in, but I need

Jem - EQ:

to get the drawings done for that job.

Justin:

yeah,

Jem - EQ:

I'm

Justin:

hoping there's some video or photos of this.

Jem - EQ:

They will

Jem - EQ:

will be.

Jem - EQ:

Yeah, for sure.

Justin:

Good,

Justin:

cool.

Jem - EQ:

All alright

Jem - EQ:

Well, a good afternoon chat to you soon.

Jem - EQ:

Thanks Justin.

Jem - EQ:

Bye.

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