#453 Grimsmo's shop tours around California

- Good morning and welcome back to the business of machining episode 453. My name is John Grimzmo. - My name is John Saunters and this is the manufacturing podcast where sometimes we sit on a chairlift and have a great conversation but typically we sit in our offices and talk about our business. - I think I was inclined to say good to see you even though two weeks ago I was actually sitting with you but yes this is our normal thing. - Exactly. - Yeah, yeah. - Now I get to see you digitally again but man it was good to see you. - It was great. - Yeah. - That whole week was a blur. It feels like it was three months ago but also it was great. - So quick recap, how is the mammoth tool summit like now that you've had a week or two to think about it? - You're really good. I think what tool Al and the tool that I've team pulled off is what I'd hoped to see which is not so much a trade show, not sales pitches. A lot of people are getting together just lots of conversations. So I think there was enough upside kind of word commentary that was floated out there that I don't want to just be a cheerleader even though that was the absolute outcome. I think the takeaways are you have to put yourself at those conversations. There were panels that were some of them were excellent. Some of them were good, not like you. Which is good. The kind of conversations were excellent that I either heard myself or heard from others except you couldn't be at every conversation. - I know. - That's my great too. It's great that it's only 15-ish people and you get an intimate conversation. You can ask questions directly but it kind of sucks that all the good ones are at the same time. I missed a lot of, I didn't even know about them and the guys are like, did you hear about that one? So it's fine. But I don't want that, they chose not to record and it probably would have been a lot of hurdle to do so. But also, no, this is an intimate conversation that doesn't need to be recorded for the rest like for all of the time. So that was there. And then look, there was some, it was one of the first, we brought employees and things before but like, you know, Heidi and Brock Grant, I was like, I really wanted to make sure that I wasn't guilty of just seeing the people that I've come to come. Friends or even good friends, like, what to make sure you have those conversations and you learn more. And every time I did, like, it was great when you hop in a gondola or sit down to table and it was somebody new, you learned to lie. So that's why I really like that. - Yeah, and sitting down at the tables, like I sat down and I saw Jay Pearson and Mark Terry Berry at a table, having dinner. I'd never met Mark directly so that was good but we know each other, I guess, through the internet. And then there were like a few other people around the table too that I got to be introduced to and like that I didn't know. So it seeds sparking conversation and things like that. It's easy to be drawn to the people you know and you're like, hey, I haven't seen you in a while, how are things? But then to meet the new people was super great. And I actually missed some of the panel talks because I was like having wonderful little side conversations. And one time I was talking to me and Justin, we're talking next to the panel conversation and Al comes up to us and puts his arm around us and you guys, you guys are welcome to talk, just get out of here. Like not right next to the panel. I thought that was funny. Had an amazing conversation with Jim Belosik from Senkatzend. And I'd never met him before and we made a great impression on each other. Very smart dude, very hungry and aggressive with decision making, fast decisions. So I talked to him and his lead machinist Phil for an hour and a half. And it was transformative. Like it was just really, really good to hear what, directly from the horse's mouth, like what they've accomplished and what they want to do next and what they're, like how they make decisions and how they, you know, think about things. What about Aubrey? Yeah, a couple of the pointers that Jim said, kind of like quotes that I guess his staff tends to remember. One of which is, do you, as a machinist, obviously, we want to be right, but do you want to be right or do you want to make money? And that hurt me in a way because then of course I want to be right. And honestly, I probably want to be right more than I want to make money in a weird way. But they kind of like, you know, welcome to the 12-step program admitting the truth is the first time. Okay, that's why I was like, please elaborate because this stings and I'm like, I want to know more. Yeah. So it was really helpful. And obviously, there's the balance. We make a very like premium product and I need to pour myself into it, not chase the money and cut corners and cut costs and things like that. But at the cost, at the caveat of sometimes I go way too down the rabbit hole and have no concept of making money and I'm just burning time. So that I can like be right or like do it the hard way or things like that. And there's probably a very healthy middle ground for me personally, where I can have both. I can be right some of the time, most of the time, even left my team be right. I really try to do that. But can like always consider the making money part of side too. What, what you speaking for you, you don't want to sell your soul. I respect you for that. I continue to find inspiration from my like very tangential connection to the art world and back in the day. And like, I think I've sent it before, but remember a friend telling me once, because if you go into like super bougie, high end stuffy art galleries, like you're just kind of like, how do they make money? Like what? And sometimes they like put on a show, speech featuring a newer artist or less commercially viable artists, etc. And a friend who is in that world was just like, dude, these places artists, I think his phrase was like, they are hucking warhol prints behind the scenes like you wouldn't believe it. Not a bad way, but just like, they have a four week show of some edgy contemporary artist and they may make, you know, they may frankly make 15% of what they need to cover their operating overhead for that same period, which is like super not sustainable. But what you don't see is they have 100 clients that they're sourcing Andy Warhol, and you from this. But like, it kind of reminds me of the whole like, have something that helps generate cash flow while you can also take risks. Yeah, exactly. And I'm a big fan of taking risks. I need to constantly remember like, bring myself back to the surface about the cash flow side of things too. So that was super helpful. The other one that his machinist Phil told me was they call it the 4070 rule. And we've all heard the 8020 rule. This is not the 8020 rule. The 4070 rule is if you have 40% of the information to make a decision, you probably have enough information. If you have more than 70% of the information, you have too much information in your wasting time. And that hit me last night. Like I was doing work on on GERP adding new features and stuff. And I'm like, John, you're at 72% right now. I want to get to 90%. I don't need to get to 90%. I'm like ready to launch this. I'm ready to like add this feature and like move on with my life. But I want to get to 90%. You know, and these are made up numbers. But it's really interesting to think like as far as speed of decisions, send consent is a company that has been literally a rocket of innovation and speed. And as I'll talk about in a bit, being around the companies in Silicon Valley, speed is their favorite word. Yes. And yeah, so that was my Jim Belosa take away. That and much else was just wonderful. That kind of feeds into some moments I wanted to have after the summit, not about the summit so much as some of the discussion around it. And I'm certainly not always right. And in fact, I know sometimes I'm too pessimistic or I choose to antagonistically take the counter viewpoint simply because it's healthy for somebody to do so. And so, and this is for sure not directed at Jim and Senka Sen, that his, he seems like an awesome guy. I got all like I've talked to him, but got to meet him for the first time. And what they've done in sheet metal, you know, I mean, he shared the numbers. I think they've shipped 30 million parts already. They're shipping like 30,000 new customers a month or something like like weird numbers. Yeah. Like they have a problem disposing of the pallets from the candy that they buy to put in the orders. Like the levels here are not even funny. And so, what I want to say this up, I want to make sure it's not construed as to be a criticism of them or anybody else, but just in general. One thing I've seen over the years is the sort of founder success fallacy. Being good at one thing doesn't make you good at the other end. In fact, sometimes gives you a false sense of confidence. Sure. And you know, one could say here, being good at sheet metal doesn't mean you're good at sheet metal. You know, you got a deep talent pool and critical momentum to rock and roll because buckle up because you're going to change it. But that analogy applies elsewhere. You know, guy, successful, sorry, he have a crypto company doesn't mean he's going to do well running a hardware. Yeah, yeah. And we fall into that too. You know, yeah. Anyway. And that's a bit of decision thing. Look, you're right. We analyze stuff. But also the context of 47 types of stuff or what we see when we talk to our friends that have direct exposure to that aerospace world or the fun, the tech funded world, those conversations need to occur through a cycle and we just haven't been through a cycle. John, you just have a cycle. I mean, economics, Nicole. Okay. Yeah. We just have it. Like that's like, this is where I'm going to sound irrationally pessimistic. I don't mean to be, but the reality is the folks that don't think that there will ever be a time where some of those tech companies don't have to to Nichols to rub together could could come to be. But being right on a thesis is wrong on a time mean, which is kind of what I am at right now. I think I have a thesis that this stuff could soften. But when is something is being wrong? You just don't. You know, Christopher. I mean, we had it with tariffs last year. Like, it hit us pretty hard. Sure. Out of the blue right? Sure. A bit of a different situation, but still like out of our control. Yeah. Yeah. But like, you told me Apple computer was going to send us $3 million with the work a year to make new AR glasses. If we bought XYZ machines on R and it took that risk, zero chance. I mean, yeah, that's a big. Fictitious example, but like anyway, but the one that I actually had the most thought about because of product, he was people were so comfortable discussing raising prices. And I think that's probably a healthy conversation to have with yourself or your team or your spouse because sometimes we're all guilty. The consultants, the product makers, the job shops, we just don't always charge enough or were two generous, et cetera, et cetera. But there was also some pretty aggressive discussion that you hear the whole, like there was the analogy, double your prices and hope that you get half the work because that's the same amount of revenue. And I'm not here to weigh on whether that's right or wrong. I think if it works, it's actually probably a pretty darn good validation. But I think where there maybe felt like a smidge of hubris, so there's this idea of like, yeah, but you're also opening the door to competition. I just didn't hear that discussed much by raising your prices too high and then competition scooping you out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. That's a good point. My dad's been saying that for 20 years, 30 years. You know, double your prices, half your customers and your work half as less and you make the same money. Yeah. Like literally since the 90s, he's been telling me that. Yeah. But that's a good point. Yeah. And we have like our prices have been stable for the past several years. And there's definitely the option to raise our prices as high as we want. But there is a market demand. There's a. Yeah. There's a lot of feel to it, right? Mm-hmm. And maybe you could nickel and dye him every month and like slowly increase in a way that people don't feel it. But I don't know yet. At the end of the day, you got to, you got to do well. Yeah. No, for sure. And look, I mean, I think that's what's, I know this is a recorded podcast, but like you and I both do this because we want to do it. I think. Yeah. If you want to be a sell out or similarly, I think there's probably whatever different ways you could act, act ethically or business ventures, et cetera. If you just wanted to just make money. But I do think like worry, we are worried about how we think about stuff. Yeah. Since the show. Well, yes, to be fair, yes, not to take credit away from the show. We also were already evaluated beforehand. And we're basically not, we're no longer going to do the whole, hey, if every quarter or six months or every year, should we look at it? We're now going to do kind of inspired by what Senka Sen said about how they are constantly kind of adjusting it. I can go into it more of people want to hear about it. It's not so much I want to be private about it. I'm just not sure how much more talk about it yet. But we are going to move away from that whole like a VF2 plate should cost, you know, a round number, $1,99 or whatever. We're going to probably end up being more at like, oh, it's going to be $2,064. So like people, we're not retail. You're not walking through shelves like most of the time when you add stuff to the card, it's a weird number anyways. And so that will then let us say, bump a price, you know, maybe you raise it every month by 0.3% or whatever. Or even raise it as material prices fluctuate. It gives you, yeah, like we've got the round numbers thing too. Like Enorsment is 990 plus options. So the final option, the final price could be a little weird. But we're not going to, ooh price titanium went up by 10%. So the, not thought to retail price. But like we got charged a little bit more, we're not doing that. We're absorbing all that cost right now. And maybe that is something we need to consider going forward. Because otherwise costs keep going up when we keep charging the same worth of it really lose like making less money. Yeah. For some point losing money on it. So that doesn't work. Cool. I quickly would like to share really happy with how last few weeks have gone post summit. Yeah. I believe the horizontal is sold. Sorry, it is sold pending in inspection. But that's great. We have one machine left, which we do need to sell. I have to VF 6, laser laser wall gone. Good. I mean, not good. But yeah. Yeah. Right. Just second VF 6. Yeah. So we thought we might need to keep it. And we don't, we got the guys did a great job. We got a lot of the work done. And we have a, another Okuma Genos M660. And we have a Ducon DNM6700 that are now on our floor. And we were going to wedge the VF 6B in and keep it running while those were commissioned. And now we're just, it's now in the warehouse bay. So if anyone interested in the VF 6, we do need you to get that one moved on the up. But I want to share that quickly because I want to hear about your post, post summit shenanigans. Yes. So is that summit for five days, I guess? And then I spent another seven days traveling California. And what started out as like one shop tour drew me to the coast to San Jose. And I was like, that quickly grew to six. And then by the time I got there and was going through them, it became 11 shop tours. No. Yeah. And I was able to film at nine of them. And I filmed like probably 20 hours of footage. So there's going to be nine very long, very in depth shop tours of some very cool places that some of them have never been filmed before. So that's super cool. I'll give you the quick rundown list. Being in San Jose, our buddy Jeff Tidakin texted me and said, Hey, you should come by our satellite company. I was like, okay, it's like a 20 minute Uber ride away. I was like, I'll be right there. He's like, yeah, fine. Come on over six, 30 at night. I'll be here. Yeah. And so it's a space company. It's a satellite company. They're developing engineering, making and having SpaceX launch, but they're like mission controlling their own fleet of satellites. I think they've launched 11 so far and their goal is to launch 50 and have an array typically for measuring or viewing force fires in the middle of forests where nobody is around. So like middle of the Amazon jungle from space, they can now they have like lenses and like fancy cameras and IR sensors and stuff that can see force fires and react to them and like tell people on the ground. So I got to see like Jeff's been involved with this for many years now and Mewon spaces the company. They kind of bought him and all of his equipment and all of the shop and just moved him into their new big building, 150,000 square foot building. And now his all of his possessions are in this machine shop corner. And they kind of own him now, but he's happy. And he knows, I mean, he's a very boisterous guy, and he really knows this whole company because not just the machining part, but like literally he toured me around. He knows, you know, the surface level of everything in the company, which was really cool to see. And he's it was a really good host. So they have two locations. So do I saw you in a bunny suit? Yes. So at the second location, he's like, he's like, this is our clean room, like class, whatever 100, whatever they call it, because the satellites need to be like super clean, especially the optics. So they actually had two levels of clean room. There's like the bunny suit room. And then there's the air curtain wash down, like perfect one that is in the optics room. And I was like, as a recent obsession with optics, I've seen a lot of optics videos. And I never really thought of optics in a clean room, because all the videos are like just on a lab bench, like mirrors and lasers and stuff. And that's like, oh, yeah, like obviously, that's like a really clean room environment. So I got dressed up in the bunny suit and Jeff told me some of the rules, it's kind of counterintuitive. You want to go top to bottom so that if any hair further falls, it was like covered. So we filmed a lot. That was great. And then I got to talk to the CEO and he kind of tore me around a little bit and got to just hear the story. And that was like a surprise, but a really cool trip. After that, I went to surface engineering, which is a shop run by my buddy Paul Doyle. And I met him at the current event. Basically, they'd make air bearing spindles and they made ultra ultra precise, like they're chasing the micron and the sub micron with grinding and machining and things like that. They have a, I think this is right. I got on video at DMU 250. You. Whoa. The big one is ultra precise. It's like, it's massive. And there's a U version, which is the ultra precise version. So it's like the size of a room, right, with a 12 station pallet. It looks like a like a small department complex. Oh my god. And they're making, they were making actually a little linear stage roller bearing things on it. They were doing the finish cuts with like diamond tooling, but they also make big housings on it. That's why. I got it, but it can do big stuff and little stuff, which is really cool to see. But that shop, that kind of drew me to the coast. Those like Paul invited me a long time ago and I was like, "Yeah, one day, I'm in Mammoth." So the precision that they do there, both grinding and milling and lapping and inspection, things like that is one of the most accurate shops I've seen. So I really wanted to go there and learn everything. And so I filmed a lot there. I spent nine hours at that shop. And they were gracious enough to show me around. So I did Mewon Space in the morning and then I spent nine hours at Paul's shop. And then I get a message right at the end from my buddy Jason who makes my flashlight that I've been carrying for me. For me, he's a flashlight. Awesome. And he's like, "Hey, I'm like five minutes away. Do you want to come by? I can come pick you up." I'm like, "Yeah, come pick me up at 6.30." And so I spent the evening with him and I toured his shop. We went out from Mexican food. And so the whole rest of the trip was these kind of full day tree shop tour days. It was amazing. Down the list, the next morning I met up with Ethan Perrin, who's got Miter's West. They're kind of made up maker space kind of shop. And he's an MIT graduate, currently a Tesla battery engineer. It's one of those dudes who speaks at 1.5 times speed and is really, really, really smart. Like, he's very sharp. Very sharp. And he's like, "Yeah, come on by. Check out our shop." And they basically created a maker space, but private amongst their 10 friends. And they all pay rent. And they all rent. So Zap, rents an office in that space. So Ethan has like, he has his mill and his lathe and they're building a formula SAE car. And they have like, there's a laser guy that's got his optics corner. And it's just like a candy store of auction fines and projects that are probably never going to get finished, but they just get to have a place to play. And it's the ultimate garage. And so that was really cool. And then he actually drove me up to San Francisco where Cyrus invited us to tour where he's hanging out with or where he's working right now. So Cyrus Lloyd is one of our precision nerds. He's become a good friend. And so he's working at Atomic Semiconductor and they're making, you know, the big ASMR chip-making machines have a billion dollars, right? They're making like, I think the number was under $100,000, like 3D printer sized machines that will make chips. Oh, interesting. And that's all I can talk about because I literally signed an NDA. But Cyrus was able to like come in and within six months basically invent his own machine. Like we've all wanted to make a machine, right? He's been able to do that using all the precision knowledge that he has. And he was like to solve a problem, like a pre-serious machine. And he was very, it was fun nerding out and having him show us that. And we owe him a correction. He is now a co-host of the precision microfiber. He is. Yes, which I haven't got in for that episode yet. I'm on episode nine. That's awesome. I'm really solid. I'm so happy for visual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very smart. One of those really smart guys that's like, so that was cool. And then, you know the YouTube channel Breaking Paps? Of course. With Zach. He's Massachusetts. He was in Massachusetts. He moved to the Bay Area. Interesting. But he was there too. So I got to meet him and we got to hang out and we all got to tour Atomic. Oh, that's cool. Is he working at Atomic? No. He wants to. Okay. No, he's good. Yeah, so that was awesome to meet him. We've chatted over Instagram for a couple years. Sure. Oh, John. He's kind of made his own. He's made his own lithography machine to make chips and things like that. So he knew more than I did. And I was the dumbest person in the room. And that was one of those situations. You know, they always say like be the dumbest person in the room. That was me. Which was now that I think about it. It was really awesome. Yeah. And the other engineers there got to meet the owner of the CEO also really, really sharp dude. He actually was biting his tongue at first. And then he goes, oh, wait, you guys have signed the NDAs and then he opens right up. Oh, my God. Yeah. That's cool. Cool. Yeah. So that was just incredible. So then Ethan's in the morning, Atomic in the afternoon. And then in the evening, most of us, except for Zach went over to Laney Machine Tech, where Atomic was at Amaruns, the Laney College manufacturing department where they have, they teach both basic machining and have an ultra precision lab. So I got a full tour of that and I got to run the press attack diamond turning lathe. And I got to use, there's I go interferometer. And we got to play and we were there to like 1030 at night. And turns out the diamond turning tool that was, we were using to make this aluminum optic was dull like microscopically dull. So Atomic was so unhappy with the results of my sample piece that I was going to bring home and I'm filming all about. And he's like, we got thrown a tool in there. I'm like, do his 1030, like, go home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the next day he goes in with a new tool and cuts a new piece and he goes, see, it's supposed to be this good. I like, don't understand the process by which something like a diamond up against aluminum. You know, it's such like it's David and go, like it's so strong. How does it? Yeah. I'm still curious about that too. I'm wondering if actually it might be the touch off because he had us manually jog forward until a chip forms. Okay. That's not good for the tool. Like I'll have to ask him. I don't know. But the difference between a good partner bad part was a good part should be flat to like, I think it was five nanometers. And my part was flat to like 50 nanometers or something. You can literally see the grain crystals of the aluminum like pop up because the tool was not dull enough to cut them. It just bounced over there something. Yeah. You look at the part and it looks kind of shimmery and you see like the crystals, which is, I think it's really cool. Yes. Yes. So that was a big day there. And then in the morning, I popped over to Dave Versailles' shop in Verbank. His new company Final Rev is doing some amazing things. So I was able to film a really in depth video with him about what they're doing, both with the tool trace, the scan outline software, which was like a little side gig that's actually turned into a pretty serious thing. And what they're doing with Final Rev, which is trying to make like local city based job shops with instant turnaround, same day turnaround kind of thing and pop up locations all around the country. And he's going hard at that. So he's having a lot of fun and there's a great video for someone who doesn't like to be in front of the camera and just shows his love. He was very, very accommodating and very happy to do this. So that was sick. And you saw that Willow and Twinsie, I got to see the Willemann like three serial numbers off of mine or whatever it is. I literally I felt his door and I was like, Oh, your door smooth is way smoother than mine. I must be missing some bushings. Don't know if that was real, right? And then he drove me to Jason, the flashlight maker who I met two days before. He's like, Hey, you want to go flying? And I'm like, sure. I knew he had his pilot's license. I thought he was going to rent a plane. So Dave drives me to the hangar to Jason's like personal, Sesson 182 that he owns. And I was like, Oh, this is amazing. So we spent two hours in the air. I got to fly for like 45 minutes. We flew over Alcatraz over the Golden Gate Bridge. Oh, John, that's incredible. I filmed a lot of that. So that's going to be in the vlog that I'm posting. And just hanging out more with Jason, he's such a good guy. Darksucks.com, right? Exactly. Yep. A little shout out for him. Exactly. And I've been carrying this flashlight for nine years. And it worked out great. So then my plan was to jump out of plane from Oakland or wherever. There's like three airports around there. Last minute. I don't really care. And then fly down to LA where I've got three more tours lined up. And so I was talking with Jason and Dave. And they're like, I mean, you could drive. You could rent a car because I had Monday open. I had no plans for Monday. And they're like, you could rent a car. And I'm like, I could rent a car. So I did. I rented a Dodge Hornet, which was actually a pretty great car. And then I drove the Pacific Coast Highway down. And I had the day to myself. I'm like, all I got to do is be at LA in Torrance by the morning. I'll take as long as I want, stuff for a nice burrito. It's just so free. After all those tours and mammoth and everything, it was like, I needed the day to myself. Not even really to process because my brain was still kind of jumbled, but just to like have the freedom to just roam. It was really nice. Yeah. And then Tuesday morning got to Torrance, spent the day with Joshua Shapiro, watch company, which was absolutely insane. Filmed so much there. One of their lead watchmakers, Eric, who I've been sort of friends with for a couple of years, was very happy to walk me around and show me everything and film everything. And he said, the only thing you can't film is customers watches before they get them. Because we want them to be the first ones to see them. I'm like, sure, of course. I'll give you full edit on the video afterwards. But like, please teach me everything. And they did. I got to sit down with their watchmakers and talk about all the little details and like, tell me about Radico and tell me how I see you're doing this with your fingers. And how's that? And he goes-- actually you're wrong on this what you saw on the internet. It's actually like this. I'm like, oh my god. Interesting. So really good video coming out of there. And then spent the whole day there, had to leave it about five o'clock, zip up to SpaceX, we're one of our customers works, and we got to get the tour at SpaceX, which is like an employee led internal tour. I don't think it's really open to the public, but you have to be invited or so. I don't know if the rules are, but it was insane. I know about SpaceX. I don't follow SpaceX. I don't really know the depth of what they're doing, but I've seen some stuff and being there and talking with one of our customers, he's got a bunch of our knives. He knows the place, you know, relatively inside now, he's been there for 10 plus years, and it was, we spent like three hours walking around SpaceX. Like what is so like, obviously, I'm doing who's listening to this. No space, builds, rockets, launches, like what's the next level explanation of what they do for somebody that may not really get it? So at this facility, which is all I can really talk about, they were making the rockets, and they are these 12 foot diameter aluminum cans. It's literally a pop can, and they start by making flat sheets of aluminum and they mill out the iso grid pattern and the whole spacing and all that stuff. Then they form them to a cylinder, four pieces or whatever, and then they friction stir well the pieces together. Yeah, yeah. And I thought it was interesting. There was no end stop where the tool like comes out, the stir well tool. It was just kind of a clean lead out at the end of the seam, and I'm like, I've only seen your video in friction stir well. I don't know much about it, but I'm like, that looks really clean. I mean, anything can friction stir well if you try hard and breathing your sack. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, we got to see the guys hoist the cranes and move these big assemblies on top of each other and like, you know, we had a crew of guys walking through the aisle, and they're like, you guys got to just get off the aisle, because we've got a big equipment coming through, and it's like the action, this was eight o'clock at night. And they're like, we run 24 hours. They were off the top of my head. They were probably 200 people in that building at the time, like working. The full cafeteria, like full restaurant inside. Carbon fiber lay out the room. I thought it was really cool. I think I can talk about all of this. They had, you know, like pre-prepared carbon fiber, where it's the sheets, but it's already got the goo in it. And they had this green laser shooting a triangle laser shaped triangle on the nose cone of drag and capsule or whatever it is. And they're like basically put a triangle of carbon fiber here. This green laser line. And then these ladies have these sheets and they just go slack. And then they missed and I had to like peel it off and slap it back. And then they pat it down and they make it all nice. And then I guess it gets autoclaved or heated or whatever. It happens next to make it like carbon fiber seal. But that was cool to see. And it's just like constantly every corner or something's happening. We talked about their inventory management system. He said they have line side inventory. I think that's a term we can all Google. But where basically every work cell where they're assembling the Raptor engines they can ever run out of parts like ever. So the assembly stations need to have enough inventory but not too much inventory. And everything has to be traceable because they're a space. And so a lot of scanning, a lot of input, a lot of systems, a lot of databases, a lot of things. So we talked a little bit about that. But it was just like those engines are not simple. And there's one by humans. Well, there's one thing I would sort of say to blue me away. So I'm sort of sharing or trying to pay for and encouraging folks that want to learn to watch. It's go watch the evolution of the Raptor engine and where they started kind of looks like where NASA left off with like the F-1 engine or something with you know 450 welded external pipes. And as you move through the progression, it now just looks like one three-frame block. Yeah. And he said metal 3D printing has revolutionized the way they make that because all that stuff can be internal now. Insane. It's insane. Yeah. It's fantastic. One of the cool things they had a satellite hanging from the roof like an older one. The satellites that saw it muon were the size of a footstool like on your sofa kind of thing. The one at SpaceX which I think was a Starlink satellite was the size of a Volkswagen bus or bigger. Like I don't know. It was on the roofs of sorry to tell but huge wingspan I don't know 50 feet a hundred feet something like that. And there was this tube in the middle, this large cylinder that went all the way through it. And I said what's that? And he goes that's the nitrogen or whatever gas. That's the nitrogen thrusters. Where you know you've seen it in movies where they go psst and the thing moves. And I'm like you're telling me you launch that full of gas whatever nitrogen. And that's all you got for the life cycle of that thing. There's nobody fuel and he goes yep we use very little in space and that has to not leak obviously and it has to be enough to last the whatever it is five year life cycle of the typical satellite before they crash and burn on purpose. And I was like that's I mean that's like the simplest thing of the whole thing but I was like that's really fascinating. Crazy right? Yeah. So that was at the end of another huge long day and then the next morning I went to Pearson then I spent the whole day waiting to you Pearson. It's like a who's who I know. I was like hey I'm in town. And yeah we talked about it on the mammoth chairlift my kind of reinvigoration of lean and con bond and things like that. So I talked to Jay again at the show and I was like hey can I can I come by can I spend a day with you because this is really this is really a plug in my brain right now. And he was I saw his shop in 2017 so nine years ago. Yeah yeah and I mean same person same vibes same product same shop but timestamp. He is you know quadruple down on what he is and what he does and what he believes and he is the most gracious host and just really really smart guy. So we talked a lot about his business and my business and how we can implement con bond and lean and you know the places where it's really going to make a difference and the problems we're having internally and how we think it could solve and it won't be exactly the way he's doing it but that's okay. He's also had a ton of fun with AI programming and making making his own internal systems which he's now starting to market called stoke forage productions which I didn't know anything about and Billy showed me and I was like to this is sick like the Pearson boards. Well and he openly accretets us you and me for calling it the Pearson boards. He had like a weird name for it before and he's like I guess it sticks if the bomb calls it Pearson boards and so stoke forage is a digital super upgraded Pearson board and he showed me it working in his shop and he's like it's been live on our shop floor for like two weeks. Everybody adopted immediately because it's so much better and faster and easier and cooler and it's iterating amazingly so like and he had a weird hack to it kind of in the way that I told you when I built Gurb I had like chat GPT for theory and that cursor for action. He in 2009 used to work in a software company and kept two really good software friend developers friends and so he basically made the initial model in cursor or clot or whatever he did and then he wrote them on board and he's like hey like experts can you help me like polish this and make it like really nice and really secure and then the three of them have just been working back and forth like collaborating and making it but that's why it looks so good. Yeah yeah yeah so so that was my trip it was fantastic. I feel like that like overwhelmed since just from listening to your very very brief but wonderful recap. I can imagine it's like to live that you know back when we used to really do this and film these tours it's exhausting. I thought about you a lot while I was doing these stuff. Oversteining the sounders run right now like awesome and we're going to have nine shop tours and two vlog videos like mammoth and then my trip to post from all this and that's like a lot like when people see all these shop tours they're going to think I'm the shop tour guy but literally that happened within six days. Oh yeah yeah right right. Do do do do do right in Rome. Yeah exactly so it was incredible it's not something I want to do like you see the MTD CNC guys like doing this as their job I don't want to do this as my job sure but not only was it super fun and I love to share like I learned so much. Yeah but that's what that's what makes that's what I'm gonna watch your videos is because it's not yeah a higher gun where it's like oh show me your new widgets like no I'm here because I've known these people they've been in the trenches. Yeah yeah I'm all I don't know what if anyone ever if anybody ever like documents this era of American manufacturing but to some very humble extent many of us have played a very smart part in this like story we told in this group that we built a smart bigger than any one of us for sure but nevertheless it's like hey you you've heard you've seen the people that were motivated inspired and and you know I always say credit to you like you maybe a video or something you saw was what you needed to get off and make a change but you did it yeah you're the one - Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so doing the shop tours, I kind of told everybody going in, I'm like, I have kind of two goals here. I wanna show your shop and what you guys do and who you are, but I want to ask questions. I want you to teach me something I don't know yet. I wanna go deep, so I feel like I asked a lot of really interesting questions and, you know, made, I like pointed at things that they probably weren't gonna talk about, but I was like, "No, no, no, no, no, tell me about that." Like, what's going on here? So that's cool. And at Surface Engineering, their founder, which founded the company in the '70s, has all these isms, you know, all these little quotes, like, "Rensette Equats" kind of thing, because they've been in the precision industry forever. And so the guys there were rattling off some of these things, and I was like, Paul, you gotta text me the list of petty's rules. Mr. Petty was the owner. And you gotta, you gotta text me the list of petty's rules because these need to be public, you know, and a couple of them that come to mind are, when you chamfer a bur, you create two burrs. - A hundred, they've been there, right? They've been there. - And I was like, "Oh, I love that so much." - I'm laughing because-- - 50 rules, all right. - This is, sir, I don't know Surface Engineering or Paul, any of these guys, but I do know persistent instruments, and here's the 50 tidbits by Dave Arnason, which I keep, say, pulled to my filing cap, right? - It's a beautiful list if anybody hasn't seen that yet. - Yeah, just good stuff. - It's called "Pipits" by Dave Arnason or Jay Marnason. And we're three, so I sent that to Paul a couple of days later and I was like, "See this list?" And he's like, "Oh, number seven. Read number seven right now." He goes, "Number seven is three." - You hold on to a part is probably going to be your greatest source of error. (laughing) - Yep. So, that kinda stuff. - Yeah, that was great. - Good, that's awesome. As much as I wanted to just say here in SoCal, what you just said for the sake of keeping them in mind to about, I learned a couple things recently, I think at the summit. So one thing I saw at the summit, I don't think the individual who said this is gonna care that I'm sharing it. I'm not gonna name them because I don't want to betray that, but I also want to give them credit words. They have a single room homework shop and you ready for what they did? They dumped all of their tools and toolbox drawers, contents, et cetera, et cetera, into a Google sheet, air tape, I'm gonna what? They hooked up a point to zoom camera that has a laser beam on it, vibe coated it and they say, where are my four to six inch mics? - Like, I would point to the drawer. (laughing) - Yeah. And it's like done, like or working like that. This is why like, and I'm not gonna do that, but am I gonna use that inspiration or that energy to think about something, I sure am excited. That's why I love. - Exactly. - And then I didn't know, or I underestimated how much emphasis is being put into the verbiage and the words you use in an LLN prompt. Like I now learned that there are full time prompt engineer jobs, where your job is to understand how to query or how to prompt the LLN and the thing I've since done, which has been phenomenal, is every single LLN, I mean, maybe not every request, but almost every request I put into cloud, I end with please ask me whatever questions you need before starting this task. - And- - Before starting this task, okay. - 10% of the questions are silly. 90% of the questions are absolutely fundamentally- - 90% of them. - Yes, job. - Oh my gosh, okay. This is not negotiable. You guys are really honest. - Okay. - And you realize it makes sense. - Okay. - Because otherwise it's just like, I'm not gonna bother you, I'm just gonna go do it. - Yeah. - And reality is like, - And then it's so like back and forth, yeah. - To quote Spencer, what have you your intern was like, man boss, I'd really like to ask you about how I'm supposed to do that, but I don't want you to just go do it. - Yeah. - And all your options are. And there's probably a better way that I don't even know yet. - Ask me if you have any questions in order to do it. - Ask me whenever questions you need before starting this task. - Okay. - Writing that. - I was gonna program there's a keyboard shortcut. I think in Cod, you can even set like rules for how you interact with it. I'm not sure I want to do that because there are sometimes I don't wanna ask it that. I don't wanna ask that on every iteration of every product. But, yeah, it's for sure some version of an unlock doing that. - Beautiful. Yeah, thanks for that, that's good. Yeah, my other notes really happy with how we've done it here at Saunders. New machines coming on board. The Wiki Plus are share drive of assets on manuals and PDFs and instructions. Is it a helpful plus? Are machine tool info cards they have? All of the fluids and oils and greases linked in there has the breaker panel listed. Has who we call for services support when you need it. - Displade or scannable. - It's in a Google sheet that was also then printed out and put it on the machine. - Do you have digital and physical copies? - Yeah, yeah. - But the Wiki in general, and just like where you start dumping all that information, we have Gemini on the front end sort of, I wanna get better at that. There's some quirks to that right now. - The Wiki and Lex are separate items. - They are. - Okay. Yeah, I want GERP to be everything. I want it to be that. The single source of truth. - I don't. - Okay. - Actually, you've got separate systems already. I don't. - Yeah, fair point. And there's probably some value to the mean tied in or maybe being able to see. But to me, the Lex and ERP have what lives there is empirically accurate and good and deliberate. Whereas the Wiki is very much intentionally a dump. You can put anything you want. We have a page for the brother. We have a new page for the DUSON. It's very SEO like everything you want to talk about, add a text blur, but like what up? - Yeah. - Yeah. - I like it. - Another great quote that I've heard a few times at the summit, stop starting and start finishing. - Oh. - Yeah, that hurts. - Oh, right, I'm not, I'm not throwing any stones. Yeah, but I really, I think starting start finishing, Eric told me that in different words yesterday. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, actually he said, "Because I'm scared of what you learned on your trip." - Oh, oh. - Because it could change everything and that scares me 'cause I don't know what it is. It's this big unknown black hole of potential that John's energy has wrapped up in. - Yeah. - And that's the balance. I'm trying to be excited to the guys and say how good the trip was and how valuable it was to me. But without having the time to go into any detail of what we're gonna do next or change or whatever like that. So, yep. That's funny. - That's what I did. I did all my dumb-tall-my-notes over the while I was there and on the flight back. And then honestly, we had such a busy week last night, last week, three machines coming and going total. And so then it's like, okay, you gotta get off that cloud nine. It's so fun and inspiring. But now it's like, okay, I just need to pick one thing. What's one thing I can take away that can implement? And then you do that, what's the next thing? - That's all. - Exactly. Cool. Anything else? - Just put it all I got for now. - Sweet. - Yeah, I hope man. - That's good. - Yeah. - Back in the groove. This is my second day back at work. - Oh, well, that's like new to me. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, I walk into our team meeting and the guys are like, who's the new guy? (laughing) - Yeah. - That's awesome. - Yeah. - All right, good. See you next week. - All right, see you next week. Bye.