Episode 131

131 - Beeswax, Brushes, and Bathroom Heat

Jem and Justin chat about shop improvements, from Justin's new dust boot designs to Jem's successful tumbling solution using local beeswax polish. They discuss business challenges like Justin's Shopify glitch that blocked dust boot sales and Jem's Profit First distribution adjustments. Tech talk includes Claude 3.7's capabilities, AI-powered research, and Jem replacing a $350 review app with custom code. The episode wraps with Justin's bathroom heater installation and Jem's table tennis upgrades.

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DISCUSSED:

✍️ Comment or Suggest a Topic - New voice message option

AI ZONE

  • New Claude 3.7! Party ꘎
  • One shot config rework attempt, unfair?
  • Saved $350 and coded a replacement in an hour ꘎
  • Deep Research 👀 ⠄
  • Hours and hours in cursor this week ꘎
  • Slowwwwww cash cows

IMPROVEMENT OF THE WEEK

  • JUSTIN - HEATER
  • JEM - TABLE TENNIS


00:00 Potato CAM 4 Lyfe

01:17 Product Development and Prototyping Insights

04:23 Sales Trends and Market Analysis

06:33 Website Functionality and Customer Experience

09:18 Coding Practices and Version Control

12:23 Financial Management and Profit Strategies

16:46 Shopify Add to Cart Nightmare

24:27 Financial Priorities: Paying Yourself First

24:56 Machine Maintenance: The Importance of Listening

30:51 Innovative Solutions: Using Technology in the Workshop

33:40 AI in Manufacturing: Exploring New Tools

39:33 Building Custom Solutions: The Value of DIY

47:21 Shop Improvements: Enhancing the Workspace


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Show Info

Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.


HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter | Instagram | More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC | Instagram | More Links

Transcript
Speaker:

You've gone all musc...

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all foggy.

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You've got your vaseline...

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your vaseline lens on.

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All good, there goes my camera.

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yeah you find cameras being weird

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Quick screenshot of what Justin's got on his...

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no...

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pinball.

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just printed out a new thing for the wall.

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I've had this forever.

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I made like a spreadsheet of all the very CNC router specific the up cut lengths of my

compression tools sorted by length.

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yeah, tasty.

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Ta-da!

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Got it.

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It's just an imperial, so good luck with that.

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and how to convert that.

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I'm...

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I'm...

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Yeah.

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in years.

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I'm out in the main office today.

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I don't know, just purely because I couldn't be bothered moving my microphone stand.

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I was running a few minutes late and I'll...

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Ah, that's the room.

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The room's different.

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Yeah, of course it is.

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Now I just went to reach for my standing desk control to lift it up a little bit.

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I have this like, every time I lift my desk up, want...

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Josh Groban's You Raise Me Up to play just in the room.

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Put a little marker there.

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Uhhhh, how's it going man?

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I just tried to play a laughing clip and it didn't let me play.

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wait.

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make it stop.

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It's awful.

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good.

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How's it going?

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Good.

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Got a lot of stuff delivered the last couple of days of parts and products we've been

waiting on for a long time.

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Well, a long time coming, let's say.

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Like the dust boot parts that I was mentioning were prototypes last week.

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We have a limp Microsoft stand again.

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And...

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Had some show up and they were missing holes.

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was the first time ever I've had a online sheet metal quick send solution.

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And it was just like missing holes in the parts.

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And I was like, I don't, I can't use like, I almost tried to modify them to get parts sent

out, but I just told them, and this is rmfg.com and they've been really great.

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and they remade them and sent them out the next day and we had them the next day.

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So I was like, wow, I'm not gonna try and modify, you know, five mil holes that have to be

very, pretty precise in stainless steel.

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don't know.

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It's not my forte really.

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Yeah.

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And thin sheet stainless steel.

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Yeah, I've done plenty of drilling of stainless, it's not fun.

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Not a fun product.

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I asked Dylan, I was like, hey, I know you do stainless steel.

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is this stupid?

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I even try this?

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And he's like, yeah, just make a quick fixture.

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And I was like, see, that's easy for you.

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Like a fixture is a day for me.

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Like, I'm not quick at those.

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Those kind of like, just pop it in the mill real quick.

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Are you, like, building and running these test units on your shop saber?

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Mm-hmm.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah, it's, we've tested it probably not as extensively as we should, but I am pretty

confident in it.

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And as we always discuss, it's like somebody is going to run it way harder than we expect

and something will happen.

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But we're kind of at this place with, we call it the bottom plate, the snap-on plate,

right?

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That it's.

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It's never been what we wanted it to be.

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And the brushes come out so easily, no matter what we try to do to them, glue, you know,

all the fastening items that it's just finally like, you know, I think this is a better

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solution.

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Even if it's not perfect, we haven't tested it extensively.

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It's so much better than where we were at that like, I think it just gotta be shipped, you

know?

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Mmm.

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Yeah, I was gonna say, in the baby pants fence last week, I wanted to say, I don't think

we've had a brush come out or flex inwards.

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And I'm pretty happy with our airflow.

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Yeah, sure.

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Like it's more bushy on the inside than when it was new, of course.

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Like it's, and I'm sure some fibers have been, yeah.

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completely derail me.

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I appreciate the comment regardless.

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You're, I would say that the nice people don't say anything.

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Well, let's just say people that are friends of us, you know, more personal and don't just

know us as an ad that they saw and tried out.

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Yeah, I don't know.

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I don't know how to say it just to be transparent.

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It's not been what we, it's never been ideal.

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And part of it's the brush composition.

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And part of it was we never could find the right combination of ways to keep this

flexible, like five by five millimeter backer of a strip of brush attached to HDPE sheet

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that we machined.

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And so now we've had this like drastically better solution.

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and it's, yeah, well, I went through this before it's repairable.

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It's

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Yeah, that's great.

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video to publish about it.

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And I'm in the same attire as I was the other day, which, which definitely had some, some

nice commentary from you and the other peanut gallery about my, my Gen Z look apparently.

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camera.

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What's wrong with you?

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it's back.

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Hmm.

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It's one of those days.

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Yes, I was greatly entertained by, orange, et al.

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look bad or is it surprising that I have a slightly different look?

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Surprised me.

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That's

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How about things in the other hemisphere?

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South.

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yeah, don't know, slow week, yet another slow week.

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Laura and I were chatting, yeah, so was Laura and I were chatting finance on the couch

last night as we do sometimes and we're like I think this is kind of the time of year, it

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is, it's exactly this time of year when like we made the big shift where we kind of

freaked out and

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downsize started that process 12 months ago and Laura went into spreadsheet mode and

pulled up five years worth of data in zero out of zero into Excel and built some graphs

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and she was like, yeah, this is like the end of end of Jan into fab right into the end of

fab is like a classic dip every year.

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You can see the pattern clearly.

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and then it rises up.

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into March so fingers crossed this is just the standard dip but yeah definitely feeling it

just cash flow is super tight it's just hard to get people over the line right now like

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I've caught up on quotes pretty much for the first time in ever which is good feeling but

as I said the other day it's also a bit like scary so my leads

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But at the end of the day, I don't want too many leads.

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I want to just sell more straight products.

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So I think that's partly why I've been burning the midnight oil this week on the

configurator, because I just want to get that better and better and to the next point, get

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more people using it.

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Yeah.

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Mm, mm, mm.

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Yeah, I'm just trying to like get, mean, it looks like it's so close.

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Like, I suppose what the big hang up is it's not converting into the shopping cart yet.

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Probably.

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to even look at that.

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Like, you know, it's hosted in Shopify now, so I should absolutely be able to do that.

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I don't know if it's even on my dev list in Workflow.

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Let me go and put that on top of my hit list now.

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bet that you could knock that out in an evening.

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God damn it.

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is wrong with that?

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I'm so pissed about this camera situation.

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Why are you having problems?

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I think I'm, I'm close to just buying a nice webcam.

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I'm tired of this stupid thing,

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Let's see, what did you just say?

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Oh look, no they're just the configurator add to cart code.

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Like I agree, I think it probably will take me an evening.

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I've just been holding off.

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I haven't run that prompt yet.

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It isn't probably like the top priority I get like that it functions and people can try it

out and send you results is great.

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think, I mean, I can think of how I could do it slowly myself probably like with very poor

results.

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And then I would try some kind of like coding tool to actually get it done.

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But

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The API is pretty built for that.

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So you should have some good results from it pretty quick, I think.

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Really happy with the automatic dowel placement that I added this week.

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Super-tough to that.

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It's just made it so much faster to use.

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Like it's now the fastest tool, much quicker than like my Rhino block template for

building.

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So you can just use that instead and send people.

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Yeah, I added like configurations last night so you can save and import designs using like

a JSON output.

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And yeah, it's great.

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I'm really happy with it.

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Where do I find it again?

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under kitaparts.

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Do you hide it somewhere?

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or the website actually, the guinea pig link on the front page.

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yeah, you added that.

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yeah.

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I think it integrates better with your website too.

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I mean, doesn't, it's like so fast to load.

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Yeah.

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Straight HTML, baby.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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I was thinking about a dark mode button.

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I mean, I love AirShop's dark mode switch.

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Proud.

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Sitting proudly in the top right hand corner.

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Very nice.

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I guess if I, while we're updating our code inside projects, I sent you a nice little demo

and then it got merged right away, but I got a nice dashboard built into the quotes now.

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So we had like a homepage dashboard, which is like your big zoom out.

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Here's all the things happening.

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Hold up, hold up.

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What were you imagining?

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code.

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like we make, it's like a whole, like, I think I said this to you.

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No, I didn't.

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So it's perfect.

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I think it's like this whole code development thing is really great I think we need to,

and I've heard like, I think Justin Gray say this too, like bring some of the software

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development stuff into the CNC world more clearly.

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It's like, there's so many nice little features.

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Like I wish we had, I'm trying to think.

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maybe in G code related things, but like you start working on a new feature for the

software project and it's like, you make a branch.

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And so it never affects the thing that people are using currently.

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And then, which you call like main or production or dev, whatever, which version of that

there's different levels of it.

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So you can keep kind of editing on your side and then merge it back into the main.

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and you have somebody review it in the process and they've got it all figured out in terms

of it's annoying and it feels slow at times.

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like the reason that I think it was, I think it was American Airlines, maybe Delta, I

can't remember the airline, but last year they had a giant crash of all their systems

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because the person working on the code for it publishing code to main like on a production

and not going through a testing phase, which is.

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Insane.

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Like in our little side tool that nobody uses, we never do that.

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I don't understand how a multi-billion dollar company doesn't have controls on that.

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That's just crazy.

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I built out a nice little dashboard that can, show you what's going on for just your

quotes and kind of updated some styling and,

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before it was kind of like a grid of just quotes.

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And that's not really our plan, whatever it was for it, it just took some time to like

build out some graphs and I have more to put into it, but it's just nice to make and add

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new features like that pretty quickly.

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was there, I wanted to ask you about this cause I was falling asleep last night after yet

another late night of coding and about how you professionals do like what you just

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described with like merging and forking and stuff of like how you do file management.

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Cause at the moment I'm just like every time I sit down to work on it, I save a copy of

the file.

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Yeah, right.

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the end of the session, if I'm happy with the progress and I'm like, yes, I've improved

upon it.

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I'm happy with how it's working.

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I'll save that again as like a milestone file with like, with a, just like a one word

description.

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And then next time I sit down, I'd save off a copy of that milestone and proceed.

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So I've always got things to come back to.

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that okay?

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Appropriate.

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Basic.

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seems, seems pretty, pretty safe and great.

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mean, it's taken me the entire time I've worked on Air Shop like partially 60 % understand

GitHub and Git in general.

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I've, I kind of hated it at first, but it turns out to be pretty.

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I actually really kind of like it now and it's, nice to have this like other thing where

you can go literally on GitHub and go back and see, like, I was just, I, when I was

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building this quote dashboard, I built a draft of it in a branch two months ago, I think.

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And I could go back because so much else changed in that time period.

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I'm not capable of like.

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bringing that version back to the current version and like all the merging that needs to

happen.

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So I was like, well, I can reference a lot of those files and kind of go see a saved state

of where I was working in commits.

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So it's like where I go from my local and it pushes it up as like a saved version, I

guess, in that branch.

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So, I mean, I don't know if I can recommend GitHub, but like it's probably...

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to like learn all of it, but like, think you're doing kind of that already.

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Like as long as you're dating and saving, it is nice to like put comments in and stuff

about how, how you change stuff.

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Yeah, I think like something I've struggled with is just drift.

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Like I realized last night at some point my like disclaimer pop-up has disappeared from

the code.

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And I'm like, I don't know which version that vanished.

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And it'd be kind of nice to have it back.

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So it's like, do I just...

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go back and open all the files and try and find that feature and then try and reintegrate

it.

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I can't be bothered right now.

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Whatever.

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That happens to both Brady and I, it'll go like, man, you used to have this nice tool tip

on this button or something.

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And he's like, yeah, I was fixing something.

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I forgot to add it back in.

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just kind of from, you can only imagine what a big software project has, just so many

missing things there.

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So,

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yeah, man, it's looking really good.

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I'm very happy with it.

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Click here to email your designs.

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What did I get?

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it just dumps that.

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Huh.

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I had a Shopify issue of my own, which kind of brought on by my own doing, I suppose, I

think.

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last week, so we've had dust boots kind of like out of stock and in a backorder state

because we've been changing.

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We ran out of the custom brush.

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So that necessitated like this.

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I saw it coming.

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didn't fully get it done in time, which is stupid because it's a driving force of a lot of

our sales.

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got the new version tested and rolling.

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And so as we ran out of that stock of those brushes, we started to backorder and I've got

a plugin that kind of manages that automatically.

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And tells people how long until they'll get their item when stuff goes out of stock.

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And, you know, I also have the bundling app plugin, simple bundles.

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And there's one other one that was in play.

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But basically I had some customers say, hey, I've been trying to order your dust boot and

it keeps saying it's out of stock.

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People will email us that sometimes when it's stuffs on backorder, because it says

backorder, you can preorder now.

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It'll be, it'll ship by this date.

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And I was like, have it set so you can, you can preorder something or backorder it.

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And he's like, I don't know.

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I tried that.

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I'm getting this weird warning.

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I had never seen this warning before on the dust boot page.

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It took me the entire day Friday to manage to.

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allow people to add dust boots to the card again.

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And I don't know how many days it had been like that, but like, let's just say thousands

of dollars of sales probably missed that week, at least that week.

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I don't really know.

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and it kind of resulted in, right.

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It resulted in basically me turning on and off some of those plugins.

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I took one out of play completely.

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think.

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And I was looking at like, was happening on the code on the front end.

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was like a weird error happening and it works.

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We've had people order them since, but I was like, kind of in a panic panic of like, I

don't know if I can fix this and I'm relying on these things to do these, certain tasks.

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And I was chatting with a friend about it.

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was like, how do I prevent not knowing this in the future?

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Do I have to like create like a bot that like goes to the website and

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randomly picks products to like add to cart.

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And if it can't do it, tells me about it.

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Like, I don't, how do you do that?

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Do it yourself, I guess.

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it's a bit spooky, do we like a weekly review of core functionality or something?

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I mean, yeah, hopefully just customers tell you, right?

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But I had a customer call me yesterday, just like picked up the phone and called me.

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He's like, hey, Jib, you remember me from like 14 years ago when I bought really early set

of shelves.

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like, hi, David, like searching his name in the inbox.

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He's like, oh, I was looking.

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so often now.

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Like that, yeah.

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and I want the draw, like I want some draws, do you still do those?

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People are confused about the draws because they've seen them on socials but there's

nothing, no mention of them on the website at all.

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And I was like, yeah, yeah, actually if you go into this new configuration tool, you can

add them yourself.

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And he's like, he's on the phone and I can hear him clicking through, he goes, okay, so I

go to the configurator and then he's like, it's just giving me like a blah, blah, blah

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error.

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I was like, oh, is that on the main configuration?

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And he's like, yeah.

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Oh, okay, just ignore all of that.

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Go down and click on my link there.

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Bypass that one.

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I'm like, shit.

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And I can't reproduce that error.

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So it's working for me, but you know, he's a punter out in the wild trying to buy our

stuff and he's just getting like some sort of error when he tries to load the main

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configuration.

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Yeah, stuff like that, spooky.

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Don't know.

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what you can do other than rely on people to let you know.

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So it's funny, an ad just worked on me as you were describing that.

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And I was thinking like, okay, you know, my original bot idea, there's that, but that's

like, hopeful that I can come up with a solution.

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And I don't know that I would do this, but we'll find out if it makes sense.

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I listened to this podcast from these two web developer guys.

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it's like, kind of like fascination of like, I barely understand what's going on.

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It's kind of like how I learn stuff often where.

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I was watching John Saunders videos back when he had like a Tormach and was playing with

like, I'm just going to say junk cam software.

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I don't really understand what I'm listening to, but I just, I'm like, Oh, that's

interesting.

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I didn't know that existed.

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And they are sponsored by a app called Sentry.

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And it's basically just helps you find bugs and errors in your code on your websites.

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So it's some kind of subscription service.

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Let's see how expensive it is.

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Free.

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Ooh.

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$26 a month for teams.

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I don't know.

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Anyway, one thought.

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Probably won't find the thing I want,

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mean, given the pace of progress, we're probably about like six weeks off.

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One of our AI agents being able to do this on its own in the background as a background

task, just like trolling your website, looking for stuff.

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Right.

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I made an oopsie just to update on the the Profit First finance story of last week having

reconfigured everything for:

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Human error.

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We messed with it a bit too much, I think.

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And so, as I was doing distribution on Monday, I was like, there's no profit in this

distribution.

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What's going on?

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And then I looked at the numbers and it was, you know, it was a low distribution.

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just pull up my spread here, which isn't loading.

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You know, I can't remember.

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It was like...

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half of target.

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I was like, oh, there's no profit in the breakdown.

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I was messaging Laura about it.

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was like, oh yeah, because we've now got some fixed costs in here.

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The calculation is prioritizing things like payroll and insurance and sort of fixed costs

within the distribution.

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And it's spitting those out, you know, as full numbers.

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And then, then then it's distributing whatever's left.

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and just the way the percentages were broken down, was like there was 0.5 % profit or

something that week, I was like, oh no, no, this is like, this goes against the whole

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point of the system, like the system is a hack to trick yourself into ensuring there's

profit in every distribution, we need to bring the hack back.

348

:

And so Laura's re-jigged it again this week to that it is

349

:

truly profit first, you know, that's what gets pulled first out of the distribution.

350

:

And then it can still apply those fixed allocations within that.

351

:

So fine tuning, fine tuning.

352

:

But it was a bit of a shock of like, Oh, oops.

353

:

And then I was teasing Laura.

354

:

was like, cause you haven't read the book, man.

355

:

Can't read the book.

356

:

then you'll know.

357

:

We pay bills after we pay ourselves.

358

:

Which just sounds, this is like, I told you, my friend first told me about it.

359

:

It's like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

360

:

yeah.

361

:

It's usually Laura teasing me that I don't read the instructions.

362

:

So it's nice to have an opportunity for a change.

363

:

Accusing Laura of not knowing what we're doing.

364

:

But yeah.

365

:

Yeah.

366

:

up.

367

:

So the one thing that happened this week that was a bit in the last week, that was a bit

of a, well, it's just unplanned.

368

:

Never planned for this kind of thing.

369

:

And it's the first time I've really had this scenario, the Rookie's pumping out a bunch of

parts on the mill, switching parts out, jobs out to do one from like pedestal parts to

370

:

these F4 flanges we make.

371

:

And he was going to make stands for ATC pedestals.

372

:

the probe stand and I, I don't know.

373

:

I'm probably, it's some kind of weird thing I have, but I can hear weirdness in machines

so easily.

374

:

And I come into the mill room and I'm like, what's that hiss?

375

:

And he's like, I don't know you're talking about.

376

:

And I'm like, yeah, there's a, there's a new hiss.

377

:

And it's just like, you could call me annoying about it, but it's usually like useful.

378

:

Like that's a good, to me it's a good thing.

379

:

Hear it.

380

:

And I can't not hear it.

381

:

had to take a panel off the side of the mill.

382

:

the actuator that opens and closes the door to the ATC.

383

:

It's a big wheel and the door slides open with a piston, filled with chips.

384

:

And we go back to that saga of how poorly designed every mill and internal

385

:

area is it's either the door can't open because there's chips in it or like there's chips

stuck in the cable track so that's broken there had been so many chips stuck in this thing

386

:

that it had eventually packed into a place where it poked an airline and we didn't i mean

we should have probably i guess pulled it out it didn't even look like something you would

387

:

ever check is it just like this piece of sheet metal covering kind of the the airlines and

the

388

:

some wiring, I guess, probably for like sensors.

389

:

Yeah, I poked it out and it was just, just dump an air out.

390

:

that means for replacing all those airlines and the whole mill, I asked some Instamachine

as friends and they'll just pull the line up the slack out and, make it work.

391

:

This is a 10 year old machine.

392

:

They're like, replace all the lines.

393

:

And I was like,

394

:

Okay.

395

:

Yeah, it's the right thing, but it's like a hundred bucks of, of hose, eight mil.

396

:

And we got it from McMaster the next day.

397

:

So Ricky's doing that right now.

398

:

Trying to anyway, we haven't done it before.

399

:

Yeah, it's funny, think, what is it about us that makes us hear those noises?

400

:

Because I have exactly the same experience here.

401

:

I'll walk out into the shop and I'll be chatting to someone and then I'll just like, I'll

get distracted and stop focusing because I've heard an airline leaking and I'll just like

402

:

walk over to the shop and fiddle with the fitting and it's like, it stops.

403

:

Yeah, okay, cool.

404

:

What were you saying?

405

:

I, right.

406

:

I mean, I, the fan on the enclosure on the CNC router, computer was making a weird, loud

noise.

407

:

And I was like, dude, you hear that?

408

:

And he's like, no, I don't know.

409

:

He's like, he literally said to me that time.

410

:

I don't know if this was a joke or not.

411

:

He's like, he's like, we're pretty lucky.

412

:

We have your hearing around here.

413

:

And I was like, is that true or is that annoying?

414

:

Anyway.

415

:

That when the Kaiser guy was installing our, I think maybe it was a salesperson.

416

:

I'm sure it was a sales pitch to some degree, but.

417

:

And we're back.

418

:

The sales guy, I'm just gonna do this now.

419

:

Oh, 15 bucks.

420

:

I just like integrate that into my, into a 3D printed module.

421

:

I bet that'll work live all the time.

422

:

It's 480 pixels, that's enough res for your...

423

:

Just permanent, permanent potato cam.

424

:

Yeah, just bring it on.

425

:

Sorry.

426

:

like, we have these sophisticated microphones that will go through a shop.

427

:

And I think that the sales structure was pretty weird.

428

:

was like, for how much money we save you will like charge a percentage of it based on how

much air is being dumped out in leaky fittings and stuff.

429

:

But basically they can walk through a facility in here and, figure out where the leaks are

with some microphone array.

430

:

And I was like, that's pretty cool, like, I don't trust, know, it just felt a little bit

slimy sometimes.

431

:

Hmm

432

:

It cool to have the time to fiddle with, I would love the time and focus to fiddle with

raspberry pies and that sort of tech now that you can bake in AI into them and you can

433

:

build cool little widgets, I'm just imagining a little bot that is just a mic in the

workshop that's just listening.

434

:

So like...

435

:

give you a warning.

436

:

You know, you could give you a warning in the middle of the night of like, oh you've

popped an airline or your compressor's running when it shouldn't be or like, what's that

437

:

noise?

438

:

Oh, ba ba ba ba ba.

439

:

Right.

440

:

I mean, I don't know why you couldn't have some type.

441

:

mean, like so many like libraries now for like Arduino's or Raspberry Pi's that are just

right.

442

:

You just have like wanted Jack's precision.

443

:

I don't know if you follow them, but he just put in like this crazy, I want to call it,

maybe it's one 80 camera, but it's like either a set of cameras.

444

:

in like a security camera that's like probably one of those domes.

445

:

But he showed a view of it.

446

:

It's like right over his desk in the middle of the floor.

447

:

And you can see like wall to wall.

448

:

And then you can zoom in anywhere.

449

:

Like live.

450

:

It's like filming it all at once.

451

:

It's crazy.

452

:

Awesome.

453

:

Another shop update from us is the...

454

:

Tumbling.

455

:

I was at the local artist's market in town here on the weekend just with kids.

456

:

Well whole fam actually.

457

:

Wandering around getting hot and grumpy in the sun and the kids screaming because they

weren't getting ice cream.

458

:

And...

459

:

And we spotted...

460

:

We spotted this dude.

461

:

selling like timber polishes, beeswax timber polishes and I stopped and had a chat to him

and I described what I was doing with the tumbling of like these small timber parts and

462

:

blah blah blah, how I was having issues with the wax and Chatted looked at his products

and yeah, he recommended one particular flavor of this like beeswax polish that he had and

463

:

I bought a bottle of it and took it back and took it straight to the shop that afternoon

and

464

:

Molto bene it's beautiful.

465

:

Does such a good job.

466

:

What's good about it?

467

:

I think I just needed that consistency.

468

:

Like I had a hunch that I needed more of a liquid consistency rather than a solid wax and

sure enough, I cleaned out the tumbler barrel, melted out all the old wax and then just

469

:

put some parts in there from the new like flush bookends that we're making.

470

:

Just guessed how much product to slop in there and it's kind of less than you think

because it tumbles.

471

:

Somehow it covers all the surfaces.

472

:

I guess there's like millions of little interactions as it's tumbling around in there.

473

:

somehow magically coats every surface, gets into every nook and cranny and yeah, just

working really well.

474

:

So yeah, I think I've got a solution to tumbling and the pile of like, for the more

decorative parts, like the caps on the kidda parts that stays in there for a whole day,

475

:

tumbled around with some Scotch Brites or whatever you called them, you had a different

name for them.

476

:

Brillo pads, Brillo Scotch Brite, just a white Scotch Brite, which is like,

477

:

yeah.

478

:

Non-abrasive.

479

:

Yeah, success.

480

:

Happy.

481

:

Oh, Jesus.

482

:

I just saw a bill for a healthcare bill.

483

:

I need to stop looking at other things.

484

:

Inbox NoSkrull.

485

:

that's, I love, love how like, you know, what do they say about like honey, right?

486

:

It's like best when you get it locally.

487

:

So you can get like the, the allergy.

488

:

So you're just getting local beeswax solution from, does it actually made locally by the

guy?

489

:

Cool.

490

:

Amazing.

491

:

Right on brand, baby.

492

:

I know, right?

493

:

We have a lot of thoughts about, maybe we'll try to keep it short.

494

:

I don't know how much people enjoy listening to our AI babble, but I played a bit.

495

:

think we both have played a bit with Claude 3.7 and it definitely seems like an

improvement all the way around.

496

:

I can't say that it's like the thinking parts are blowing my mind yet.

497

:

I guess in a different version of that thought, not Claude, but I was on my phone watching

my child the other morning and, you know, multitasking as he is playing with some blocks.

498

:

And I was like, I need to find those screws we're going to use for those dust boot plates.

499

:

And, love McMaster, but they do this thing where they like strip out.

500

:

all the product labeling so that you're kind of stuck ordering from them, which they do a

great service.

501

:

But when you're buying production quantities of things, these screws were almost 20 cents

a piece and we need like 20 per each assembly.

502

:

And I was like, that's a lot for screws.

503

:

So I took a photo of the front of the box, which has no branding, just some like

production batch numbers and like

504

:

not even really a skew.

505

:

And I put that on my phone into GPT and I said, I need to find these screws.

506

:

They're 424, 3 8's long.

507

:

I can't find them anywhere else.

508

:

I would need to order a lot of them.

509

:

And there was a new button that said deep research.

510

:

And I was like, oh, well that seems like exactly what I need right now.

511

:

I need you to deeply research this for me.

512

:

It actually asked me one clarifying question.

513

:

I answered that and it's like, all right, I'll let you know when I'm done.

514

:

And 10 minutes later, had found, went through 60 sources.

515

:

It found me six different places I could buy them.

516

:

It found me the company that had patented those screws and then where other distributors

were, including some very common ones that I would have never found because they have

517

:

terrible internet presence.

518

:

And like, it's not searchable.

519

:

I didn't have a skew.

520

:

I was like shocked that it was that good.

521

:

Like that it found all that for me and made it very easy to then purchase.

522

:

Cool.

523

:

Pretty impressive, So that's the OpenAI deep research function.

524

:

Yeah.

525

:

know if I can even do it.

526

:

Can you do it on the, it's right there, yeah.

527

:

On the desktop app there.

528

:

It seems like now there's a limit.

529

:

says I have eight available until March 28th.

530

:

Okay, yeah, I haven't tried it at all.

531

:

I've kind of been have barely used open AI I did I turned off my subscription again, so

kind of I've hobbled myself in that department I'm all in sim theory at the moment, but um

532

:

yeah Cool cool cool cool.

533

:

I did you know I had a good example like with row who's building the ps2 The moment like

we were sitting down

534

:

last week trying to nut out this like tuning problem with the stepper motor and my

response to everything at the moment is I'll just build an agent which will help us with

535

:

this spin up another agent in sim theory train it on train it on some stepper motor basics

fed it some spec sheets and then started asking questions about this you know very

536

:

specific tuning question that Ro had

537

:

Yeah.

538

:

And it was a great example of when you know nothing about the subject area, how opaque or

how unverifiable the results are.

539

:

Like I was standing at my desk on my computer with my agent, but Ro was the one sort of

prompting and then was spitting out these responses, which looked great and comprehensive

540

:

and blah, but like, I'm like, look, it's over to you now.

541

:

Like I don't, can't look at this and tell.

542

:

whether any of this is useful or true or like yeah I guess we're just not at that point

where we can trust it to that extent

543

:

Yeah, I guess what do you do like use another AI to verify the first one?

544

:

yeah, maybe.

545

:

You call a professional, hey, my AI is saying this.

546

:

Can you make sure that it's right?

547

:

they'd love that one there, You are just a verification tool now.

548

:

I'm sorry.

549

:

But we're going to get those calls, you know, right?

550

:

Like I'm trying to get my CNC to run.

551

:

I'm trying to make these plywood parts.

552

:

but yeah, look, Claude 3.7, Sonnet 3.7, whatever it's called.

553

:

I've used it heaps in cursor this week.

554

:

I've, it seems great.

555

:

it's very impressive at single-shutting projects.

556

:

I gave it just a few, perhaps unfair tests.

557

:

I gave it the whole Kitterparts configurator project and said, Hey, can you just

558

:

Rebuild this from scratch, but make it mobile friendly buddy bar and it did it had a great

attempt at it I was really impressed with Wasn't particularly functional was like oh,

559

:

that's pretty good.

560

:

It's like a single shot But then the more I worked with it.

561

:

I'd started very quickly started going around in circles, so it's not like mind-blown oh

my god, this is like Ten times better than 3.5, but it does seem pretty solid and

562

:

impressive

563

:

But yeah, we'll see.

564

:

We'll see how it progresses, I suppose.

565

:

Your camera's gone funny.

566

:

Cameraman, you're here.

567

:

You want to just stay there?

568

:

It's Vaseline mode.

569

:

Ridiculous.

570

:

It takes my like complete concentration away every time it happens.

571

:

I know, It's like, I'm very familiar with this.

572

:

It's like having a toddler.

573

:

It's like trying to have a conversation with an adult with a toddler at your feet.

574

:

It's just like constant resets.

575

:

So it feels very normal to me.

576

:

Yeah, yeah.

577

:

I did use Clawed 3.7 to save 350 bucks a year on a Shopify app that I've now deleted.

578

:

annual subscription was due the next day and I was like, oh yeah, I really don't like that

app and I don't want to pay another 350 bucks.

579

:

Let's just entirely replace that functionality.

580

:

Um, and it took me about an hour and I coded up a new review app and it's for the website.

581

:

Implemented it, rolled it out.

582

:

on the front page.

583

:

turned off the Shopify app, walked away.

584

:

Haven't rolled it onto the product pages yet, but that's just on my to-do list for next

week.

585

:

You seriously, dude, I need to do that.

586

:

Can you sell me that, that subscription now?

587

:

Can you start selling this?

588

:

Cause I need this, I need this too.

589

:

I've built it in a kind of dumb way and I now then have to build a system for myself to

ensure that I ask for reviews.

590

:

Like I'll build a little automation, whatever reminder of like to ensure that I'm

soliciting reviews from customers.

591

:

But in terms of the actual output on the website, I'm much happier with how it looks and

how it works.

592

:

so yeah, but it was a bit of a no brainer.

593

:

Did you hear that?

594

:

You did?

595

:

Okay.

596

:

I was trying to make something.

597

:

That's good.

598

:

That's not what I wanted.

599

:

Hmm.

600

:

We shall try this.

601

:

yeah, that's, that's amazing.

602

:

I, that's, as you were describing that I was going from really impressed in like, that's

so cool.

603

:

I also have a review app that I don't really love.

604

:

And yeah, they all end up being decently costly and it's like an email sender.

605

:

And then it presents stars and.

606

:

Sometimes photos if even people even do that, but it is important in terms of What do they

call that like social, you know trust in?

607

:

That you have if you haven't made them up like you completely make all of them up and

nobody would ever know Except for you get sued eventually

608

:

But just to be devil's advocate, I was thinking like, well now you have hamstrung this

tool a bit, and is that now worth the $350 a year and your time to have done this and to

609

:

deal with it going forward?

610

:

And I think it is.

611

:

I think you could probably make it better

612

:

And I hate those subscriptions too, that like they're a little tacked on things to Shopify

that like, I don't really want to pay that, but I don't know.

613

:

Like how long is it going to take you?

614

:

And you're pretty good at following up, guess, but like, will you finish that out and get

the rest of it tackled?

615

:

Yeah, yeah, I'm confident that I will.

616

:

And I've got a pretty tight sort of job closeout function in Airtable where I can see like

who I've asked for a review, what their feedback was, things like that.

617

:

So I'm confident that with a few zaps, a few automations and stuff that I'll be able to

close out the loop.

618

:

pretty seamlessly without making too much extra work for myself.

619

:

But you're right, it's only 350 bucks.

620

:

if I value my time at, my quoting time, I haven't checked these stats for a while, but

like last time I calculated this, like I worked out what I can quote per hour if I've got

621

:

leads sitting there and then what my conversion rate is and like in that sort of...

622

:

rough sense, you know, I'm worth thousands of dollars an hour to the company to be just

focused in quoting.

623

:

And so

624

:

Yeah.

625

:

Yeah.

626

:

I don't mean to like downplay it.

627

:

just, just made me think about it.

628

:

It's a point because you know, what's that $350 worth?

629

:

It's, know, maybe 20 minutes of my time or something in terms of what I can generate for

revenue.

630

:

So yeah, it's a tricky one to balance.

631

:

features and stuff, that's better than what it was.

632

:

And a lot of these are tiered based on use.

633

:

like, when I first started using the one we have now.

634

:

It, I think we got 50 email sends a month and we're now pretty far over that.

635

:

So I just have a portion of them that don't get asked to review, which I know like I get

annoyed by the review things too, but it's like.

636

:

Hmm.

637

:

does convert and it does.

638

:

It's always amazing.

639

:

It's just amazing.

640

:

If you ever think, and you're not somebody that sells something you think that marketing

emails don't work.

641

:

Well, they do.

642

:

Like, even if they're annoying, they almost always convert some amount of dollars.

643

:

And even if, even if, even if you don't even put a link to purchase in there and somehow

you found a way to track it, it's like over the

644

:

15 years I've been selling stuff on the internet.

645

:

like people will click back to your website and find a way or it reminds them that you

exist.

646

:

You just muted yourself.

647

:

Just down theory.

648

:

you

649

:

Yeah, I...

650

:

shush.

651

:

Not you, Siri was talking to me.

652

:

Yeah, they do convert and yeah, I'm always torn about sending the EDMs and I forget to do

it.

653

:

I think I have a lot of internal resistance about sending those sorts of marketing emails.

654

:

I got one yesterday actually, which quite impressed me.

655

:

And maybe this is like a trend in marketing emails that's happening now that I'm unaware

of.

656

:

But it was completely plain text, like it just looked like a personalized, an actual

personalized email because it just looked like a normal email.

657

:

There were no embedded images.

658

:

There was one hyperlink to click through to whatever the promotion was.

659

:

And I was like, oh, that actually got my attention.

660

:

Like I opened that email because it looked like a normal email and I read it because it

looked like a normal email.

661

:

And I was like, oh, that's kind of smart.

662

:

I like that.

663

:

It's not shiny.

664

:

Yeah.

665

:

Right.

666

:

Yeah.

667

:

I struggled to just make emails simple.

668

:

And the problem for anybody that gets our emails, you'll see this as I duplicate the most

recent email.

669

:

And I'm like, well, there's all this good stuff in here.

670

:

I don't want to lose it for if when I need it.

671

:

And then some just fricking put too much crap in an email.

672

:

I need to spend a better, spend my time better, I guess on that.

673

:

see if this works.

674

:

that is bad.

675

:

That's not what I wanted.

676

:

So I,

677

:

that.

678

:

I can do that voiceover for you Justin.

679

:

Here we go.

680

:

Improvement of the week.

681

:

Perfect.

682

:

That's exactly what we needed.

683

:

Yeah.

684

:

It's better than the 11 labs voice generator.

685

:

just used, something that had driven me crazy for the entire time.

686

:

I've had this shop is the, it's a nice place.

687

:

It's got a heater in the main shop.

688

:

It's just like a big gas heater keeps it just what we need.

689

:

I've got a heater in my office that keeps the office.

690

:

The bathroom has no heater.

691

:

So we keep the door open overnight to hopefully ambiently heat the bathroom, which is

annoying.

692

:

It's not a very big room.

693

:

But then I get here in the morning and it's not warm enough and I need to, you know, do my

normal routine and it's freezing cold in there and it drove me crazy.

694

:

was like, why am I using the restroom in 55 degree weather?

695

:

So I just put a heater in the bathroom this week.

696

:

So stupid.

697

:

55 degrees, 12 degrees, okay.

698

:

58 degrees, let's say.

699

:

Yeah.

700

:

Yeah, yeah.

701

:

That's not that cold.

702

:

It's an event where you gotta have a decent amount of your body exposed and that makes it

worse.

703

:

Okay, no, no, I won't be dismissive of your...

704

:

your so-called cold weather.

705

:

are we talking about?

706

:

That's not cold to you?

707

:

This sounds like a regular, cool, central Victorian morning, but sure.

708

:

yeah, yeah, yeah.

709

:

it's just a cold doney, mate.

710

:

Get used to it.

711

:

Honey, just learned that on Bluey and I was gonna ask you about it.

712

:

Is this like derogatory in some way?

713

:

Like mom didn't like the word on Bluey.

714

:

nothing wrong with Danny, it's just a bit, you know, ocker.

715

:

like Aaron and I were trying to take whether or not that meant like Christmas vacation and

he says, clean it out the shitter.

716

:

It's like, is it like calling it the shitter?

717

:

No, that's a bit...

718

:

well, to my ears that's a bit more like abrasive and obnoxious.

719

:

Yeah, to my delicate ears anyway.

720

:

Improvement of the week.

721

:

Look, it really just has to come down to the fact that I sealed the table tennis table

with some clear coat finally.

722

:

That's the most important and pressing shop improvement that needed to be done.

723

:

Yeah.

724

:

Right.

725

:

What was the thing you posted about on the walls?

726

:

Were they like vinyl records?

727

:

was wondering if that would make sense to anybody else.

728

:

No, they were table tennis rubbers.

729

:

So you know, the rubber that you buy and apply to your bat.

730

:

Okay, okay.

731

:

Collect them all

732

:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

733

:

I have to stop buying table tennis rubbers running out of money.

734

:

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

735

:

Yeah.

736

:

Well, if you're watching this, I'm sorry about my camera.

737

:

We'll get that fixed.

738

:

I'm looking at cameras currently.

739

:

Use some of the profit of this podcast.

740

:

It's gonna be great.

741

:

Yes.

742

:

Yes.

743

:

show you sympathy with some Vaseline on my lens.

744

:

Look, I can do it now.

745

:

This will be a nice little closing gesture.

746

:

I don't have Vaseline on my desk, I promise.

747

:

yeah, look at that.

748

:

It's beautiful.

749

:

that's so, that hurts a little bit.

750

:

Daddy.

751

:

Yeah, perfect sync.

752

:

my god.

753

:

my god.

754

:

We just synced with the sound.

755

:

That was crazy.

756

:

I gotta end on that.

757

:

I just got some on my face.

758

:

dear.

759

:

Ugh, I'm tired.

760

:

My video's still not working.

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About the Podcast

Show artwork for Parts Department
Parts Department
Justin Brouillette (Portland CNC) and Jem Freeman (Like Butter) discuss CNC machines, their product design and manufacturing businesses, and every kind of tool that they fancy.

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About your hosts

Profile picture for Jem Freeman

Jem Freeman

Co-founder and director of Like Butter, a CNC focussed timber design and manufacturing business in their purpose-built solar-powered workshop. Castlemaine, VIC, Australia.
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Justin Brouillette

Owner of PDX CNC