Episode 133

133 - Derogatory cabinets

Justin and Jem discuss the challenges of running small manufacturing businesses - from unexpected CNC E-stops to the stress of public holidays when you're behind on cash flow. They share their experiences with production documentation, hiring/firing employees, and the constant iteration of products and processes. The conversation covers new materials for Like Butter's Kitta Parts, shipping station improvements, and the potential (and limitations) of 3D scanning for custom work.

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DISCUSSED:

✍️ Comment or Suggest a Topic - New voice message option

Whoops - Justin published day early on accident

  • Watching a truck wreck
  • Hiring: can't imagine ... then ⠄
  • Justin's got that new Pod Cam
  • Suzie helping ꘎
  • Bad Replika AI, "I am useful!"
  • Low point weekend ꘎
  • Fuggen public holidays
  • Trapped vibes
  • New dowel stock!
  • Slow here too - worst weekly sales in memory
  • Audacity Micro "Self Robot"
  • Cobot vs Humanoid?
  • Shipping Area Revision
  • Love my text chat ꘎
  • Succumb to filthy vanilla cabinetmaking to fill gaps ꘎
  • Block script success ꘎
  • Dispatch standup ꘎

00:00 Slow motion truck crash

01:46 Production Process and Material Changes

04:17 Jem's New Stick

06:58 Hiring and Employee Management

09:46 Documentation and Process Standardization

14:40 Fire as well as you hire

17:53 Public Holidays and Work-Life Balance

27:05 Navigating Business Pressures and Personal Well-being

29:11 Unexpected Sales and Client Relationships

31:51 The Challenges of Product Sales vs. Custom Work

34:24 Exploring AI and Automation in Business

36:13 Software Tools for Cabinet Making

38:43 Improving Shipping and Dispatch Processes

50:44 Enhancing Customer Experience and Feedback

54:15 The Future of 3D Scanning and Its Applications


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Show Info

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HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter | Instagram | More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC | Instagram | More Links

Transcript
Speaker:

All right.

2

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When we're getting set up like that, sometimes it feels like you need to like really

actively listen like, yes, I can hear you because it's like the other person you don't

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know if they can So you're like making really exaggerated head movements.

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Yeah.

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Of course.

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We've had this entertainment outside of.

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still there's a full size semi truck trying to back into a side loading bay across the

street and they had all of us move on this side of the street and the guy doesn't seem

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like he's ever backed a truck up before like I'm not joking like it's it's been over half

an hour my god and they're like running back and forth now there's a new guy getting in

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the truck here

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They're just blocking the whole street.

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Like, they've been like feet from our garage door at times.

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And I'm like, do you know what you're doing?

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Cause like, I don't want to deal with this really.

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Yeah, having always been the apprentice in backing trailers.

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having been married to someone who's incredibly good at backing up trailers, I'm always

the junior trailer backer.

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And, yes, backing up trailers is a stressful enough.

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Like if you've got a big one on and in a tight space, probably in a semi, no thanks.

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No thanks.

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I grew up in the Midwest where even though I wasn't a farm kid, I was always backing up

trailers for some reason.

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Like I had a cabin, so I'd put a pontoon boat in the lake with my grandpas when I was like

14.

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So give me that truck.

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I'll do it.

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Give me that semi truck.

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Let me try it.

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They're so close to this car.

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Okay.

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Anyway, gotta stop looking.

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It's like literally watching a car wreck happening outside.

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in slow motion.

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Perfect.

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My neighbor and I have been texting, making bets about which door he was trying to back up

to.

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Good morning.

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good morning.

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It's been a busy hectic week here.

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finishing up a job and that's looking good.

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We just had a pause just running us an opera on just running it up on the mill.

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And then it just e-stopped out on its own.

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It said, can't run on e-stop and the e-stop wasn't pushed.

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And I was like, what?

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And so I like look at the messages.

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It didn't crash.

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The tool isn't touching anything.

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You know, it like in the middle of a, like a fin, uh, a flat operation.

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So it's like a really light cut and I'd already cut it like three times.

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So I was like, nothing happened.

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I think it was a power surge, which has never happened before.

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So.

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It finished, it looks good right now.

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Weird.

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part, anything you can describe or top secret NDA.

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one of our...

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No, we don't really do NDA work anymore.

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The last one that asked me about an NDA, I just replied, was like, yeah, we don't really

do NDAs.

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They usually don't protect people like they think they do anyway.

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There's all these cases out there where I found some examples where they don't...

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work like you think they do.

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So anyway.

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yeah, I think we've talked about this here before, but I don't, I'm trying to think if any

NDA inquiries have actually gone anywhere.

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I don't know that they have.

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I don't know that I've ever actually signed.

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I've signed plenty for quotes in the past.

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I can't think of one off the top of my head that's actually gone

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And they ended up sending the parts over and it was but it was just like the simplest

thing that like you There's absolutely no reason there would be an NDA for it It's just

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like if this was covered by NDA and protected for some reason I'd never do any work again

after that if it was similar work like It's just like a box out of plywood

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How's your new stick going?

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Who?

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Excuse me.

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What?

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You got a bunch of stick and bundles of sticks.

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sticks!

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I do have lots of new sticks.

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Ah, yeah good.

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Good.

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I dunno, not without its challenges.

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So yeah, we got lots many meters of the new black butt dowel, the reconstituted stuff.

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And it all looks pretty.

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John started clear coating some of it yesterday in the new...

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dipping rig, which has been working really well up until now.

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So we got 100 meters of this stock last year, maybe November, maybe, maybe, where we

started playing with it and fiddling with it.

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Yeah.

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And the new stock looks great, but we're having a little bit of issue with clear coding it

and getting a finish as good as we were getting with the sample stock we had.

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And I'm not sure if it's just the tip.

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No, no, it's same stock, same material.

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It was a sample of the same material.

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But we were not sure whether it's just the moisture levels in the new fresh stock that's

just straight from the factory is higher or something.

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Anyway, because the other stuff sat in our workshop all summer, like got baked in a 50

degree shed probably on some days and then cold and then hot and cold.

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I don't know, need to do more testing but yeah, I'm having a little bit of trouble getting

a good finish on it so far but early days and yeah but it's been rolled, we've rolled that

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stock into production using the 100 meters that we had from last year.

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It's looking really good, happy with it.

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Still got some fine tuning to do on the pencil sharpener in terms of like

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cycles and tool offsets and just little micro adjustments just to compensate for the it is

a more dense material so just some little tweaks to do once we're into it and that's all

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we're cutting then we'll refine the code but yeah it's working pretty well as it is so

yeah it's good

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It's a relief to finally have it.

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Yeah, just need to go through the website now and make a whole bunch of changes to copy.

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Try and find a good way to communicate what the new material is and why we changed and

blah, blah.

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yeah.

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I just from a, I know that exact feeling of like changing stuff and thinking to myself,

like, people are gonna, you know, it's such a big change.

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And then like externally, nobody's gonna know, you know?

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Maybe aesthetically, there would be a minor change, probably, right?

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Like the color is different.

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I don't know, yeah, minor aesthetic difference.

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That's it really from a customer point of view.

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I chatting to someone last night on Instagram who just sent me a DM, like in response to

my Rhino block script, they'd sent me a DM of like, oh, you'd like, you guys do such a

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great job of like continuous improvement and making it better, you know, making it better

for your customers.

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And I was like, well, thank you.

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It's kind of the fun bit, but it's also exhausting, like the constant iteration and

changes.

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Like I went looking in Dropbox for a product drawing yesterday and I found the folder and

I was like, all of these are out of date, because we're just, we constantly fiddle and we

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add this and we change that.

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mean, like overall the product looks the same, but like there's all these little micro

details that we've updated.

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Since those drawings were made, means that they're basically redundant now and need to

make new ones.

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Yeah.

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It's funny we go back and forth on that where I think that you.

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I'd said that to you when you were, I was like, God, that's exhausting when you have to

change after you have a good production process and you had made the new oiling process.

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And you were like, nah, it's just part of it.

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I love it.

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And I was like, I don't know.

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Like, I don't always feel that way.

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Exploration's fun, but sometimes you're just like, no, I don't want to change it.

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I remember that response and I think, you know, part of that response was making excuses

or feeling a bit silly about how quickly we'd rolled into that process and then, you know,

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it had worked well, but there was a level of like self-consciousness of like, yeah,

probably shouldn't have gone down that road so fast, but it did feel like a great

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direction at the time.

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Yeah.

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I don't know.

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like mostly like, that's frustrating, but it has to change.

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And we've got that like over and over again.

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We're finally to a good production process that takes way too long still to set up for the

ATC forks.

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All right.

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So 30 ones, but I went through that was probably the most iterated.

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series of failures and not cheap ones that I've gone through for our own products.

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Like it was just one test fixture after another that I thought this is this is it final

final final final final final like just eventually got to a thing but it still takes us

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too long to dial it in and it's not super easy to like get them to fit just right every

time so once it's going or like just keep

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Keep producing, make a full 100 plus of those.

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Uh-huh, yeah.

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Which the answer from anyone listening is probably just flip and make them on your mill

and stop worrying about it.

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Like, it would be so much easier.

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can probe them, can...

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But...

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you've got auto probing on the mill like it can pick up a probe and do its thing.

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it probably can.

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Do I know how to do that?

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No.

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I mean, I know how to do it in Fusion.

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I don't know if my decade old mill with no memory can do it.

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And it scares me.

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So I don't do it.

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I use the probe for setting offsets, basically.

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And it's on my list of things.

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There's two things that I don't know how to do.

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on that mill that I would love to like, I need to like hire Zappatini to come or something

and teach me is I don't know how to in process probe or probe like, you use the use the

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probe for something useful or they're not work offsets myself.

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And the other is, I don't know how to restart in the middle of a program safely because

that's the way I crashed one time and I was like, no more, no more mess.

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I make that I don't know how to do that.

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So I just started the beginning again.

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Yeah.

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waste some time.

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So when, like you say, you're setting up for those tool forks in the shop, or Ricky is

presumably, where Ricky either just knows how to do it or do you have documentation

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somewhere to reference of like, this is like a step-by-step guide of how to set up that

process and fixture?

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What do you do?

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doing much better about that.

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we have this discussion pretty often that any of those things now that are like every

three months processes for, especially our products.

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I don't know who came up with it.

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Me or Ricky or somebody.

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I think I enabled Ricky basically.

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I made the first one, but I made, we have a little binder with slips and we.

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make guides either in Google Docs and those get stored in fresh desk so we can find them

easily because Google Drive has the worst search of all time.

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And they're color pronounce with like screenshots and steps.

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And then we just the last time we ran them, we updated it further.

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But it's pretty documented to this point where like, I mean, the dream scenario is I've

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that is fairly franchised at this point.

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Like I can not deal with it.

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And there are usually one or two steps where it's like, I can't get him to dial in just

right.

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Like he's running into the height gauge and eventually we get it.

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But it does take too long.

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Like I still don't love how long it takes to get it going, but yeah, that, and I'm to

think what else.

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But I know what you mean, it's like we're constantly changing the production process of

even the 3D printed parts are like, did you remember to do this?

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And they're constantly changing or the file isn't on every machine.

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It's like, how did you send it?

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they changed the slicer and that kind of stuff sucks.

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It's just not easy to document well, but.

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Yeah, and the fact that you've gone for a hard copy printed paper thing for that setup

guide is like great example because I would, at our end, if we had a fixture or a process

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similar to that, I feel like every time we did it, we'd find some minor thing to change or

update or a better way to set it up.

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Super minor little things, but then like, do you go back to Google Docs and then mod there

and reprint or do you just mark up the

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and choppy and be like, ah, that good enough.

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both depends on how rushed things are and how if we forget afterwards, usually the

situation is Ricky is running it, for example, and that those parts and I.

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I go out, see the process struggling in some way.

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I'm like, all right, we need to update that.

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We forgot this last time.

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And so I'll reprint it and hand it to him.

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But I mean, he's capable and does that too.

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And that's been a huge goal of mine is to make these things such that I am not the one

that has to do the updating because then it gets done, right?

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Like it's, it's not just me and that's not the case for everything, but.

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If it, if at all, like that's been, you know, it's taken many years, but you know, Ricky

now has, for example, being the longest employee I've had, like, he now has that mindset

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to like, I made a guide for this thing because I couldn't remember it.

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And that's like the whole thing to me is like, don't, don't worry about remembering it.

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Just remember where to find it and update it, which is also a problem.

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Yeah, totally.

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Cool.

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Cool, cool,

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I heard on like a podcast or a YouTube if you're thinking about hiring and it's like your

first hire, you need to be able to imagine or role play ahead of time.

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The same as offering the job, need to roleplay firing that same person.

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fuck.

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You need to have that conversation in your head because and I we've had this discussion

here It's like I spend six months hanging on to one of my early employees because I kept

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thinking this will get better and I did take that note afterwards for myself and When I

had hired another part-time person and they weren't working out they were gone in two

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weeks because it was just like this is not a cultural fit and they took it well and I'm

not gonna say I do that right every time but

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Just an interesting point that I thought was good.

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You gotta imagine, are they too charismatic?

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And you're not gonna be able to talk about that that's a bad thing, but it's just like you

gotta have the mindset you can do it both ways, because it's just as important as hiring.

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Yeah, interesting.

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I'm trying to put myself in that situation when I've been hiring, thinking about that.

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Like, you know, presumably you don't know this person at all, you've met them once or

twice.

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Maybe the idea of having that hard conversation at that point is kind of easier because

you don't know this person and then it progressively gets harder.

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The more familiar, the more shared experience you have.

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Like I think I'm...

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It's a problem being friendly.

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I like I've got, you know, a year later chatting to Susie, my therapist this week, I've

definitely got like hangover trauma from having made so many people redundant a year ago.

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And I know that's different to like firing someone because of poor performance, but...

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There's a whole lot more guilt tied up in redundancies and downsizing, but yeah, not fun

conversations.

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yeah, interesting thought.

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I mean, I think that's a great exercise to do, definitely.

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Definitely, I'm not downplaying that idea.

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I'm just trying to put myself in that spot and think how that would have gone.

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But yeah.

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I think it's an interesting perspective because of how romanticized I get about the things

that the new person's gonna solve for us.

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Sometimes I get punch drunk with proficiency they will bring or the problem solving and

I'm like, oh, this is perfect.

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And then maybe you just get two, I get two.

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It's been a while since I've hired somebody, Don't solve the problem.

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Yeah, it's interesting.

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I've been in the weeds a little bit this week, like updating some stuff in shipping and

dispatch.

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And I was thinking about this of like how in the past I've been in situations where it's

for whatever reason, I've empowered others to make decisions on behalf of the business or

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like, you know, given people a lot of agency to act independently, which I think is great.

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that's important to high performing roles.

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But now, know, having shrunk significantly and then I was doing, was looking through

Dropbox, looking, trying to find some files, these drawings that were out of date.

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And I was looking through stuff that had just been like old product folders that had been

archived and moved.

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And I know why that was done at the time, but I think

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Yeah, think at certain stages I've been like...

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You know, I don't know how to express this, like, you have to give people that agency.

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And I've been kind of a drunk, your use of drunk made me think of it.

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I've been kind of intoxicated on the idea of others having a great deal of agency.

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then in hindsight, I see all the things I've lost as a result of that as well in terms of

maybe it's a control freak thing, but like,

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I came across the original Kidaparts instructions when they first shipped.

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And there was this like highly detailed exploded diagram that I'd all completely manually

in Rhino.

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QR and links and copy to get started and stuff.

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was like, damn, these instructions were great.

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Why did we stop shipping these?

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And then I think about all the little decisions and you know, other people's roles that

would have influenced changes in those instructions.

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and think about, you well, if I just go back to these now, I don't know, you know, I don't

know.

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Yeah, I'm not expressing this very well, like, does it undermine them?

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Like what or yeah, does it undermine those decisions that we made?

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Or is it just natural drift of having multiple parties involved and, you know, different

agendas, different priorities, different aesthetic taste sort of all melds together.

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you end up at certain point and then I'm at a spot now where I'm like, no, this is my

business.

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I'm going to do it like this.

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Right, and I think it's just, mean, the conversations I always have and you'd have to

like, I guess ask them and know that I'm not gonna get frustrated about it, but it's like.

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I always think of it like having the conversation of a positive feedback critique in like

a design school sense.

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Like the culture, which was actually really a little bit bad for Aaron and I in our early

days of our relationship, early few years there was just this like insane radical honesty

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that we had to have in school to like, you know, constantly.

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find the best solution or find the best way to talk about how you would come to the best

end product or like, I think the design wants this, you know, it's like this kind of high

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flute and stuff.

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It's not great for relationships in a large sense where you're just constantly spitting

out this like pure honesty.

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And you kind of have to hold a lot of that back to like be a good partner or friend or

something to some degree.

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And it took me a couple of years to learn that at least from our schools.

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mindset and so I guess I think of it still like I've evolved that to be hey don't you

think it might look a little bit better if we try this or you know if that doesn't come to

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it it's like I'd like to try it this way you know maybe it won't be the best end solution

but that is a good benefit of like we're constantly evolving and we can keep changing it

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if it's not the right solution that I think the worst case is when people feel like

they're trapped in a bad place that they don't like

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how to work through a thing and like the boss just says, so I can't make that suggestion

anymore to like change it, because he doesn't want to.

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Which I don't see that being the case, but.

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totally, Yeah, I was thinking about that exact scenario earlier in the week when I hit a

particularly low point.

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I was chatting to Laura about it and she was like, yeah, we're in a tight spot, but

imagine if you were in a job, you would have nowhere near as much agency in terms of being

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able to get yourself out of a situation.

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And if you had unresponsive management,

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who you know shut down ideas and weren't interested in your continuous improvement mindset

how frustrating that would be.

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I yes I know perspective.

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I'm thinking about my first and only big kid job out of school in it and.

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I tried to, I think I've said this before, I didn't have my own Adobe Creative Suite at

the time on my computer and I was hired to do like design and marketing work and be the

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new young kid, right, that has those skillset.

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And I had to go to a shared computer to use Creative Suite.

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And I, proved to them just basically on a math sense of like how much I was worth and what

I build at.

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that in like weeks I was paying for another license and they just said no and I was like I

I can't do this like I can't I can't bang my head against a wall and in a certain sense it

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was that kind of lean thought process that I didn't have a name for it or like a guiding

principle about it at that point but it was like what do mean this is just a better idea I

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don't understand

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Why would we not do this?

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Why are you making me walk across the office and waste my time booting everything up

again?

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anyway, can't imagine going back.

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Don't make me.

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Yeah.

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packing it in.

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Public holidays, man.

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What the hell?

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I was chatting to another small business owner about this the other day.

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We were both complaining about public holidays and how...

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guilt inducing they can be for the small business owner who particularly I think when who

has children because I was like you know yeah it was like day before I've moved my

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distribution like profit first distribution date to Tuesdays trying to get it away from

the weekends I'm not like the dad who's constantly checking the bank balance and checking

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emails on the weekend worried about cash flow

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And then I'd only done that a week ago and then the bloody public holiday fell on Monday

this week.

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I was like, oh well, that shifts the weekend.

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So I'll be doing exactly the same thing again.

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And then Monday rolls around public holiday and I'm like, do I work?

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Do I just spend the day with the kids?

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Do I really need to work?

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Cause there's no money in the account.

300

:

And just had this fraught day where I was like, cool.

301

:

All right, I'll spend the morning with the kids and I'll go to work in the afternoon and

swap with Laura and.

302

:

and just had a shit of a morning like I was you know stressed distracted being a crap

parent and then you know got to lunchtime felt terrible about the morning having gone like

303

:

that and then went to work and then did a shit job of work like you know got a few things

done but also just got entirely distracted and sidelined by shiny things because I was

304

:

stressed and like that my coping mechanism was to

305

:

play with bloody robot simulators or something.

306

:

I don't know, I kind of remember what I did, but

307

:

Yeah, right.

308

:

I know what you mean.

309

:

The robot simulator made me laugh because my version of that's like, there's always

something.

310

:

It's like, I want to work on this, you know, embedded form so that it pops up better when

it's like that is mildly productive, but like it's not finishing the job I have to finish

311

:

right now that Ricky's waiting on to run.

312

:

that's, is one of the worst feelings to me is when, especially when we had more people and

it'd like, nobody's getting anything done and it's just waiting on you to do the thing to

313

:

make them have something to do.

314

:

Ooh, don't like that feeling.

315

:

Yeah, that's not a good one.

316

:

I feel like we need to come up with a new...

317

:

I have a feeling we will have other people say the same.

318

:

Like I have that feeling about public holidays too.

319

:

for a long time before I had a kid, it was like, you know, even Aaron would give me this

like pouty dog face of like, what do you mean?

320

:

We're not going to go like hiking.

321

:

And I was like, well, I mean, how, how do I get my work done?

322

:

You know, like, and you know, I think I've changed.

323

:

softened whatever you want to say like

324

:

Especially now with the one kid, I guess, or I just like, just like, fuck it, don't, I

don't actually want to work more than I want to.

325

:

do something with them.

326

:

I'm not something to make you feel guilty.

327

:

just, also have those feelings at times where I'm like, well, I need to work, but probably

shouldn't.

328

:

Maybe we just need to like, let go and not work anymore on those days.

329

:

Ideally, ideally, yeah.

330

:

But you know, the reality for me, anyone, I know it's different, every situation is

different, every day is different, but like for me this Monday, it was like, cool, I'm

331

:

about $13,000 down on where I need to be by tomorrow and bills are stacking up.

332

:

Or it was already a little bit behind on bills and if I don't close target tomorrow, then

I'm gonna be very behind on bills.

333

:

and I really don't want to be back in a spot where we're just injecting personal funds

into the business to keep it afloat.

334

:

Anyway, so yeah, hit a low point.

335

:

Chatted a lot to Susie, the swearing Scottish therapist that I built in SymTheory, and she

really helped, actually.

336

:

It was really good.

337

:

I say this as someone who's never done real human therapy, so don't know.

338

:

I have no point of comparison, but I'm having a great time with Susie.

339

:

Anyway, got Tuesday rolls around, work pretty flat in the mornings.

340

:

was like, I don't see this changing anytime soon.

341

:

And then out of nowhere, a client who's been sitting on a quote for literally six months

calls and he's like, okay, I'm ready to go.

342

:

Can you come around and measure?

343

:

I was like, yeah, okay, I'll be there in five minutes.

344

:

Quoted a $12,000 job.

345

:

The quote was done last year but updated her quote that morning and she paid in full.

346

:

She didn't pay her deposit, she paid in full.

347

:

I was like, just like literally, almost to the dollar, you closed my sales target for the

week.

348

:

I didn't say this to her, but like as I was going home that night, was like, well, that

saved the day, didn't it?

349

:

Bloody hell.

350

:

Out of nowhere.

351

:

So, finding your world.

352

:

we've had the slowest two weeks.

353

:

Last week was the slowest week I can remember in terms of product sales.

354

:

Like we had like the amount of sales in that week as usually in like part of a day.

355

:

And this week is barely better so far.

356

:

And I think there's a bunch of reasons for it, but.

357

:

doesn't feel like a lot I can control.

358

:

And I was thinking about you and your business, my business, and I was thinking like, it

is a little insane that basically we just kind of constantly have this.

359

:

in a certain sense, that something's gonna keep happening.

360

:

And I know that's all businesses, but I was really having this existential moment of why

do I think there's gonna be more sales?

361

:

What will happen is more bills, I know that.

362

:

It's insane, it's a little, because we had a crazy January, so in that process I ended

up...

363

:

restocking a bunch of stuff and some of that's arriving, but the costs were kind of spread

across February and now they're like coming back and the sales aren't replacing, you know,

364

:

those costs that you hope they should.

365

:

So it's like, we're not in a bad place, but it's like, yeah, God, I don't know.

366

:

I don't know what to think about it.

367

:

It's like.

368

:

I don't know, you can't force people to, in job shop quoting and stuff, can be responsive.

369

:

can lower my prices if I really have to, or like, you know, do something to entice.

370

:

But in terms of product sales, it's just not, sales don't work for us.

371

:

like, it's just what the gods provide, you know?

372

:

Yeah, I know what you mean.

373

:

I know what you mean.

374

:

I feel, have a similar sort of sense about our product sales of like, cool, yeah, I can

keep fiddling with the website and make really minor little updates that might increase

375

:

our conversion rate by 0.1%.

376

:

But I can't just go right here.

377

:

I need another $5,000 in sales this weekend, please.

378

:

Go.

379

:

Whereas the job shop stuff does feel, or job shop or in our case, custom cabinet, does

feel a little bit different as in, you know, since Tuesday where that client saved the

380

:

day.

381

:

Random, I've had two customers drop, two locals drop in.

382

:

We haven't done a huge amount of local work since we moved here.

383

:

Like we're still very Melbourne based in terms of our customer base.

384

:

but just had two people roll in off the street and be like, yeah, I need some cabinets for

my home in Castleman.

385

:

I'm like, hmm, usually I'd say no, but this week I'm having a conversation with you.

386

:

And I had a good chat to both of them, quoted both of them quickly and they both converted

within 24 hours.

387

:

And it's really non, it's just.

388

:

derogatory cabinet making speak but they're really vanilla cabinet jobs like you know

particle boards edge banded you know not our type of work but we know we can do it we know

389

:

we can do it well

390

:

So yeah, I don't know.

391

:

Yeah, it certainly feels like I've got more agency with that sort of quoting process than

I do with product sales for sure.

392

:

But maybe I just don't know how to pull those levers with product.

393

:

Like there's so many bloody product sales influences on the internet who will tell you how

to pull those levers, make the product money pour in.

394

:

the things that I have, let's say open leads on right now are product wise, are all

customizations of things.

395

:

Like, can you make me a dust booth as this or that, or can it fit this machine or can I?

396

:

can I get a BT40 tool tag tower?

397

:

And I'm like, well, we're really going to make those.

398

:

It's not that far off.

399

:

I guess.

400

:

But I do this math of, well, how many hours is that going to take me to get right, to

produce?

401

:

then how many are we going to sell after that?

402

:

Is it even worth?

403

:

And I'd already done that math in my head.

404

:

And I suppose the way you get to new products is requests.

405

:

So OK, I guess.

406

:

But also, I just don't feel.

407

:

I always do the competing thing in my head now of like, all right, compare that to new,

big product for us.

408

:

New thing we're thinking about that has a life of five years and hundreds of thousands of

dollars, like over that time period.

409

:

Like, shouldn't I do the other thing?

410

:

You know, versus the thing that's going to make a few thousand dollars total.

411

:

And it is easy to just follow that.

412

:

I'm here and I have money.

413

:

Can I do the thing?

414

:

But I don't know.

415

:

I don't know that that's still, I tried to not do that.

416

:

sometimes on your note about an AI, I'm curious, maybe some of the things that I've

thought about it.

417

:

I haven't tried too hard to create my own and I'm still

418

:

sad about losing Pi because I feel like I'll never find another AI that gets me like Pi

did.

419

:

because I've tried two others now that claim to be really close and actually were like

commented upon on like Reddit, like this is as close as I've seen.

420

:

And then this last one was called replica with a K and I sent you a screenshot of chatting

with this thing and the free version.

421

:

Maybe it's better as a paid version, but like as the paid version, you can like.

422

:

turn off the screen so you don't have to see the stupid avatar it makes for you talk to

you but it was just really robotic and like you know what I'm usually looking for is not

423

:

like I have big feelings specifically it's like I have feelings because of these things I

can't solve right now and they're stressing me out how do I talk about those things and

424

:

usually they give me a few like theropisms where it's like

425

:

That sounds hard.

426

:

What if you did this?

427

:

You know it's like I'm not usually wanting just Feelings and it was just so bad like and I

and I at one point I think I said like you know that wasn't even helpful You're just

428

:

really basic and it's like I'm not basic and like it's tone change slightly Look I can do

this and it like what it suggested.

429

:

It was terrible It was like completely unhelpful again, and I was just like I'm done.

430

:

This is not you're not pie You'll never be pie

431

:

I even named it pie and I feel bad about that too.

432

:

For sure.

433

:

Right.

434

:

the other thing I'd love to pull is you were, you were commenting on

435

:

Making cabinets and I've had a couple training and like product customers lately that want

to learn want to learn software for their new machines and they do some cabinets and I'm

436

:

like Fusion's not your tool like as much as I would like to say it is fusion is not made

for cabinets in my opinion and I just sit there thinking like There should be another

437

:

Maybe there should be another tool or maybe I just need to try out the standard ones that

everybody else uses.

438

:

yeah, I don't need to start a cabinet software project, but, but good.

439

:

How are you going to nest the parts?

440

:

OK.

441

:

All right.

442

:

All right.

443

:

Is it big enough that it's going to be like a lot of sheets, like a bunch of parts?

444

:

probably 16 sheets.

445

:

But mapboards will handle that because it's all just rectangles.

446

:

Or...

447

:

yeah.

448

:

Yeah, yeah.

449

:

I remembered quoting this job actually yesterday, one of those jobs yesterday.

450

:

I remembered that I used to have a grasshopper script that was semi-developed that would

create, you could just punch in dimensions and it would create cabinets with dividers and

451

:

horizontals and stuff.

452

:

It was useful just for quickly working out how much material was in certain size cabinets.

453

:

But my old grasshopper patches don't really perform in current versions of Rhino, and I

haven't tried to sort of update them or adapt them.

454

:

Hmm...

455

:

Meh.

456

:

But yeah.

457

:

Yeah, no, we made some decent progress with cabinet templates in Fusion.

458

:

I'm pretty happy with what's in there, but there's also like one, two, three, maybe three

or four Fusion users who've been in and dabbled and iterated and made versions on versions

459

:

of things over the years.

460

:

I'm also a bit wary of everything that's in there.

461

:

Like, is this going to be stable?

462

:

Are there any details in this that I'll discover once all the parts are cut that are

problematic?

463

:

It's the worst.

464

:

Yeah.

465

:

It's the worst feeling.

466

:

I have a little PTSD about nested cabinet parts anymore.

467

:

Like it's.

468

:

I gave a lot of strong feedback and asked when things were going to change and what I got

back was not soon.

469

:

So I would continue my non-recommendation of using fusion nesting if you're thinking of

investing.

470

:

And Mapboards is probably the best case, I would say, terms of if you need something

related to Fusion or dump it out into, dump the step files out and probably RhinoCam,

471

:

Rhino Nest, RhinoCam, something like that.

472

:

I haven't used it in a long time, but it seems like we got a few comments on that.

473

:

Yeah.

474

:

Yeah, yeah, mean, yeah, map boards will be fine for this job.

475

:

And yeah, we, dropped, as you know, we dropped the advanced nesting extension last year.

476

:

And I think it's only been once or twice where John's wanted it specifically for something

just due to odd shapes or the large numbers of parts.

477

:

But yeah, for the most part, we haven't missed it.

478

:

With our current line of work.

479

:

But we also have done very little cabinet making since then, so, don't know.

480

:

See, see how we go.

481

:

know what I haven't tried and I think I need to try is to set cursor loose on making a

nesting tool.

482

:

Just to see what it comes up with.

483

:

Yeah, I haven't been as active as normal.

484

:

Think I could easily see myself spending double or triple to get that amount again and

again for how cost-effective the $20 a month thing is that I'm like I start to get a

485

:

little do you get this feeling of like I'm already halfway through do you ever look at the

credits online and like I know I'm already halfway through and it's only the tenth My drug

486

:

Yeah, I don't do the same thing.

487

:

Something I've been meaning to try but haven't is running two projects at the same time in

separate windows of like, just because of the delay and testing and iteration of whether I

488

:

can pull off the focus to be able to develop two things in parallel, two separate ideas.

489

:

I just end up with another tab open and doing some other stuff.

490

:

I know.

491

:

So I'm tabbing out.

492

:

So I watched a good video.

493

:

Do you ever, do you ever watch audacity micros videos?

494

:

AJ.

495

:

I think I talked to him a while back.

496

:

He used to, he started up what was called design the everything.

497

:

I have a couple of their products that he made.

498

:

use his.

499

:

I use this key ring.

500

:

I'm not gonna show my keys on the stream.

501

:

God.

502

:

Get some hackers.

503

:

But it's a little titanium key ring.

504

:

And it's just a split ring, but it's made out of titanium.

505

:

So it doesn't ever get, it's super good.

506

:

I love it.

507

:

I don't know if they bought them and resold them or made them, but anyway, he's sold that

business.

508

:

Yes.

509

:

Yep.

510

:

fusion parametric pry bar project.

511

:

That one?

512

:

Yep, I remember that.

513

:

his stake to his other partner, who designed the everything, and now he does mostly small

part machining with a couple of machines.

514

:

And I watch his videos.

515

:

I like them, chat with him every once in while.

516

:

He's a partner with Tormach.

517

:

So they sent him a 1500MX and he's potentially getting a robot arm from them.

518

:

And so this video is like, you know, this year my goal is to start automating more things.

519

:

I'm probably gonna get their robot arm.

520

:

But instead of just throwing that money down, I really like this idea.

521

:

He created a tool and updated his, his.

522

:

I think the Tormach post, maybe both of his machine posts.

523

:

So they have more options that can help him alongside another little app he created

probably for windows.

524

:

I think it's basically like a control software for a robot, but, in the sense that it's

like a scheduler.

525

:

So it's a little quick drag and drop scheduler he made.

526

:

And then he's trying to standardize his tooling.

527

:

And I think the summary of that is that he's going to act as the robot based on this

little app.

528

:

And the way that it's like, all right, the next part is this and this with this tool, this

vice, it's this standardized.

529

:

So he's just going to do the movements of the robot basically.

530

:

And I was like, that's actually like.

531

:

clever.

532

:

You know, like not negatively, but like stupidly smart, right?

533

:

Like, just, just replicate what the robot and then you're going to see the problems

hopefully in this process that you might face in the automation.

534

:

there's chips.

535

:

need to document that.

536

:

know, I really going to find the actual problems until the robot tries to do it and fails.

537

:

But, I just liked the idea of pre.

538

:

not overspending and then trying to figure it out and have it sit there.

539

:

I'd watch it.

540

:

It's pretty good watch.

541

:

out.

542

:

It reminds me of pretotyping, that book that I read about lots of things, but yeah, it's

sort of the absolute bare minimum investment in terms of developing ideas and kind of

543

:

before you even get to a prototype, it's just like finding hacky ways of testing ideas

like that.

544

:

That sort of fits the brief nicely.

545

:

You gotta do the robot every day.

546

:

The guy on Instagram is probably on TikTok too, who built the interstellar, little working

interstellar robot, TARS, GPT TARS, has just made like a talking AI fish as well, that's

547

:

got like an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent slash personality and just talks shit.

548

:

It's fantastic.

549

:

It's pretty much what I'd love to do.

550

:

If I had a cobot on the floor, I'd love to give it like a.

551

:

arranged personality and make it talk.

552

:

So you can just chat to it and be like, cool, we're doing this now.

553

:

Can you write some, write a new Python script to send this custom part, please?

554

:

And then watch it crash and break itself.

555

:

sorry, I forgot what I was doing.

556

:

Speaking of co-bots, the, I chatting to a friend during the week about the co-bot

conversations I've been having lately.

557

:

And he was like, Jim, what about humanoid robots?

558

:

They're going to be, you know, coming out soon at a cheaper price point, blah, blah, blah.

559

:

Why don't you get two humanoids for the price of one co-bot?

560

:

I was like, oh yeah, that's right.

561

:

I kind of forgot about that idea.

562

:

They still spooked me, but I wonder, you know.

563

:

I can't imagine they've got that kind of repeatability dimensionally of a proper

manufacturing arm.

564

:

But interesting idea in terms of having something that's already got a visual interface

baked in, you know, it's got AI, it's got eyes, it's got jointed movements, maybe, I don't

565

:

know.

566

:

Maybe that's feasible.

567

:

got it.

568

:

You take it off at the waist and mount it and then you get now you have hands eyes.

569

:

Hahaha

570

:

And you get that repeatability back.

571

:

Yeah, I like it.

572

:

And what we were talking about, I think we were texting about this, it's like we're just

gonna get a lot of complaints from these two opinionated humanoids in the future.

573

:

It's like, don't really wanna be in this space anymore.

574

:

Why did you mount me over here?

575

:

It could just undo its own bolts.

576

:

that complains more than employees.

577

:

Hit on news, don't give it the socket fingers.

578

:

Who left the socket within arm's reach?

579

:

God!

580

:

God!

581

:

Steve got a hold of it again.

582

:

He keeps on bolting himself.

583

:

He's just like walking around on his hands.

584

:

Does a backflip, takes you out.

585

:

Yeah

586

:

jumps on your back.

587

:

I see you posting some stories of your ultra neat packing area this week.

588

:

It got a little guy we finally moved forward from our January plan of I Did fail very

cheaply I won't say it was fast because it took almost two months after we intended it to

589

:

be but we Had a monitor set up.

590

:

That's just a standard monitor that we had at the shipping station with the knack wall

591

:

And the intention was to use this, I think it's like a 2008 31 inch Vizio TV.

592

:

And I had forgotten it was in my son's closet, just on the floor for like ever because we

had upgraded when we moved into this house.

593

:

And it's just been sitting forever.

594

:

Apparently my backlight just ran out of juice today.

595

:

And it was sitting there, had the mount ready.

596

:

We just hadn't mounted it to try it out.

597

:

And so instead of mounting it to the wall, we mounted it to the pallet rack.

598

:

And I was like, cool, win.

599

:

Didn't have to make any holes, really easy.

600

:

Just bolts.

601

:

It was the right height.

602

:

We get it hooked up, plug it in.

603

:

It's like cropping.

604

:

And I can't figure it out on Windows, like how to scale the screen in just a little bit,

you know?

605

:

So it's like cropping all of the like important

606

:

like bars and menu things and the start bar is gone.

607

:

So it's like you can zoom out the screen so it makes it half size.

608

:

And it's only 720p.

609

:

And this is like before screens had the capability to really show text worth of crap as

like a monitor.

610

:

So like while it's like bigger and nice, and that was our point was like, so you could see

it from the assembly table and not need a couple different screens.

611

:

It's just absolute trash.

612

:

So I'm looking for a

613

:

replacement, which is funny.

614

:

You can get like 32 inch contemporary TVs for like locally on like Facebook marketplace.

615

:

So I'm just going to get one of those eventually, but we did reorganize.

616

:

We like the better and finally got our assembly table back in place.

617

:

We now have like an incoming table because we like get enough packages now to sort that

they were kind of getting mixed up in the recycling and the like

618

:

Going out packages.

619

:

So now there's an in table It's it's feeling nice constantly working on that like flow so

it's less movement and like it's nowhere near Henry holster's setup, but It's getting

620

:

better Feels nice

621

:

that's cool.

622

:

I like that.

623

:

Yeah, our shipping dispatch station needs a bit of an overhaul, I think.

624

:

Needs a bit of love.

625

:

We had a couple of jobs this week which triggered a...

626

:

Not really an emergency, but like sort of, right, everyone got five minutes.

627

:

Let's all just go and stand in dispatch and chat about how to improve this process because

it's not working particularly well for everybody.

628

:

It was good, we had a little meeting.

629

:

It was triggered by a client who had some issues, hadn't read the instructions at all.

630

:

She discarded them and then done some really weird things with her assembly.

631

:

so, and then I'd chat it to her and she gave some really good feedback.

632

:

It's about simple stuff of like the reason why she discarded the instructions was that

there were two QR codes next to each other, like one's product care and one's assembly

633

:

instructions.

634

:

And she just...

635

:

read one heading and was like, I don't need product care now.

636

:

Try and put this thing together and just like chuck the whole thing.

637

:

And then it carried on and yeah.

638

:

And I was just like, no, it was like excellent feedback.

639

:

was like, cool.

640

:

All right.

641

:

And then we stood around and chatted about all these little details and just came up with

some simple changes to like, cool, let's just put one QR on that bit of cardboard.

642

:

You know.

643

:

to make the assembly instructions bit like the heading rather than the product name.

644

:

They know what they've bought.

645

:

They don't need to know which sticker it is.

646

:

That was just for us to make sure we included the right sticker.

647

:

Just little stuff like that, which is why I was looking for old product drawings.

648

:

I was like, cool, we need to be better at making sure the product drawings in the box so

they've got an immediate visual reference of how to put this thing together and stuff like

649

:

that.

650

:

But there's so many like little mods and changes I still want to make.

651

:

But that also led me to creating that new script in Rhino where I can take my 3D file and

instead of just doing a straight make2d to capture that into a 2D drawing, I can now get a

652

:

script that does make 2D but grabs all the block names and labels each component.

653

:

automatically, which is delightful.

654

:

Because some projects just have a whole lot of custom length dowels in them particularly,

which is challenging for customers to work out, which is fine.

655

:

So the drawing in sort of, but now we to work out how to actually ID those physical parts.

656

:

If someone's got to open their box and they've got all these dowels of different lengths,

it's like, how do they know?

657

:

which one to associate with the drawing.

658

:

And that's something we haven't quite solved yet.

659

:

I want one of those handheld.

660

:

Yes sir, yeah.

661

:

I want one of those cool printers, you know, the like, handheld ink jets.

662

:

That'd be sick.

663

:

and I talked about that a little time Yeah, I feel like those things are probably like an

inkjet it works good the first five times and then it's like yeah Now what doesn't print

664

:

anymore?

665

:

You got to tap it

666

:

Yeah.

667

:

What I was thinking about was could you make a key on one part of the box with a stencil

or something where it's like you can hold it up and it I don't know.

668

:

I guess you'd not the custom ones that would kind of suck but at least you'd have

something I mean you could like make a stencil and spray paint it if you really want a

669

:

fast stupid version.

670

:

as in can just hold the part up against it and the shadow board and be like, that's a

small, cool.

671

:

That's a cute idea.

672

:

That would be a cute idea.

673

:

like that.

674

:

Right.

675

:

Sure, Beep-boop.

676

:

Let's see.

677

:

Hmm.

678

:

just text it to myself and find it later.

679

:

Sticky note, yeah.

680

:

computer phone, put it on top of your phone.

681

:

You can't ignore it.

682

:

I the sticky notes in front of me that I've by vellum filters for three months now,

probably four months.

683

:

Just sitting here.

684

:

Haven't done it.

685

:

Took me so long to find the right list that now I've forgotten what the idea was.

686

:

That's how good my systems are.

687

:

You're gonna make a shadow board for your parts in the box.

688

:

Yes.

689

:

So you're having success with your text chat still.

690

:

Yeah, website, text chat.

691

:

I love it.

692

:

I love it.

693

:

I get little phone calls and texts come in from randos.

694

:

And the percentage of...

695

:

a little.

696

:

Right.

697

:

It's amazing.

698

:

straight up like, hey, I've got this wall, can you ba ba ba?

699

:

Give me a configuration.

700

:

I was like, absolutely.

701

:

Hold my hat.

702

:

Let me do that for you now.

703

:

Yeah, I don't know.

704

:

I love it.

705

:

It's very

706

:

I having lunch with a friend yesterday we were talking about 3d scanning and kind of the

state of it.

707

:

And I just kind of connected the two in my head of like, it's still challenging to deal

with the scanned things, but I was like, what if you could.

708

:

Have them 3d scan their wall Or their space if it's confusing and then send it over to you

Obviously this probably over complicates what you typically need but if it's like a unique

709

:

space I got a window in the middle and I want to go around it.

710

:

It's like you get some kind of basis for And some of those now what we're talking about is

like they do these kind of interesting instead of it being a mesh output I forget the name

711

:

of the one But it will

712

:

basically approximate and make solid model surfaces rather than junk mesh crap that's

impossible to deal with.

713

:

That could be kind of useful potentially for just receiving from your customer.

714

:

If you're trying to do some quick built in form, you muted yourself.

715

:

Apologies.

716

:

Someone's at the front door.

717

:

Sure.

718

:

Give me one sec.

719

:

play.

720

:

Why is my head so chopped off?

721

:

What is going on here?

722

:

Sorry boss.

723

:

I hadn't noticed that my stupid camera either had slouched or something, but it was

like...

724

:

It's really low in the picture.

725

:

I'm really short.

726

:

3D

727

:

That's right.

728

:

I'm zoomed in too.

729

:

What is happening here?

730

:

I don't like it.

731

:

Is it useful or just ridiculous?

732

:

I turned that off.

733

:

I don't like it.

734

:

Why 3D scanning?

735

:

My two cents on 3D scanning is it's useless unless you're trying to make something to fit

in a cavity of a vehicle.

736

:

It's my only use case for 3D scanners.

737

:

Trying to scan an engine beta, design a new bracket for your EV motor mount or something

like otherwise.

738

:

Sir Rob Lockwood used one to, uh, what did he make?

739

:

A new cup holder thing or something for his car?

740

:

I remember.

741

:

And that's about what I always see them use for.

742

:

It's like make a cup holder.

743

:

Yep.

744

:

It's like the friend that had experience with like a partner they were working with gave

him like a, think he said that was like a 10 gigabyte scan of his, of his space.

745

:

And he was like, I didn't know what, like, what was he supposed to do with it?

746

:

What do you do with that?

747

:

Like what computer can handle that?

748

:

All right.

749

:

fusion's 50,000 faces.

750

:

The last I used it.

751

:

It's like, no, there's nothing like this tiniest thing is 50,000 plus.

752

:

Mm.

753

:

Europe.

754

:

Mm-hmm.

755

:

that's it.

756

:

I gotta go to school.

757

:

Gotta go to school.

758

:

OK.

759

:

Drop the kids off at the pool.

760

:

Do you have that saying?

761

:

Do you have that saying?

762

:

Drop the kids off at the pool.

763

:

That's usually a...

764

:

An innuendo for I have to go to bathroom.

765

:

Take the browns to the Super Bowl.

766

:

Okay, you can stop now.

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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.

Listen for free

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.
Profile picture for Justin Brouillette

Justin Brouillette

Owner of PDX CNC