Episode 24

24 - How Small is your Bit?

Justin has a "We Made it Feeling," how long will it last? Shopify transition discussion, Pierson Pro Pallets acquired, Like Butter worldwide? Recruiting for Fusion 360 skills.

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Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.

  • "We made it feeling" - Justin
  • Dust Boot 2 - LB
  • Compression Tooling Talk
  • Shopify Transition Talk - New website transfer attrition
  • Like Butter Worldwide?
  • I did it - Pierson Pro Pallet ordered
  • What's the one thing you would change in my business?
  • Trademarking costs worth it?
  • Jem's holiday on the machines
  • Patagonia Billionaires No more
  • Recruiting for Fusion driver - junior vs senior?
  • Young for a software package
  • Justin's Fusion 360 Optional Parameter Trick

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Show Info


HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter | Instagram | More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC | Instagram | More Links

Transcript
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Hello looking very for having just surfaced the spoil board,

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I just work on an office.

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Did you get a

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got my hairs cut.

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It gets a little too shaggy on the side.

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It starts to look real Ky to me.

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Yeah, me too.

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it's like if it gets long enough, then it's fine, but it's

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also too warm for that here.

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Once more with feeling 3, 2, 1.

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I think that worked.

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Ah, good morning.

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Morning.

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We should just start saying good day.

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Good day.

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happening in Portland.

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Portland.

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I mean shipping lots of dust boots.

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It's been very rewarding.

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lots of, I don't know how many listeners, but if so, I appreciate it.

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It's been very had a moment last week, just honestly kind of

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like mildly emotional felt like we between winning finally, a

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couple decent size job shop jobs.

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And then we just kind of have had a continuous order stream of dust boots.

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And it's finally, like, I guess I could relate it as saying not quite,

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I don't feel like this is the truth.

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We made it kind of in a sense, or like we finally have made it over a little bit

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of a hump where it's just been so tough.

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So lean income wise that I saw a little bit of, of light there.

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Which is cool.

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It's been

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Fantastic.

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Yeah.

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Really good.

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I mean people from Australia by two of them from you, it's very good too.

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Who would do that?

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Yeah, it was great to get our second baby pants in the door this week.

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And in a week that I got to install it and play with it too.

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Yeah.

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That one seemed a little easier.

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That machine has less complication to it potentially.

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it was very, a very simple exchange.

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Yeah.

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just yeah.

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Four volts to take off the existing hood which is good actually, cuz I

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reckon I might still have a use for the stock foot at times on that machine.

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Yeah

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we occasionally use it as a pressure foot.

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We put Springs in it

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Oh yeah.

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That's super cool.

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Have it sort of pushed down as it's riding hard on the surface.

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So we might still find a use for that application, but yeah, it was nice cuz

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it was such a quick change operation.

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It means that that's not unfeasible to swap it back if we're running

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a whole lot of really thin stock or warped panels or something.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, for sure.

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it's pretty cool.

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I did immediately start, unbolting the spindle nose and kind of, as I

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was fitting out, I was just started to think about like, oh, could you just

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have some little like pressure foot roller that just bolts in under here

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Mm-hmm.

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you can pull in and out something that I've toyed with a bit that

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that acoustic panel product that we cut that I sent you a

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Yeah.

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Oh, my word looks like ramen noodles.

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The wood wool that stuff's really hard to contain cause of how aggressive

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the material removal rate is.

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But it also, that's a product that really benefits from a pressure foot.

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I know the, the factory in Sweden that does it.

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They've got this funky setup where they've got carpet instead of a cuz vacuum hold

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down, does nothing cause it's so porous.

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So they've got carpet on the bed for like grip, sheer, sheer grip, and then

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they've got like a pressure foot rollers,

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which I think there's a router manufacturer in the states.

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I can't remember what they called that does like crazy pressure

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foot high speed machines.

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that, what are they?

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It's the new one that Izzy Swan's a part of.

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At

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least I've seen that.

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I don't remember what their name is.

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Phoenix or they're blue.

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Yeah, but those pressure rollers look cool.

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yeah,

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I frankly thought they were a little silly when I first saw them, I thought,

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Hmm, dunno why you'd want that.

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It looks like it would break really easily.

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But you know, as you describe it, there are things that are just

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super hard to cut and hold down.

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And as we've always joked, the vacuum is the magic solution for so many, so many

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easy ways to work hold, but there's also things that are just super hard to work.

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Hold that don't work at all like that.

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So,

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Yeah, And I think like the feed rates that they promote on some of those

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machines are just bonkers, they're pushing a half inch or one inch hoer

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flat out you know, if you're building caravans and stuff in high volume.

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The sideways tool, pressure, lateral tool pressure, and

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those kind of things are absurd.

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Yeah.

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I remember it The shock and all, when I first discovered that a

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half inch carbu tool was actually deflecting under tool pressure,

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my God.

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Yeah,

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How is, how is that possible?

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for a long time.

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Our primary compression tool is like a quarter inch, which is just

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a little bit more than six mil.

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And it whipped so much, it, it always whips.

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And so we kept having to space our parts farther and farther, and we'd

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still get like defects on side.

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So you have the same spindle, I think, but because.

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We're only using a five horsepower spindle.

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You can't really go to like a, even the three eights is a little bit too

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much sometimes to actually cut at the right feed rates in like plywood.

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So the tool we use primarily is an eight millimeter compression.

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Cause it's just like the perfect middle ground.

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It's close to five sixteens and yeah, it works great.

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I love that tool, especially for the five horsepower.

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Yeah, I really don't like that tool.

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The eight mill

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You don't

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it's no, I find it a really S squarely.

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Maybe we've just never got it.

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Right.

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But I find it a really S squarely tool

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well compared to a six, right?

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Like,

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oh yeah.

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I don't know.

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I don't touch sixes unless I have to, although John did order a five

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mill compressor recently, which he's using been using on certain jobs just

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to get it in there on small parts.

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But I think it's a three flute.

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Five mill is impressive.

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But 9.5 or three eights has always been our sweet spot for the compression

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cutters, but what, may I ask?

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What chip load you're running on an eight millimeter.

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God, this is where we're gonna get into that conversion nightmare.

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It's

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Oh, yeah.

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18 and a half thousand RPMs at 550 inches a minute.

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So don't know

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what that is.

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Yeah.

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we usually run under the suggested fee rates of what vortex recommends.

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They're usually very aggressive and we just can't push them

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fast enough with the tool

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What was your RPM?

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18 and a half.

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She, okay.

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Point three, seven mil.

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Feed per tooth,

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It's funny.

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Cuz it's like those numbers I'm sure the same to you.

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It's like they mean nothing to

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nothing

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it's like, I'm telling like my wife, like yeah, the feed for tooth is three th and

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she's like, what are you talking about?

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so you're running a 0.37 feed per tooth.

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I think I would run a 0.4 to 0.5 feed Bluetooth So that's not this similar.

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The other reason why we've always used smaller compression

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tools is a, the spin just.

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Seemingly handle a whole lot more, but it's probably more that the

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width needed between parts is less and that exposes less vacuum.

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And since we have basically like the minimum required vacuum for

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a four by eight machine, like the more that it's exposed, the

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more challenge there is to it.

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So,

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Because you got those hair dryers as vacuum pumps.

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Ooh.

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so, oh man, I've always wanted to do this really interesting project cause like,

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one of the guys that worked for us for a.

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Would always, you know, spray yourself off when you're kind of dusty at the end

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of the day with compressed air, right.

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He would do it pretty extensively.

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And I was always like, man, we should make like, basically it'd be using

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the same kind of motors, but like a, a little ring where you'd walk through

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and it would just spray you off.

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So this little, yeah, quarantine booth as you exit the shop, just

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it's like a vacuum chamber.

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You go through

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next

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next,

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car wash.

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take your, your what do they call those?

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Like contagious diseases, shell off

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Yeah, well, be careful dusting yourself down kids.

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don't inject yourself with compressed

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Ugh,

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That'll mess you up.

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steam will do that.

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Yeah.

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Nice to get a little shout out from the Pearson media department.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Did they, did they shout it out somewhere or do those just that comment?

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Just what you sent me on slack.

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Oh yeah.

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Yeah.

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I was curious if he was gonna do like some post about it, but I think

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he was just kind of being nice.

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I laughed when I saw this note in there the other night, I like, I did it.

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What did you do?

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it this morning and I couldn't remember what I did.

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And then I remember what I did I was like, shit, I should, I didn't wanna spoil

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a surprise if you saw it earlier, then I was like, well, if I can't remember

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what it means, it's not a surprise.

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You gotta leave coded messages in there.

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No.

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I mean, as we're talking about, I, I did it and bought the Pearson pallet system.

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You did it.

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Yeah, it was the peer pressure, the reverse peer pressure I wanted.

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Happy to oblige.

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Now it's just yeah, it's a little bit biting off a little more and I think I

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probably should chew at the moment, but kind of on the, heels of feeling like,

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okay, we're having some decent sales with dust boots and things are going all right.

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Like if we can just get these pedestals off.

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And my thought was instead of trying to do setup for my custom version of

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basically making pallets that screw down, I might as well just skip that phase

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and not invest all the time, making the fixture and then having to remake it

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later when we need something different.

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And Jay had also.

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Replied via email pretty nicely, pretty quickly and answered basically all

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my concerns of like, I wanted to put a vice on, but I needed to turn the

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whole thing sideways in the middle.

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So it fits.

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And that way it sticks off like a lot.

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Cause the, the it's or the it's like perpendicular orientation and he's like,

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he recommended the right size pallet and for the vice we have, and it he's

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like, I don't have any concerns, so it's gonna be a problem because all the

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energy transfer goes straight through the center of the backdrop in his experience.

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So that also just made me feel like, all right, well, like it's gonna save

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so much time just to switch between even like the two parts we make for this,

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this one job that but also kind of freed me up mentally to think about like it

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not just being a production machine, potentially if we do want to do some

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type of odd job with it, that I don't have to do any tear down necessarily.

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Cause those pallets repeat so nicely.

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Yeah, well, it's a zero point fix system, right?

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Think you could call it that.

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Yeah, basically.

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Yeah.

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It's supposed to repeat within three tens, which is

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Yeah.

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I don't know what that is.

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But

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a lot, a little,

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A little

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0.0076 millimeters

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whoa, Lordy, that's a

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mm-hmm

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so a guy that chops wood for a living that's that's little

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yeah.

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I mean you're in yeah.

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Like what a great place to start.

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If you are starting to think about pallets, like investing in that system.

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As you are build, you know, jumping off point your base point,

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yeah.

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making things build up that rather than kind of going down a path.

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And then, you know, SMO has done of like getting to a point where he is

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scrapping all these old Norseman pallets and is coming back and just rebuilding

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them all on zero point systems and,

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You know, what's funny is he uses a lot of, I have watched an old video of his,

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I think because I was searching so much to watch videos on pro palettes and

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peers and stuff that just to kind of sync myself into making fixtures and all that.

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And now looking into the pro palettes that his, one of his videos came up

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from like five or seven years ago.

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And he was just putting on a mini pallet system from Pearson and like

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putting it into a space that was like small in the back of his table.

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And he already had all these others.

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And I was just thinking to myself as like, thinking how he's just scrapping the,

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the ones that I'm just about to like,

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yeah.

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making.

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I was like, I'm that far behind am I?

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Yeah.

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Awesome.

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Yeah, I am feeling more and more like some form of a capable machinist though.

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Like, it looks pretty

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basic, but,

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The only thing I didn't do, I can't find a fricking rigid tap, call it for this eight

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millimeter, which is these holes here.

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But so I did those by hand, but the rest of it came off the

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machine, this bottom base plate, like perfectly out of the device.

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So

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Looks amazing.

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Great surface

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it's looking really nice

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Even on this potato.

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you know, the potato Cam's looking nice.

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great.

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is the only, this is as large as I can make, basically in

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the fixturing I currently have.

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Otherwise it just doesn't hang out in the vice.

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So I'm, the pallets are supposed to arrive Friday and then I'm off to the races

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trying to figure out how to make all that.

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awesome.

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Sounds fun.

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What do you do?

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Finishing those parts, you just leave them

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I think I've had a few people over there over the time since we've talked about

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putting those out as a product ask once, like in messaging like them to be, but

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to start out, I'm I will probably just clean them out

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of the cool end clean 'em up.

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And I mean, the surface finishes are in my experience anyway.

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Really nice.

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So I like, we like how it looks on our machine, that kind of like

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machine aluminum, it looks nice.

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It looks, it looks like a machine that makes other things

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should look in my opinion.

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And yeah, somewhere down the road, maybe if we have enough interest,

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we may do some randomization.

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Outsource that, cause that's a whole thing that I don't understand.

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Oh, totally.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Look, I understand that energizing makes stuff harder.

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Right?

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hardens, the surface somehow

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But at the same time, like it's a huge chunk of aluminum.

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It's not going anywhere.

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no for sure.

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And it's not gonna like oxidize or rust or really anything.

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So,

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no.

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All of a fixture, all the stuff we're putting with it, stainless steel.

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So it should last a good long time.

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So you got the pedestal ATC rack thing coming.

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As soon as possible.

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You got dust boots.

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What about the, the the duck duck crack rack.

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Do.

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Okay.

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It's basically ready to sell.

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So what's hap what I'm, which you can probably relate to.

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And all the more reason I need to push this stuff out is I am just currently

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working on transitioning to Shopify.

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I wanted to stop all new things going on to our stupid square space eCommerce,

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cuz it's so, so I, the more, you know, I, once I commit mentally to like,

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this is a bad idea, it's like, I just get more and more frustrated with it.

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I'm like, ah, yeah.

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Okay.

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You know, this doesn't work.

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And so the more like I was chatting with Jay about it, they've actually in

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seemingly intentionally made it difficult to export your products from Squarespace.

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Like it only exports a small blurb of the whole long bit of

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their description basically.

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So I have to rebuild all the product pages.

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So every new thing I make over there just represents a ton more work to transition.

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So.

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My goal was to launch the, those with the new Shopify page or website.

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So I'm, I'm feeling good about it.

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It's going right.

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Kind have to get into the vibe of like making those kind of things.

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I guess.

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I'm not just like immediately, like ready to make webpages all the time.

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It's

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no router.

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about, I was thinking about your situation last night with that of

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remembering when we did our big sort of rebuild from Magento into Shopify.

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And again, then we transition to Shopify 2.0, there's this sort of

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natural attrition that happens.

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I find of what are the priorities that we need to get over to the

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new site and get live immediately.

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Yes.

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And then I think it's actually a really positive thing of what gets left behind.

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That's been my experience anyway of.

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Cool.

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These are the priorities in the moment.

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Let's get all of that happening, but then you just naturally either don't get

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back and finish all the other little bits and bobs, but the positive side of that

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is you're actually sort of focusing the business, whether you intend to or not.

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It's kind of deleting some of the old redundant stuff and it's kind of a pity,

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a pity to lose some of those pages, cuz maybe they'd be nice in an archive

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somewhere, but at the same time, it's, you know, it's moving forward and focusing

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your outputs and what you present to the world, which I think is positive.

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Needs to be a lot more precious with, I think it's just the

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design school thing, honestly.

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I used to be a lot more precious with, like I spent all this time on this

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website design, especially with the NAC pro webpages for so long, which is

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funny, cuz let's just like represent so much work that didn't like do as much

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as I wanted it to over that time period.

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And I would, I, I probably will do the same.

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It's a good, you reminded me.

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I will use like a, either a website or like an extension on Chrome and

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do a full page screenshot and then just like save those in Google drive.

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It's like good enough for me.

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Like I can go back and look at it.

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I totally know what you mean though.

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What, what I'm I'm just so excited about all the potential.

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It, to me it's like representing a huge potential into like really formalizing

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this being a big part of our business.

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Now, rather than when I first made the Squarespace site, it was

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like a side project and I was in 2017 and I was like, maybe this

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Portland C thing would be something.

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And then.

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When I had the thought to like sell a product, which I think

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we were mostly digital things.

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It was like, whoa, Squarespace has commerce.

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All right.

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And it was just kind of like accidental and I always thought it

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looked kind of crappy, honestly.

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But commerce stuff.

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So just like I was telling you, I think be a message that what like one of

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the stupid things I'm excited about.

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That's so simple is we can very, very simply add more like international

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countries to ship to on, on Shopify because they do all the automated,

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pricing of shipping for you.

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Like I don't have to go do research.

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Like right now I have to basically cover myself to make sure that we ship something

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to New Zealand, it's not costing me a hundred dollars extra or something.

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Cuz you wanna know a silly example is shipping to you where you are versus

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literally I think Melbourne itself is like 50 different, 50 more dollars.

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Ah, right.

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I, how do I know that?

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Like, you know,

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was that calculated in checkout?

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When we bought the dust poop?

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It's not calculated at all.

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I just had to go look those

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up.

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That's what's crazy about it right now is I'm kind of just, you have

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to do so much of your own work.

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Oh, no,

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I'm setting up the Shopify, I just was like throwing new countries and I

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was like, oh, what about Switzerland?

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yeah.

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Awesome.

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Yeah, it's good stuff.

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Yeah.

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I think you guys have got it pretty good with Shopify and like your

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compatible carriers and stuff

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like that.

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Like, we are quite limited here with who we can integrate.

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Whereas when I look in the options, it's like all these amazing options,

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but they're all like us, Canada,

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Are you considering international sales at all

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look, there's some conversations happening at the moment.

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I think maybe in part due to this podcast.

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I had, I think three requests in as many weeks for.

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Makers manufacturers in the us who are interested in distributing or

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licensing, like better products.

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Oh,

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these conversations have come up in the past from time to time, and I'm

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always interested in entertaining the question and having a chat.

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So I tend to jump on a zoom call and have a chat with these

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people and just suss them out.

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See what the vibe's like, what the alignment's like.

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And also just talk through all the it's quite complex, like talk

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through how the hell that might work.

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Anyway, I had one call maybe last week, which was by far the most

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positive of these calls that I've had.

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And yeah, I think there's potential there I don't want to ship anything overseas.

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I don't believe furniture should be shipped internationally.

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Happy to buy a, a little lightweight dust boot, but I'd like to not

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end up in a spot where we're

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shipping plywood.

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Yeah,

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but I think there is potential there for some sort of us distribution

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where we take the orders and our website does all the work and then

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someone stateside fulfills them

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in local materials,

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Yeah.

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but then there's all sorts.

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Whoa, sorry.

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I just got deafened by a message.

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But then

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there's also just like little challenges someone over there is gonna be

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manufacturing them in say kit parts, for example, in different plywood,

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different Dow, you've then got.

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Country dependent variance on the website.

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And like, I think you probably wanna just spin up a whole nother website,

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just so it's not con as confusing for the two different audiences, but I dunno.

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I'm laughing mostly because I'm imagining them all being

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an Imperial measurements here.

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Well, thankfully pretty much everything here is just Imperial in metric disguise.

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it wouldn't be too hard.

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I'm imagining a superhero.

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That's like, it's just a unit machine.

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And he is like he's Imperial and disguised in a metric cloak.

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There's a brief for

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very good.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, over the years, I've had more different opinions

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about international selling.

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When we first did the Kickstarter, you couldn't control in 2011

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where your backers were from.

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And luckily I had a bunch of people approach me, which

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was kind of cool at the time.

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Maybe it was a half dozen or so, which is a lot I felt like about,

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oh, we wanna sell these in Europe.

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We wanna sell these in the Philippines.

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I think somebody from Malaysia bought hundreds of them,

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luckily approached me about.

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And not, it didn't just do it, but I , I definitely took a lot of boxes

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to FedEx that went to Malaysia.

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And it, I was so afraid that it was gonna be like some scam or something.

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Cause I just had no experience with international business like that.

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And I learned a lot about basically not wanting to do that kind of thing.

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And it used to be so much more complicated because there wasn't simple ways to

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calculate prices for all this stuff.

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And they'd Shopify, like, at least at that time there was no like auto pricing

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and countries had all these rules about like you can't chip shoes to this place

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because it's got a certain tariff.

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yeah, lately it's been interesting, especially I think honestly your

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influence has helped a lot with like the, your corner of the world where

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we've sold dust boots over there.

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And I would've never thought.

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Otherwise, I, I probably honestly to like think, oh, we should,

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we, we could be big in Australia.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, totally.

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it's gotta be your influence.

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honestly, it's gotta be that.

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And I'm appreciative of everybody that's ordered.

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yeah.

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I think part of that is we're kind of limited here in terms of, I dunno how

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best to describe this like small scale custom tool makers is not really a thing.

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Like I look at, some of the Americans I follow like Izzy Swan is a good example.

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someone with big social media presence, who's making cool

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mods, cool tools for makers.

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I don't feel like that's really limited here.

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So the fact that you are doing this, and then we've got a bit of a mixed audience

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cuz of, you know, our relationship.

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Yeah

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it does.

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Yeah.

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Open that up, which is cool.

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Which leads me to the one thing that I would change in your business.

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that's a good segue.

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Off the back of the,

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me

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the natural attrition of rebuilding a website.

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And you know, this is a bit bold, cuz it's a one thing and

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it's not my, not my call, but I

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I'm scared.

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Oh boy.

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I would I would reduce your offering and focus dramatically.

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If I was called in to run PX, I think I'd go hard on this, tool, mod trajectory

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and scale back, a lot of the other areas.

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I can't say I can argue with that really.

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I mean, send me back a month and a half when we just thought about

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two months ago, when we were starting to think about selling dust

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boots or like putting 'em public.

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I would've said you're maybe crazy because of how much time and effort

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I've put into like the knack wall thing.

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And it's really interesting.

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You bring that up too, because I wrote this down, but we've tried to trademark

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knack the word kind of on advice of a colleague or a local friend here.

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And it costs a lot of money to even do the research on it.

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And I just got word today that it didn't go through and there, which was

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likely, it was likely that it wasn't gonna go through the first time.

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And there's confusion with other brands.

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There's they think that it's a surname.

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More than it is

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a brand, which is like, I've never heard of anybody named NA.

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And so anyway, I've gotta spend roughly 3000 more dollars if I want

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the lawyers to even write letters back and try to get it to pass again.

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And I'm just like, I don't wanna continue spending money on this at this point,

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but I've also spent so much the, the sunk cost fallacy is heavy with this.

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It's like we've spent well over 10 grand to like research into like

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patent ability of this trademarking, like, and, and now with the success

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of the PDC and C stuff that has nothing to do with that, I'm like, do

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I continue sinking money into this?

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But like not to, not to segue too much, but it's just funny you brought that

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up cuz it just happened this morning.

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wow.

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No, I think it's a good thought for sure.

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I don't know how to.

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Like, do I just, if I have to dig into that, do I just stop working and

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thinking about knack wall together?

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Or my thought was I was putting it on hold until I get back to

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like the time when all the other products are kind of rolling right.

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With like the dust boot, the ATC thing.

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And I have time to do the R and D on that again, where it makes sense, but it also

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could just never be as good of a product.

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So.

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I don't know that you have to think about whether it's you're canning it or not.

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Like I would put it on hold really knuckle down and focus on this new

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offering, developing those products, but also developing the marketing

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and the, the coms around it.

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Because there you, you know, it's, I can relate to a point and like it's

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confusing offering two different things.

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Like it's confusing for us to offering custom work, but also trying to push

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product and that's within one brand, like you're running two brands.

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sort of

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Sort of, but there is a lack of clarity.

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There is, there is a lack of clarity there.

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Like I think when we bought that sec, second D boot, I saw one of

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the auto emails came with knack branding on it and I was like, oh,

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hang on.

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Yeah.

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And so I can I pulled that.

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I pull that, I'll pull that up and screenshot it for you.

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But like, I think that's a real challenge for your sort of storytelling

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and all your, your customer journey.

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imagine if you put all your energy into this one avenue, what could be

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possible in like 12 months or something.

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And it's not to say that in, you know, you build that up and get it

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stable and then revisit NA and the wall and all of those things, I think.

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Yeah.

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We're not, we're not killing it off.

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I think

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Yeah, I think it's

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there's just great, great potential there.

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It's worth discussing.

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I think that's one of the harder things and I, you know,

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everybody says this to death.

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It's not a new thought, but I remember reading the Steve jobs

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first biography out of biography.

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And I think he said in that, or it was probably another things he said at one

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point, basically that, oh, no, it was when the, when the iPhone came out and he, you

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know, some reporter asked him like, isn't this gonna cannibalize your iPod sales?

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And he was like, I'd rather do it myself.

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You know, like I'd rather kill off that thing myself.

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Not that what I'm doing is killing off that, but it's like, basically.

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You know, you gotta always be willing to kill one of your darlings.

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Right?

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It's like, without that it's not gutsiness without the idea of, you

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know, each one of these things, like we were talking about last week, it's

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like, we make, I make decisions to emotionally often about business, but

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it's like, without you bringing that up very poignantly, I may continue to

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think like, these are both good ideas when, you know, even the math of it's

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currently like, well, one is selling, you know, and, and is a business solution.

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The other is still hard to describe.

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yeah, yeah, yeah,

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It's very poignant.

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At this point I don't regret it.

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I, somebody here said or, you know, setting off into the neck product making

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thing was, you know, it was kind of during, when the patent thoughts were

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potentially killing some of the features.

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That we thought were great and simplified the product of thewell.

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And somebody said, you know, I'm not worried about this at all, because

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even if we kind don't continue this, what, what, I'm pretty proud of this?

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What, what had happened is we had converted ourselves from R and D everybody

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else's things every day with job shop work to like, we were solving problems so

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fast with products, you know, problems.

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And, and that person was like, you know, we'll figure out what's next.

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And I think we did that with being able to make the dust boot probably faster

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than I think we probably should have.

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Otherwise, if we were just only doing job shop work, because it was like we're

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in this mode of making products now.

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So anyway now

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certainly not, not I don't think you've lost anything by putting that on hold.

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As you say, like that being in that space and that skill development of

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being, becoming more efficient product development, it's all, it's all a win.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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The trademarking and protection stuff is a really funny area.

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I've always been of the opinion of it's not worth it.

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Let's let's put our energy into creating , new, and better things,

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rather than trying to protect our old ideas and just use our sort of whatever.

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What's the expression, social capital by putting our ideas out into the

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world and kind of owning them in our.

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Audience and on our platforms.

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And then may, maybe day, well, maybe one day we'll run into trouble and

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have something sort of ripped off or copied, but I would rather than go cool.

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What's next rather than kind of protected the end.

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The exception to that I think is speaking of darlings is like, I feel

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most protective about kid parts,

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Mm-hmm

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because of how much energy I've put into that.

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So I think I would find that very challenging if, and when it's

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probably a, when that gets challenged

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I don't know how it is there, but if I, put it in this framework and the person

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that pushed me to look into patent ability, trademarking, when we were

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setting off and all I could think was we were spending so much time and effort

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trying to make that be a product that I, I don't know if I heard it on a podcast

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or something, but it was just basically all I could think about after that was.

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If one of the primary utility functionalities of the wall turned out

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to be patented and we had sunk, godly amounts of money into like actually

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producing them and then had to stop.

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It's like, what if one of the main features like how

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it threads together, right.

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Or something it's like, you'll probably find a solution around it.

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But if you had sunk, you know, what, if you had three pencil sharpeners and

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all your machines were set up to like run this thing super efficiently and

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then stop and you've sunk all your, you know, it's just, I don't know.

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It doesn't feel like there's a right choice at this point for like maybe more

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you you're a little bit farther ahead.

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And maybe I shouldn't have spent the money on it, but we definitely

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found stuff that would've been a problem if we had gotten big enough.

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Yeah.

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Interesting.

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Okay.

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Yeah,

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or, you know, the lawyers did, we didn't

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yeah, yeah, well, Don, you know what time it is?

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You got it.

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I always enjoy this.

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If I reverse that sound, it's gonna sound like you're in the bathroom.

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I always think that what's Ricky,

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Oh, we are cutting some pricey acrylic for a customer.

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I think he's cutting it.

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Or he was going to cut it, I I'm trying to think.

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I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about that in advance, but trying to

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think what I would change about your business, but mostly I think I'm just

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think jealous, I'm not jealous and I don't mean that in like a negative way.

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I appreciate your business.

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I feel like your, like the older brother version of like, what I

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hope to my business can be at times.

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So it's like hard for me to imagine, like how I would change it in a certain way.

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Cuz it's like, I would like to do a lot of the things you guys are

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doing with different aspects.

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So I don't know if I have an item to change.

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Mm,

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dunno.

Speaker:

You're doing everything.

Speaker:

Thank you.

Speaker:

I'll take it rather than try and argue with you.

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I'll say mine can be next week.

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If I think of something,

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Okay.

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Yeah, I think off the back of my blues last week, it was perfect timing and

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I hadn't even occurred to me as I was chatting last week, but John has

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been away this week taking a break.

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I got to be on the tools and it was so good.

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Mm-hmm

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it's a really, it's only a three day week here.

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So we're, it's a public holiday today and tomorrow.

Speaker:

So I only got three, three glorious days, but damn it was good.

Speaker:

I couldn't wipe the smile off my face,

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You took a selfie with your, with your Maso controller.

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Look at my look at my girlfriend

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yeah, it was just so good, but running parts, but also just being

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back in that head space of like, cause I knew it was temporary.

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I didn't wanna just run production for a few days and then, you know, without

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sort of thinking critically about it.

Speaker:

So it was this lovely balance.

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Running production, but also having an opportunity to question

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some processes and legacy stuff.

Speaker:

Like you said last week, like boss for a day machinists for a day.

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Not, you know, absolutely not sort of taking anything away from what John's

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been doing, but sort of looking at cool.

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Where are our processes at now?

Speaker:

Where have we improved and what are we still doing the old way?

Speaker:

Or like, where is there still room for improvement?

Speaker:

So that was a really lovely space to be in.

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Yeah.

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Just rethinking a few little things of cool, like that wood wall stuff,

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like the, the messy acoustic panel.

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We have always programmed that in on route, which is like

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equivalent of VCA, 2d cam.

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Yep.

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And we've pretty much entirely retired on route now.

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So I had the opportunity to make new files for those parts infusion and

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just rethink The setup of that job.

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And like,

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You'd be like hooking Luke on the bottom where it's like Velcro

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sure it's a good loop.

Speaker:

Team.

Speaker:

but yeah, that was great.

Speaker:

Fun,

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Yeah, it looked good.

Speaker:

I, when, when I dunno if it's a story or something, maybe

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you, oh, you sent me a message.

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You're like, I'm on the tools.

Speaker:

And I was like, oh, you traded John.

Speaker:

That was fast.

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Like you did the boss for a day.

Speaker:

Like instantly, I didn't even think, you know, it's like one of those things

Speaker:

where you chat about something and you think like, well, that's fanciful.

Speaker:

Maybe, maybe one of us will do that someday.

Speaker:

And then you were just like doing it, but it just happened to be a vacation.

Speaker:

For the record.

Speaker:

I really like that idea.

Speaker:

I think there's something in that

Speaker:

job swap.

Speaker:

I'm always trying to imagine what the person that would be trading into the,

Speaker:

like your position would do though.

Speaker:

Like, do they, how do you, how do you set that

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know, right?

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Well, in air table,

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they would go to our SOPs

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I thought

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that was it just, oh, an air table.

Speaker:

He'd set it up an air table.

Speaker:

Yeah, that was my answer.

Speaker:

Now they would go to our SOPs and they would go to tasks by role director gem.

Speaker:

And they would see all my daily tasks, weekly tasks, quarterly tasks

Speaker:

as required and see, oh, the missing information, which haven't backfield yet.

Speaker:

That's funny.

Speaker:

but I think there's potential to get to a point where, I mean, this is

Speaker:

what we're working towards, is that every role so not person is like fully

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documented in our SOPs so that whether it's bus for a day or whether it's

Speaker:

hiring a new person, like there's just like a full system for that role that

Speaker:

someone can drop into and have hopefully everything they need to do the job.

Speaker:

And it's getting easier and easier.

Speaker:

So Sarah, our business manager was away for almost two weeks recently.

Speaker:

And so Jay and I were covering her position Jay did most of it, but it was

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just, you know, when it's well documented.

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Gosh, it's

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so easy

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that is always amazing.

Speaker:

It's like, I don't, we don't have roles like that necessarily.

Speaker:

So it's always like the things that are well documented are

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usually like machine related,

Speaker:

Yeah.

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as I've figured stuff out, we've figure stuff out on the YC.

Speaker:

M it's it goes in immediately into fresh desks so that I don't forget it.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

No,

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that's, that's

Speaker:

nice.

Speaker:

ex

Speaker:

I'm excited about that.

Speaker:

I think Jay turned on a fresh desk trial this

Speaker:

Oh,

Speaker:

I'm a little distracted.

Speaker:

We have a truck here with three sheets.

Speaker:

I'm trying to figure out if Ricky is gonna handle it or not.

Speaker:

Cool.

Speaker:

I'm happy to wait.

Speaker:

let me ask him real quick.

Speaker:

Yep.

Speaker:

I wish I had a wig to put on and just transform while Justin's away.

Speaker:

Why don't I have a wig in here?

Speaker:

Nikita inflatable jacket.

Speaker:

That's not gonna work.

Speaker:

I can just hear you talking in

Speaker:

my

Speaker:

talking.

Speaker:

I could hear you talking to Ricky and in inflatable something.

Speaker:

So things

Speaker:

damn.

Speaker:

I'd forgotten that you could hear me.

Speaker:

or you

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker:

Back back on the air.

Speaker:

Did you hear about the Patagonia?

Speaker:

I think

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Yeah.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm

Speaker:

far out what a move?

Speaker:

Right.

Speaker:

very impressed.

Speaker:

I've been inspired by them while it feels weird to say that I'm

Speaker:

inspired by a clothing brand.

Speaker:

That's kind of a gross thought, but at the same time, they got me onto the 1% for the

Speaker:

planet scheme many years ago

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

or onto that concept.

Speaker:

And for, I don't three years or so now we've been doing that 1% of revenue.

Speaker:

So yeah, they've, they've always liked kind of their ethos and their.

Speaker:

company culture in terms of what they're trying to do.

Speaker:

So yeah, seeing that move last week or whenever it was about them, the

Speaker:

founder selling off the company into a, a, whatever it's called a,

Speaker:

protection trust.

Speaker:

trust.

Speaker:

thing.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Incredible move.

Speaker:

I just kind of a really nice reminder of what's possible in the face of capitalism.

Speaker:

Yeah, no, for sure.

Speaker:

Very cool.

Speaker:

It was really ironic timing.

Speaker:

I have a friend that moved from Portland and actually went to

Speaker:

work for Patagonia for a while.

Speaker:

And, and one of their departments, this is a pretty small company I just

Speaker:

happened to see him again, like the same day, that same day or the day

Speaker:

after that announcement happened.

Speaker:

And he doesn't work for them anymore.

Speaker:

But I was asking him a couple questions, like basically I just was like, so is

Speaker:

this all, what do you think of this?

Speaker:

Is this on the up and up?

Speaker:

Like, is, is there any.

Speaker:

Weird side angle to this, or unfortunately too often maybe in America that there's

Speaker:

always some angle on, like, we're still making billions on this donation.

Speaker:

But he says it's completely genuine.

Speaker:

And the, the founder is exactly what he's like made to be in articles.

Speaker:

And his family in particular, he said the same thing.

Speaker:

The article did, which I trust him was saying that they believed that

Speaker:

billionaires are a policy error basically.

Speaker:

And they never wanted to be billionaires.

Speaker:

And they really technically weren't, but they were a privately owned company, so

Speaker:

they could do whatever they wanted in the end, which is so unique in America

Speaker:

that they never went public to make more money or to, they didn't have enough

Speaker:

money at some point and needed it.

Speaker:

But I think what's interesting, like you said, is it sets a new precedent

Speaker:

honestly, of like what you can do and how something can transition so that

Speaker:

we were joking, like they didn't get bought by north face and turn into

Speaker:

like a sorority sweatshirt company.

Speaker:

Not that, Not that, they're maybe the worst example, but like it's just

Speaker:

yeah,

Speaker:

greed is everywhere

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

on a lighter note.

Speaker:

I don't know if I understand this.

Speaker:

This is, you know, like you said before, we wanna leave notes, but we

Speaker:

don't want them to be too explanatory.

Speaker:

That's good.

Speaker:

You use the nice, nice coding.

Speaker:

I don't understand it at all.

Speaker:

mine is just three words.

Speaker:

We've got a gap as you know, in detailing and a bit torn as to the best way to

Speaker:

fill that gap, whether to find someone young and moldable and just teach them

Speaker:

basically from scratch in terms of how we drive fusion and how to use our

Speaker:

templates and get the job done, or to try and find someone a bit more senior,

Speaker:

a bit more experienced who can just kind of drop in with very minimal training.

Speaker:

I feel like without having sort of gone out and talked to too many people.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I feel like fusion as a software package is relatively young.

Speaker:

Like it's only sort of coming through the universities now

Speaker:

Seven or eight years old.

Speaker:

I think.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

So like there's, maybe some outliers like us who have worked in their

Speaker:

own business and, you know, are self-taught definitely a big

Speaker:

self-taught community of future users.

Speaker:

But in terms of people who have actually been trained in, I feel like it's still

Speaker:

a fairly small pool, so yeah, I dunno.

Speaker:

I kind of just wanna do the thing of like putting it post up on Instagram

Speaker:

and saying, Hey, anyone out there like, hypothetically, would you wanna come,

Speaker:

come to castle, Maine and oh yeah.

Speaker:

I'd remote might be an option, but I feel like depends who it is, but.

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We'd love to have someone here on site in the workshop, ideally.

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And you know, maybe a shout out would find sort of weed out.

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Some people, some people might sort of come out of the woodwork

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and find us and chat to us.

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But at the same time, I'm sort of, I feel compelled to do the process properly

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and like write a PD first and work out exactly what we want and upload that to

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an employment website, blah, blah, blah.

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dunno,

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be truthful.

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You just wanna put it out there and hire some, the first

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really do.

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so do what I have.

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Well, I have, I might have more experience than you in this

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potentially, which is weird.

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I've hired I don't know, four people now that have basically all used fusion.

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Like there's really nobody that's ever worked here that hasn't used fusion.

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And it was just a big belief for how small we were at the time that

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Ricky was the perfect example.

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Honestly, everybody else had some experience with CAD software.

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Ricky had only used to my, my knowledge only, maybe some other weird

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software but he used illustrator.

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What is happening over here?

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Do you have, do you have an animal down below you?

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This scared.

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Something's gonna explode

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What?

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onto my desk.

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Don't mind me.

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Sorry for interrupting.

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You just,

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Ricky.

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The illustrator.

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just suddenly like, oh God, Ugh, Ugh.

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Without then, without you saying that, it just, what it looked like, like something

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was biting your ankles, which I believe in Australia, there's weird animals.

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There

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Oh, yeah.

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dangerous things,

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Ricky

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Rick was, Ricky was one of the best examples of this, I think.

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And I've had different versions of basically nobody came in knowing

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fusion very well because it's new, but one guy named Alex went to

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school, new solid works really well.

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He picked it up, he picked a fusion within maybe a week and a half of working here

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just like instantly transitioned and turned out to be far better at me than me.

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Like he made all of the parameter formulas for how to make the knack wall, in a

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couple weeks.

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And then he had to teach me how to do it.

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and I was like, oh, maybe I'll figure this out.

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Before he left.

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He wrote a really nice like guide on how to like make and customize them because

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we were all just kind of staring at him like, Hey, can you make another of those?

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Cause we can't figure out how to make another file.

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So I think it's been.

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Wildly successful from my experience of like training people into it.

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Ricky had no experience in anything like that.

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Really.

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He used illustrator and then output to mostly 2d vector style, like

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Yep.

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DS or refugees, and then would set up pretty simple cam for like his

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Chipo at home or his other job.

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I forget what he used, but it was nothing like fusion.

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And which is like, honestly, it's like totally a good reason.

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Like why I will go back to the same kind of, well of the right.

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The same kind of person.

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Like, he's so excited to learn that from day one.

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I, I remember in the interview, he said, I will learn how to do 3d machining.

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Like that was like the thing he was really after.

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And I was like, oh, well, we can do that.

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Like, we can definitely do that.

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And he's, he's gone from, you know, maybe opening fusion when he was

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interviewing to like, He's making parametric models that are on our

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website that you can download right now.

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Like yeah, it's taken a bit of time, but like, I guess it depends.

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If I go back to your question, it's like, how soon do you

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need this to be useful to you?

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This person and their skillset.

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Yeah, both Josh and I would be the ones training this new person.

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So, and we are both pretty time limited, so that whilst I'd love to take someone

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from scratch, I dunno that we have time in the period that we need the role sort

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of fleshed out and filled to do that.

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Mm-hmm

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Hmm.

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Are there many good.

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Tech, what we call them, like technical schools here, like community colleges

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or that do training on like vocational skills, like Cadden cam around,

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No,

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is that not a thing in Australia or just not near you?

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No, I don't know the backstory, but I think a lot of them, a lot of

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the technical schools were canned

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Were they

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in the, in the past.

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Yeah.

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Like government

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interesting.

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technical schools.

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And I think there's been a push now.

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We've got a massive shortage in trades.

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Same

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And now I think the current government is trying to like reinstate and

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refund a lot of that sort of training to get trades back again.

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So it.

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At that classic cycle, but yeah, no, I'm not aware of any training

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program in other than like industrial design or product design engineering

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at university where they'll they'll have semester infusion or something.

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I'm not aware of any sort of

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Yeah.

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program.

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Well, I know what you have to do.

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You have to start a school.

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Starting academy.

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Yep.

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Diversify.

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butter academy

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Yep.

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and people will always be confused.

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They're like, are you making, making butter learning how to make butter there?

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I don't dairy products.

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What's interesting about, I never, I went to university,

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but what's what I've learned.

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I feel like maybe the understanding in America, community colleges,

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technical schools are like the most successful type of schooling in America.

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Wow.

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Like from my perspective, they're profit.

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They're very low cost for the user, for the people going, and

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they're speedy and fast, they teach you what you need to know.

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And for the largest part, I don't think they have any government

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funding, which is just like wild.

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Did all that exist in one thing and so many different versions of it.

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And they're all seemingly very successful.

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it's

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very weird.

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It's I don't understand because everything else like that would be

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very expensive because somebody would be taking advantage of that situation

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financially to be a billionaire.

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Right.

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mm-hmm

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I don't understand, but I'm all for 'em I've communicated a little bit

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with the local couple local ones.

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And I was, I've always trying you've maybe you've run the same thing.

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I'm always trying to hire for the longest time.

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Somebody that would run a CNC router and work with wood.

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And every one of these programs, there's no wood programs for CNC.

Speaker:

They're always like, well, we teach hos LA hohos LA and hos mills.

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So maybe somebody has some idea about that or has done word working

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in their garage, growing up.

Speaker:

I'm like, Ugh, that's not really like quite the same thing.

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You know, if you're wanting somebody to just come in and, and know it, but they're

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always very receptive to discussing it.

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Not that that's helpful for you.

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no, it's a pretty unique skill set here too.

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I think.

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Yeah.

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There's people that have ended up with that skillset.

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But they're not very common.

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And half of them have already worked at butter.

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Ha.

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Well, internship.

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This is why I think like Saunders' program with the internship, you

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know, having students in is so smart.

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Cause it's.

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You know, they're getting great experience.

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You're not fully committed to an employee, so it's, part-time they're

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kind of like a fulltime employee.

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Like you're not like handholding them necessarily, and then

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you either can hire them.

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Full-time if they're great or they can continue on with their

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education or something, you know,

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They go back.

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Yeah.

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nice.

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I wish I could make, find a way to make that work here.

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Yeah.

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We need to do more of that.

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I mean, that's, that was Josh's story.

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He was a summer intern and stayed on,

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um,

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Maybe this is like something that I feel like fusion, you know, there's like that

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skilled, like diagram thing, you can look up what your skill infusion is.

Speaker:

I feel like they should find a way to like, turn that into like a LinkedIn

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thing where like you're trying to hire.

Speaker:

And there's like a way to like, have a job board of people with these badges

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of like capability or something.

Speaker:

And it doesn't even have to be that so much.

Speaker:

It's just like fusion should have some form of like job board or I don't know.

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I guess that doesn't have to be that specific, but

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yeah, no, I know what you mean.

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Yeah.

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Well, anything else on your list?

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Optional parameters.

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I do have this, the optional parameter trick.

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I sent you a video of it's something that I've been trying to work

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out forever mostly the cabinet scenario and it still fails pretty

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drastically in that situation.

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And that's primarily because of how a fusion doesn't allow so basically

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like when you're trying to make like a pocket cup into a door and

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it goes in one time and then if you change it to the other side, it

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can't not be there the second time.

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Like when you change it, it causes an error in the timeline.

Speaker:

It's like space, time, continuum of Facebook of like,

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that's, that's a better title.

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So as I showed

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you and I could barely Des as I could barely describe to you in my delirium

Speaker:

at the end of that day I figured out how to make a very parametric, optional

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style jaw set for a vice where you could move the stock around, depending

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on whether you did a binary of ones and zeros, it would be center aligned

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or left, or if you turned it to.

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Into the parallels instead of on top and mighty bites of the device, it

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would shift that down and put it in the right position and all to help pay, to

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figure out how to do this a little bit better, but I want to figure out faster

Speaker:

ways to setups that doesn't include rebuilding all of this every time or

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having a bunch of different files.

Speaker:

So I'm hoping at some point I will find the words to describe this

Speaker:

because it's very confusing to me still, and the words don't come out.

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Right.

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I, yeah, it's such a hard thing to like, communicate.

Speaker:

Particularly in, in an audio program.

Speaker:

With video is hard.

Speaker:

exactly.

Speaker:

But I, yeah, that screen share you sent me last week, I think was a leap forward for

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me in terms of that min max parameter use.

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And I made like in my little hacky experiments, which I sent back to you,

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like, I immediately made progress in terms of that sort of binary switching stuff.

Speaker:

So yeah, we're getting there.

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But that should work.

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All right.

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I think if you can ever get it to work with, you could ever

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get it to work with features.

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If you can pattern a feature or mirror a feature that's like the most foolproof

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way to like make it work usually.

Speaker:

But the also frustrating problem is you can't pattern or mirror into.

Speaker:

Other components seemingly that fails too.

Speaker:

There's just a lot of ways you can

Speaker:

fail at

Speaker:

be nice to be able to, it'd be nice to be able to control suppressions

Speaker:

with parameters somehow, too.

Speaker:

That's something I've run into

Speaker:

There may be a future of that happening

Speaker:

Say no more Well, I'm gonna go and see what's catching fire in my wall.

Speaker:

So it sounds like there's a transformer.

Speaker:

That's about to explode in my drywall

Speaker:

oh my God.

Speaker:

Oh my God run.

Speaker:

Don't walk my I'm probably hopefully gonna plan in the

Speaker:

mill make more aluminum parts.

Speaker:

I figured out my reer.

Speaker:

Thanks to the discords help.

Speaker:

That's pretty fun.

Speaker:

Make fricking spot on holes.

Speaker:

Now they're within a th it's very fun.

Speaker:

What did I say?

Speaker:

No just . Rema is a funny word.

Speaker:

Does that mean something different to you there?

Speaker:

I'll tell you later.

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See you,

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have a good day.

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Bye.

Speaker:

I didn't know you used that, like the British too.

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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.
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Justin Brouillette

Founder of Portland CNC & Nack