Episode 9

9 - The Butter Shed

Jem tells how Like Butter's Workshop was built, their sustainable efforts like solar-power and sawdust composting. Justin's Prusa is down and Nack Wall is being batched.

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DISCUSSED:

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Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.

  • Nack Wall Boxes
  • Glass is cheaper than acrylic?
  • Prepping for Photoshoot
  • LB's Solar-Powered Workshop
  • Composting Sawdust Study
  • Solar Panels - 33kw
  • Makita Robot Vacuum
  • Makers Space for Old Guys - "Men's Shed"
  • LB - Rolling Roster of Tasks (Airtable) Specifics are only way to get something done
  • Pencil Sharpener - Double Ender!

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Show Info

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HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter

More Links

Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC

Nack

More Links

Transcript
Justin:

These guys are just dumping their trash outside their shop, you know?

Justin:

Now I'm thinking about taking it home and, you're basically hoarding trash.

Justin:

You know, like this is mine, I'm taking this with me.

Jem:

It's freezing here this morning.

Justin:

Like

Jem:

Wow.

Jem:

Fahrenheit minus one.

Justin:

Oh, really?

Justin:

It's that

Jem:

Hey Siri.

Jem:

Hey Siri.

Jem:

What's minus one in Fahrenheit.

Jem:

Yes, please.

Jem:

Yes, you're going to get there faster.

Justin:

30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Jem:

30.

Jem:

Okay, cool.

Justin:

cold.

Justin:

I think here the opposite season as we are, right?

Jem:

Yeah, yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

We're getting into warm temperatures.

Justin:

We have shorts weather going on.

Jem:

Does it snow where you are in winter.

Justin:

Not much.

Jem:

Okay.

Justin:

Every once in a while, and then it's a giant problem because

Justin:

there's no like facilities for it.

Jem:

Right.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Okay.

Jem:

Does that mean you don't have hating in your shop?

Justin:

We only have heating.

Justin:

It gets cold, but not like most of the year we don't need it.

Justin:

My arm's going up on its own today.

Justin:

There we go.

Jem:

I've been very slowly working out the window management on the Mac.

Jem:

What had been one of the most confusing adjustments.

Jem:

So just like getting stuffed, innately split-screen I worked out

Jem:

the trick yesterday, but like I just windows everywhere in the workspaces

Jem:

and I keep losing the stuff that I've got open and swiping madly.

Jem:

I find what I need.

Justin:

Especially if you have like a customized rhino set up or

Justin:

something where you put certain windows in a different screen, or

Jem:

Oh,

Jem:

I haven't played with that.

Justin:

I've never really done that, but I know people that do

Jem:

did I spy some batch production

Justin:

Oh, we started is really making enough parts so we can do

Justin:

it decent photo-shoot and be able to have, we always just make like a

Justin:

prototype basically of each thing when we're like testing different aspects.

Justin:

This time it was like, let's make three or four of this part and then that, for the

Justin:

first time it really looked like there, like my brain kept going, oh, we sold some

Justin:

there's no way.

Jem:

That's what it looked like.

Jem:

Cause I often watch stories with no sound on my

Jem:

phone.

Jem:

And so I still was like, yeah, it's beautiful lineup of what is that?

Jem:

The cabinet, oh, box.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

We've been calling them like small, medium, smaller, medium boxes.

Justin:

And then there's the slider cabinet.

Justin:

Opens up with doors.

Jem:

Yeah, what's the, what are you using for the doors on that?

Justin:

At this point, we kind of went around and around and we wanted you

Justin:

to metal powder coated metal that was like, kind of prohibitively expensive.

Justin:

So that currently they're going to be frosted acrylic, which I don't it's okay.

Justin:

I've done it a few other times, but not my preferred long-term.

Justin:

I think it's one of those things that can easily be customized, some type

Justin:

of pattern or just different colors

Justin:

. Jem: Have you considered glass?

Justin:

I haven't, no, that's interesting glass.

Justin:

Interesting.

Jem:

than acrylic typically

Justin:

Really?

Jem:

yeah, I reckon, and I would say it's harder to ship.

Jem:

Like there's some challenges with its fragility, but I really like it.

Justin:

No, I had not in my mind.

Justin:

That seems way more expensive.

Justin:

I've never even quote idea.

Justin:

you need a hold open it though.

Jem:

Yeah, we can we count machine it, I guess that's.

Jem:

You got to get someone to waterjet cut it and

Justin:

So you can, waterjet an opening oh, interesting.

Justin:

And then soften it somehow to

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

I think they call it, well, our glazing people call it an Iris

Jem:

and a Polish, so they cut an Eris onto the edge and then Polish it.

Jem:

I don't know how they must have equipment.

Jem:

But yeah, we've done a few little custom projects with glass doors, sliding

Jem:

glass doors and stuff, and doing a job at the moment, which has got reeded

Jem:

glass in it, which is that really nice,

Jem:

like vertical beaded pattern?

Jem:

Yeah, I'm into it.

Jem:

And I dunno, I've just got this thing in the back of my head of not putting

Jem:

more plastic out into the world.

Jem:

So I try and avoid acrylic when I can, but

Justin:

no, I have the exact same thought.

Justin:

That's why I was wanting to do metal.

Justin:

And it was like more than triple the cost, quadruple the cost.

Justin:

I don't know, just, I guess there's also the wood.

Justin:

It just, it doesn't seem, you probably can't see it, but up there,

Justin:

there's a couple of versions of it.

Jem:

Looks nice for me.

Justin:

yeah, it could go with a lot of different, we've

Justin:

tried to design that slot.

Justin:

It's kind of a curiosity at this point.

Justin:

It can accept quarter inch and eighth inch materials.

Justin:

It has like a double layered, it could be sought in section.

Justin:

It can go deeper on the smaller section,

Justin:

so you could potentially be able to put it.

Justin:

We were hoping to be able to put the metal panel in as a thinner

Justin:

panel it fell down farther.

Justin:

So don't know if they'll work that well, we've just been using the quarter so far.

Jem:

Does that mean you can, without changing the machining of that,

Jem:

those rebates you can, rabbits, you can switch out the door.

Justin:

Yep.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

But do you know what we spell that?

Justin:

R a B, B E

Jem:

And I, you spell it differently.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

silly.

Justin:

I'd never even thought about any of that until you brought it up.

Justin:

So I've basically, we've been doing the quarter with a, with a slightly

Justin:

widened ball mill So it has a little bit of affiliating on either side.

Justin:

And then I just added a lower pass within like a eighth inch and Mel, which is

Justin:

like 0.1, two, five inches below that.

Justin:

And it allows the quarter to just kind of ride above it and then I

Justin:

haven't tried anything thinner.

Justin:

So we'll find

Jem:

convert inches to metric or not to decimal inches for

Jem:

me as if that would help.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yes.

Justin:

Yeah, that's true.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Now

Jem:

I'm familiar with those sizes.

Justin:

We have like the stupid, I don't know if you guys have these

Justin:

too, but the drill index, right?

Justin:

Like all the different types of drills,

Justin:

you pull it out.

Justin:

So we have like 16 types.

Justin:

I swear.

Justin:

Like I'm just learning about fractional was the only thing that I kind of grew

Justin:

up with, even though I despise fractions.

Justin:

And so I've thought about that a few times lately.

Justin:

I've just like, I wonder what is it as a metric index?

Justin:

Just like every half mill and you just, you never convert anything.

Justin:

It's just such a weird, because we're constantly a fractionals.

Justin:

I have to sit there and figure out what the decimal point is on

Jem:

Uh, of course you do.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I've never thought about that

Justin:

I'm just like, don't work harder for no reason.

Jem:

fun.

Jem:

Now I'm familiar with a lot of the smaller Imperial stuff, because strangely

Jem:

a lot of our, like if you go to a hardware store and buy scurries here,

Jem:

or like basic sort of agri agricultural fastness, that's pretty much all.

Jem:

Stupidly and same with like drill bits and just basic bits and bobs like

Justin:

Every time a non-American buys one of these, they spit on

Justin:

the ground when they pick it up, they're like stupid Americans.

Justin:

I would switch in a heartbeat, but

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

Anyway, good to say some Nack stuff coming

Justin:

For sure.

Justin:

Oh on that note while we're still there, I brought these out again.

Justin:

I think I shared them a while back, but we were trying to work on kits,

Don:

Justin shows Jem his Nack Wall Miniatures.

Jem:

Oh, so cute

Justin:

Nack Walls.

Jem:

scale model.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Like eighth inch something worked out so that you could basically,

Justin:

you know, fit it just perfectly.

Justin:

I had to scale some of it to print.

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

But they function

Jem:

That's civic here.

Justin:

brought me back to architectural models that one's just taped on.

Jem:

That's awesome.

Justin:

It's really useful.

Justin:

Actually, one of our employees couple months ago brought one home because

Justin:

his partner loves miniature things.

Justin:

And I was like, see if they can bring up some kind of nice kit for us.

Justin:

And so I brought it home for the weekend.

Jem:

that's cool.

Jem:

Yesterday we had a an old hand smarketing meeting

Justin:

Oh yeah

Jem:

whenever we have the same meetings because Sarah

Jem:

business manager works remotely.

Jem:

She's in Melbourne where all in Castlemaine, which is about an

Jem:

hour and a quarter drive away.

Jem:

So we have weekly zoom meetings in the audio quality on these, like

Jem:

whatever they are, standard webcams, just terrible, particularly for

Jem:

capturing a table full of people.

Justin:

Yes.

Jem:

So I've been using the little road wireless go microphones,

Jem:

which I use for these.

Jem:

It sounds like honey, apparently

Justin:

My wife says the same, so it's not just Joe.

Jem:

I started using them the meetings cause I've got two of

Jem:

them and I made these little like threaded pegboard microphone stands

Jem:

yesterday that the mic clips into it's got felt for acoustic insulation.

Jem:

It sits on the table and there's two of them.

Jem:

So everyone can like sit around the table and do that reasonably well.

Jem:

Yeah, it works really well.

Jem:

I've never had such good outgoing audio in zoom calls.

Justin:

that's pretty great,

Jem:

Anyway,

Jem:

a little aside there.

Justin:

you probably have similar experience.

Justin:

So there's a lot of my zoom over the pandemic was with like I don't know,

Justin:

people that don't do content making.

Justin:

I'd have like a light and

Justin:

like a nice microphone and this, this camera is actually pretty good.

Justin:

And they'd be like, wow, this is amazing.

Justin:

When you record yourself for the internet.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

He made progress on your shooting plans.

Justin:

I have a model that I've been working on of I'll just show you,

Justin:

cause it's, it's, it's entertaining.

Justin:

Cause it's so simple, but the idea is to just build this little fo wall,

Justin:

that's like 12 feet by four feet to it's like each one of those is a

Justin:

standard size panel of material and then we'll just paint it because we're

Justin:

just going to use my friend's space.

Justin:

And

Justin:

Luckily our mounting bracket should fit perfectly on these studs in the back.

Justin:

And so we can just switch the panel either way, hopefully, and then

Justin:

also have one over here on the

Justin:

left.

Justin:

I think that's going to work.

Justin:

The trick was like, I'm going to have to paint some like MDF clad plywood stuff.

Justin:

That's kind of interesting.

Justin:

I'm just trying to figure out how that would work and how to assemble it.

Justin:

You don't have to do a ton of like finishing and but other than that,

Justin:

I haven't gotten a whole lot farther on kind of the logistics side first.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Cool.

Justin:

your shear, it seemed like it was a success.

Jem:

Yeah, it was good.

Jem:

Still did that classic thing of, you know, hour and a half in just getting kind of

Jem:

sucked down a particular path without thinking critically And I find whenever I

Jem:

shoot, it takes me a while to get warmed up and like get the flashes where I want

Jem:

them and the shots not looking terrible.

Jem:

And it's like, cool.

Jem:

All right, now we're at a point where things it's like was already lunchtime.

Jem:

And we were just, at that point with things started looking good or I

Jem:

was happy with the direction, but just that classic thing of like,

Jem:

you're shooting a product and you're like, oh, we need something for it.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

You just grab, whatever's like within hours rates, you put it in

Jem:

and you like start shooting that.

Jem:

You kind of stop, which is very hard to do.

Jem:

Why is that random object relevant to this standing desk that I'm shooting?

Justin:

Huh?

Justin:

I was like that thing I was telling you last week about showing my wife something.

Justin:

And

Jem:

yeah,

Justin:

I did this one rendering in school.

Justin:

I had a soccer ball in some space and I was just like, I don't know.

Justin:

I could find it on the internet to put into the

Jem:

well, what's that doing there?

Jem:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jem:

It's the equivalent of GrabCAD and it's like, what's in the room that

Jem:

I can quickly put in this shoe.

Jem:

So I think my advice would be, do a little bit of planning around

Jem:

props if you haven't, because we didn't do enough last week.

Jem:

So we've got these funny shots of like kiddo pots with the slack,

Jem:

this really random mix of stuff

Jem:

on them.

Jem:

That shots look okay.

Jem:

I've wrote really happy with the shape, but yeah, there's some

Jem:

weird props in there for show.

Justin:

Yeah, I don't know.

Justin:

Yeah, I haven't done that.

Justin:

Do you have like a dedicated space set up for this?

Jem:

No.

Jem:

I told my go to shared office,

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

the few of us in there, I just got to my end of it and

Jem:

pulled everything out of the way.

Jem:

And then we set up a backdrop papers and kind of worked in that, in that corner.

Jem:

That was one of my plans when we built the new workshop was to have a dedicated photo

Jem:

space that was always just ready to roll.

Jem:

And you could just push a project in there and the flashes would be there

Jem:

and you'd just shoot and document quickly and get it out the door.

Jem:

But space has a way of filling out and collecting junk.

Jem:

So the area that we initially plan to be the photo area would just

Jem:

chronically be overrun with other things.

Jem:

And so it became quite an effort to clear it out.

Jem:

Get ready for a shoot.

Jem:

And then, you know, a few years later that spice became such a premium that we

Jem:

ended up putting, you know, I've taught storage and racking in there, so that

Jem:

wall's now gone and, you know, kind of working our way through the building.

Jem:

We do have a little room upstairs, which I've done a little bit of

Jem:

shooting in which probably needs sort of a half day's work, just like clear

Jem:

reorganize, clear whole bunch of stuff out of it, and could actually become

Jem:

quite a nice, dedicated shooting spot.

Jem:

But the, on the issue that is it's upstate, so trying to get larger projects

Jem:

up there is not sort of feasible.

Jem:

Like if we've built some beautiful custom cabinet for someone we're

Jem:

not going to forklift it out there just for a photo shoot

Justin:

I could see your style, especially just like pulling that

Justin:

off, putting it in the middle of the shop and everybody's like racing

Justin:

around and you just have this one nice piece of furniture in the center,

Justin:

like blurred out people going around.

Jem:

I really love shooting in the dark and with tightly controlled

Jem:

light blooding conditions, like think that's just a habit I've developed

Jem:

from having had some form of, you know, it started off as an art studio.

Jem:

When Laura and my wife ran art studios in Melbourne.

Jem:

That's where I workshop was I had like a dedicated art studio

Jem:

space where I shot, but it worked.

Jem:

And so it had no natural lighting.

Jem:

So I became quite addicted to studio flashes at that point.

Jem:

And so I've always liked to shooting in really tightly controlled light.

Jem:

And we used to make animations and short films and things.

Jem:

And so that kind of all tied into this style of shooting where I like lock out

Jem:

the windows and just like have complete control over the lighting conditions.

Justin:

If you're up to it, I'd love to hear some more about your shop.

Justin:

And I feel like this is, this is leading right into it.

Justin:

I just love to hear the story of how you got to building your own shop.

Justin:

Cause I feel like that's pretty cool in itself.

Jem:

Okay.

Jem:

Can I refill my coffee really

Jem:

quick?

Jem:

i, this is naughty nonstandard.

Jem:

So worked up

Justin:

workshop.

Jem:

workshop, workshop, workshop.

Jem:

Okay.

Jem:

So we were renting obviously in Melbourne for a long time, but we

Jem:

had the benefit of Laura, Laura, and I stopped at luck by that together.

Jem:

And at some point when it became a thing, one of us had to quit our day

Jem:

job and actually focus on the business.

Jem:

And so that ended up paying me.

Jem:

Laura was still very much involved.

Jem:

But at some point soak up so more of a backseat to focus on her art practice.

Jem:

Cause she's a sculptor.

Jem:

But then she started this parallel business of running art studios where

Jem:

she'd rent out these huge spaces in old industrial buildings and

Jem:

would build walls and divvy them up.

Jem:

And so like butter always had workshops within those art studio

Jem:

complexes, which allowed like butter to kind of grow quite organically.

Jem:

Like we start with a small room, small workshop, and then as we got busy were

Jem:

like, oh, actually we'll take on next door and kind of shifted more off.

Jem:

And anyway, but about probably 20 16, 20 17, we started thinking

Jem:

about whether we could, we were always in these old buildings that

Jem:

had demolition closes on them.

Jem:

So the security on the leases.

Jem:

Wasn't great.

Jem:

There was always kind of this overhanging sense of like, at some point we're going

Jem:

to have to move out of this building because the rent was such shape though.

Jem:

That's kind of sites that were going to get developed anyway.

Jem:

So we started looking around to see, what we could rent that would be more

Jem:

secure or, or if potentially, even if we could afford to buy something.

Jem:

And we ended up in a spot where we got pre-approval on a loan for this

Jem:

industrial site in Northern Melbourne, but like a stupid amount of money, and

Jem:

commercial loans work in this funny way where they kind of don't expect

Jem:

the business to ever pay it off.

Jem:

Like it almost works like rent.

Justin:

Oh,

Jem:

We got approval on this, like $1.6 million loan to buy this factory.

Jem:

And we just kind of stopped and thought thankfully, and we're like, we're going

Jem:

to be in debt until we're like 70.

Jem:

This is crazy.

Jem:

What are we doing?

Jem:

And thankfully aborted that I was chatting to a friend who, had already

Jem:

done the country move, had moved out of the city with these beehives

Jem:

and started these honey business self in the country somewhere else.

Jem:

We're at a point where we'd done some rough pricing on building our

Jem:

own factory in the country, our own shed basically, versus this $1.6

Jem:

million investment in the city.

Jem:

And I was chatting to him about it.

Jem:

He was like, gem the price difference between those two is huge.

Jem:

think about how many robots that is because he's, he's an engineer and

Jem:

into his CNCS as well as like, oh yeah.

Jem:

Wow.

Jem:

That is a lot of robots.

Jem:

Anyway, Laura and I had been thinking about moving up to Castlemaine in

Jem:

the country, which is where I grew up in Laura grew up, not that far away.

Jem:

So we've got parents around here and wanted to do the country move

Jem:

for having kids and things like.

Jem:

We ended up buying this really cheap little plot of land in Castlemaine

Jem:

that was kind of subsidized by the council because they were trying

Jem:

to encourage small businesses to, move here and develop.

Jem:

We're in a little funny little industrial park with only a couple of other

Jem:

businesses here, but the land, yeah.

Jem:

Land was really cheap.

Jem:

Building a factory from scratch whilst it was cheaper than that

Jem:

1.6 million in the city was still a really expensive operation.

Jem:

And so we're going to be, you know, the good, good amount of debt to pay down.

Jem:

But it was effect what I say to people in the short story is like, it was cheaper

Jem:

for us to make the move and build a factory from scratch than it was going to

Jem:

be to rent, continue to rent in the city.

Justin:

Yeah

Jem:

so once we worked that out, it was kind of a no-brainer we're

Jem:

like, we want to move to the country.

Jem:

It's going to be cheaper for us to build one, what, an opportunity

Jem:

to be able to build a shed from scratch and make it how we want.

Jem:

That's kind of how we ended up.

Jem:

I think, yeah, 2019 was when we moved in.

Jem:

It's been yeah, three years now.

Justin:

you're just right before the pandemic, but I worked

Jem:

right before.

Justin:

Not like

Justin:

right in the

Jem:

because

Jem:

furniture got shut down in Melbourne during the pandemic.

Jem:

Like people weren't allowed to go to work for a while there.

Jem:

We got really lucky having already made the move and being clear up here.

Justin:

Did you have

Justin:

employees move

Jem:

Yeah,

Jem:

we did.

Jem:

Yup.

Jem:

A lot of our key staff relocated we lost a couple of the younger ones who

Jem:

will use, who was still in uni or kind of more committed to the city lives.

Jem:

But a lot of the more senior staff or made the country move as well.

Jem:

And Sarah stayed on in Melbourne as well, business manager, so still got a

Jem:

little location in Melbourne where she works and where customers can pick up

Jem:

jobs and product and things like that.

Justin:

Please.

Jem:

But yeah, it's worked really well, but we're definitely nervous

Jem:

about the move, like a little.

Jem:

So our whole customer base was very Melbourne centric at that stage and

Jem:

we didn't really know what was going to happen, but then it's only an

Jem:

hour and a half away, but still, you know thankfully worked out really

Jem:

well and we haven't didn't have any issues with having sort of relocated.

Jem:

There's a few logistical challenges with getting certain materials here

Jem:

and getting stuff back out again, but we've kind of worked through a lot of

Jem:

that and it's all pretty seamless now.

Justin:

That's nice.

Justin:

That's about the only way I've ever imagined being able to afford something

Justin:

probably more money than that now, because at the time, and I don't know

Justin:

what the conversion is between our real estate situations, every time I've half

Justin:

thought that we're not even close to the revenue to be building something,

Justin:

but I'm just like, I hate renting.

Justin:

Maybe we could buy a building or, you know, like something and it's just

Justin:

an absurd proposition in the city,

Justin:

For us anyway.

Justin:

That's cool.

Justin:

I am glad to hear the story.

Justin:

I mean, there's a lot of other aspects to the other.

Justin:

I think your goal, the, just your efforts towards sustainability,

Justin:

I think you really need to

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

We've got a few things going on.

Jem:

It was a really nice feeling when we're installing a spray booth and I

Jem:

got to cover a huge hole in the wall.

Jem:

I was like, this is our wall and I can cut a hallway that.

Jem:

Just those little things, you know, investing in rooftop,

Jem:

solar, because it was our roof.

Jem:

And we could do that.

Justin:

yeah.

Jem:

We put 33 kilowatts of solar on the roof in a three-phase inverter and means

Jem:

that while it was still grid connected over the course of the year, we're pretty

Jem:

much net zero in terms of power usage.

Jem:

We're typically we feed a lot more back into the grid on average,

Jem:

over the year, then we use,

Justin:

Wow that have any type of like, are there like incentives at all for a

Justin:

business to do that kind of thing now?

Jem:

no seller incentives used to be really good here that used to

Jem:

get paid quite a lot per kilowatt to feed back into the grid.

Jem:

But since it's become much more popular to have rooftop solar that's.

Jem:

Whittled down to almost nothing, but that's yeah.

Jem:

That's never been our interest in sort of making money on power.

Jem:

It's it's offsetting.

Jem:

What we use is our key incentive.

Jem:

But it's also allowed us to do other funny slash projects, which you

Jem:

might've seen, like the sawdust compost.

Jem:

So I like write down one side of the factory.

Jem:

We've got like two years of dust extractor, sawdust piled

Jem:

up slowly, composting away.

Jem:

And we mix like food scraps and garden waste and stuff into it.

Jem:

And it's a pretty ineffective compost system.

Jem:

Like the compost is such a fine art, art and a science, which

Jem:

I don't really understand.

Jem:

But we have done experiments to try and deal with all the soda that we generate.

Jem:

Cause it's pretty much our biggest waste.

Jem:

In terms of what was going in the bin.

Jem:

So we haven't put sawdust in the bean really for about two and

Jem:

a half years, maybe two years.

Justin:

Holy

Jem:

and we had the guy from the local community.

Jem:

He took a bunch of it away for about six months.

Jem:

It was making garden pods with it.

Jem:

But pretty much everything else we've called composted.

Jem:

And last year, I think I lost track of time.

Jem:

Relatively recently, we had it lab tested to see what had happened to all the glues.

Jem:

Cause everyone was like, can't compost plywood soda because it's full of full

Jem:

of formaldehyde and blah, blah, blah.

Jem:

We're like, cool.

Jem:

Let's try it.

Jem:

And so we took a sample of our most mature compost and sent, sent a bucket

Jem:

of at Hooper hay to be lab tested and the report came back really good.

Jem:

All the, the nasty staff had broken down.

Jem:

So.

Jem:

And there were a few like copper and zinc.

Jem:

I think we're a little bit high, but it was still within safe levels to

Jem:

be used in decorative gardens and

Jem:

stuff.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Just not, probably not food creation, but like

Justin:

other non food related things.

Jem:

Non-food stuff.

Jem:

The advice was probably not in a garden, eating out of every

Jem:

day, but otherwise pretty safe

Justin:

that's

Jem:

that's been fun, but kind of at the max, like volume now we can't really put a

Jem:

kind of spice for any more soda out there.

Justin:

What'd you do then like

Jem:

um,

Justin:

and start

Jem:

I'm thinking, I'm thinking, about taking it all home, to be honest,

Jem:

we've got land and either start a sort of little mini, industrial

Jem:

composting facility at home.

Jem:

Or invest in some sort of machine that could deal with it here more

Jem:

effectively because it's called compost.

Jem:

That takes ages to break down.

Jem:

Whereas if we could potentially come up with some sort of petered barrel,

Jem:

hot composting system, we could maybe deal with our weekly sawdust

Justin:

By an old cement mixer truck and just have it rotate with a heat inside.

Jem:

basically.

Justin:

funny.

Justin:

I was going to make a joke, but it's, it's such a noble effort that I was

Justin:

like, man, maybe I won't, but now I'm going to the you're talking about

Justin:

like lining the side of your shop, but just like keep some basically

Justin:

what other people consider trash.

Justin:

In a different scenario in the states, I can imagine somebody reporting you, right?

Justin:

Like these guys are just dumping their trash outside their shop, you know?

Justin:

And you're like, now I'm thinking about taking it home and,

Justin:

you're basically hoarding trash.

Justin:

You know, like this is mine, I'm taking this with me.

Jem:

I've thought about that because it's not an amazing look, but

Justin:

I think it makes sense.

Jem:

we do, we do seed it with green manure, which is I wasn't, I was

Jem:

never familiar with that term, but it's like a farming thing, I think,

Jem:

where you see that with like mustard seed and fast growing grains.

Jem:

And then that shoots up really fast.

Jem:

And then you're supposed to break it back down into the compost or the

Jem:

soil to help sort of revitalize it.

Jem:

So we planted out with gray Mineola, which keeps it looking kind of God, ne like

Jem:

neater and a bit more, a bit less like a pile of trash and more like a garden.

Jem:

But

Justin:

that's just like trash bags sticking out.

Jem:

But yeah,

Justin:

That's cool.

Justin:

Superbowl.

Justin:

maybe it's more common there, I guess, for this kind of thing to happen, but

Justin:

I've brought this up to other people, even before we started doing the podcast

Justin:

about some of the things you're doing, especially with the, the compost.

Justin:

And it it's always really impactful when never, where I

Justin:

talk about with somebody else.

Justin:

They're always like, wow, you can do that.

Justin:

Like, it's so cool.

Justin:

At least here that's not common.

Justin:

And I would love to see more of it because I have friends here

Justin:

too, that we live in this kind of let's recycle or compost everything

Justin:

culture, but yet there's certain things you just don't even consider.

Justin:

And that definitely was one of them.

Justin:

But it'd be cool to make some type of facility or

Justin:

opportunity for that to happen.

Justin:

Cause that's probably the same, I mean, other than offcuts, which

Justin:

we can always, I always try to put out on Craigslist for free.

Justin:

Whenever we have enough, we just, instead of throwing away

Justin:

anything, that's mildly reasonable.

Justin:

Cause we got a lot of artists that want the tiniest pieces, right?

Justin:

Like we'll have a repetitive scrap piece and we just stack them up.

Justin:

We just post it up and it's like, come get it.

Justin:

And it's gone within hours.

Justin:

So could be a thing I thought about that with your, if you

Justin:

want to get rid of your dirt.

Justin:

Right.

Justin:

I don't know if this is the thing for you there.

Justin:

Maybe somebody wants it for like fill material.

Justin:

I don't know.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Now that's a good idea.

Jem:

We are sort of smaller scale offcuts that aren't useful to us.

Jem:

But, you know, an artist or someone might still appreciate, we donate to

Jem:

the local men's shed, which is this nationwide scheme . It's kind of

Jem:

like make a space for the old guys.

Jem:

Like if it was called a maker space, I think that would attract way more people.

Jem:

But it's called men's shed was kind of off putting, but anyway,

Jem:

they're all over the country.

Jem:

Some old dude turns up in Ute and picks up our remnants every month.

Jem:

All there's a local prison as well, which has like a wood shop that

Jem:

takes a lot of them at the moment.

Jem:

So that's been good, but yeah, we don't have Craigslist here, but you've got, you

Jem:

know, equivalence, but it's a good idea.

Jem:

It's a good idea.

Jem:

Putting stuff like that up,

Justin:

It's always surprising what is, and isn't common between us.

Justin:

I, I can't get over there.

Justin:

Maker-space for old guys.

Justin:

Cause I hope that's through tagline.

Jem:

I wish.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah, I think if I'd love with the compost, I'd love to be able

Jem:

to create a recipe, but you or

Justin:

Oh, that'd be cool.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

to be able to go, cool, we've worked out this system, but it's a safe result.

Jem:

And if you do it like this, you'll get this output.

Jem:

That'd be, that's kind of what I'm working towards basically.

Justin:

I suppose a lot of that has to do with how nasty the incoming

Justin:

part is, how terrible the glues were,

Jem:

Yeah,

Justin:

which I'm sure like that if I had to guess, and if they're not

Justin:

lying about it, which I don't know whether it would, but like the states

Justin:

industries uses like soy based glues.

Justin:

And I think the Garnica uses soy basketballers.

Justin:

So I would imagine a lot of that stuff just got to be better.

Jem:

That's it.

Jem:

That sounds better than what we're dealing with.

Jem:

To be honest, I think because you're in California, right,

Justin:

Oregon,

Jem:

Oregon.

Jem:

I always get those two confused, I think, I think you've got better Owens.

Jem:

I've some of the stuff I've heard about sounds like you've got better regulations

Jem:

around chemicals and stuff potentially.

Jem:

maybe.

Justin:

Oh, specifically California does.

Justin:

They're basically like one of the largest countries in the world as is.

Justin:

You know, in population and they're also, they've got this bent, which I

Justin:

appreciate, but there's a whole, a lot of other people that do not, they, they're

Justin:

such a big factor in the economy here that if, and they're pretty liberal.

Justin:

So if they go, Hey, we're going to make the gas mileage necessary for cars,

Justin:

this level, it changes the whole country.

Jem:

Oh,

Justin:

all these different things that you'll see all the time, like the state of

Justin:

California deemed this to be carcinogenic.

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

Well, I'd say that on route a bit.

Jem:

Like if I buy OMS road route a bit, it's got this thing about California on it.

Justin:

That's kind of why there's such a big impact that like manufacturers

Justin:

will turn what they need to do because there's 40 or 50 million people there.

Justin:

It's huge.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

It's a huge state,

Jem:

Wow.

Justin:

Cool.

Justin:

Well, thanks for.

Justin:

Tell me about that a little bit.

Justin:

I always wondered some of those things and you do a pretty

Justin:

good job of posting about it.

Justin:

I haven't dug through your website too much, I

Jem:

Oh yeah.

Jem:

There's always more to share.

Jem:

The next next step is to burn it.

Justin:

Okay.

Justin:

It seems to, seems to be well one of the things that one of the major

Justin:

wood shops here, they're like they just do a lot of wood processing, but

Justin:

it's not like straight from the log.

Justin:

It's like more fine woodworking, but they have a pucker, like a

Justin:

brick making machine.

Justin:

And so they've got this like giant dust collection system and funnel

Justin:

and it gets certain amounts of it.

Justin:

I don't really understand it filters and it goes down to the pucker

Justin:

and you know, you're in there.

Justin:

It's just like bar pumps out a brick of solid wood.

Justin:

And then I think they sell them.

Jem:

Yeah,

Jem:

yeah.

Jem:

Again, when it's plywood, Tata.

Jem:

But yeah, there's definitely a market for briquettes,

Jem:

so the flyer, but there's a guy in town here.

Jem:

Who's a bit of a like sustainability guru dude and he makes these sawdust.

Jem:

Stove slowed us burning heaters, brought one around for demo recently and we

Jem:

put our plywood sawdust in it and we tested it and burns, beautifully, like

Jem:

ultra efficient, zero smoke out of the top of a beautiful little thing.

Jem:

I'd love to build one, to hate the workshop or make like a heated drying

Jem:

room for the spray booth or something.

Jem:

But I don't think our insurance broker would want anything

Jem:

to do with a shop made fire

Justin:

Yeah, for sure.

Jem:

So I don't know.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

Thinking about it.

Justin:

I was imagining the scenario or somebody could buy their kit apart

Justin:

shelves, and then they could also get a brick of the sawdust that was

Justin:

overfill, like to what it was made from.

Justin:

And then you could partner with this guy and he could also, you

Justin:

could co sell them a furnace that also could burn their sawdust full

Jem:

It was gold.

Jem:

It was so cold at home.

Jem:

Last night, I was like, desperately we'd run out of firewood.

Jem:

And I was looking around the house and I just kinda, my eyes caught

Jem:

the kid apart in the corner.

Jem:

I was like, Ooh, look at all that nice Dao that'll burn.

Jem:

Well

Justin:

Well, I, I did these iMac basis by myself, a lot of them

Justin:

in the middle of the pandemic.

Justin:

And it was just like one of the most stressful.

Justin:

But somewhat therapeutic to just work on a bunch of them.

Justin:

I learned a lot of like how to finish better and all those kinds of things.

Justin:

So there's a lot of bad ones.

Justin:

And so when it came around to the summertime, we had a fire pit in

Justin:

the back, we'd have friends over, you know, kind of safely outside.

Justin:

They'd be like, what are you burning?

Justin:

And I'm like, it's my pain from eight months ago.

Justin:

Don't worry about it.

Jem:

furniture grade firewood.

Jem:

It's the best killing dried.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Could you do something with that as like yes.

Justin:

It's keeping us warm.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Fantastic.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

It's funny.

Jem:

We're not, cause we'd burned little kit of parts off cuts since like

Jem:

seeing this like glowing Amber of threaded, the Al in the fire.

Jem:

It's this beautiful little object but away.

Justin:

It is disturbing to see in some sense, it's also really cool to

Justin:

see, like we burned off pets for a long time at home just to see something

Justin:

that's cut by like a CNC router.

Justin:

You've got these like perfect shapes and it's like, what is that doing in a fire?

Jem:

Yup.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Other than selling your offcuts on Craigslist, how do you deal

Jem:

with, do you have a good system for dealing with remnants?

Jem:

I wouldn't, wouldn't put it past you to have like some system in air table

Jem:

where you know exactly like the quarter sheet that you've got left over for.

Jem:

That job a year ago,

Justin:

Make no money.

Justin:

I just spent all my time categorizing offcuts.

Justin:

No, I'm pretty happy.

Justin:

And it takes the right people that maybe have similar mindset

Justin:

about how to deal with it.

Justin:

Our last shop was so small that a lot of our offcuts just piled up

Justin:

all over things to the point where it tipped over one of our cabinets.

Justin:

It was too much leaning against it.

Justin:

Cause we didn't have any walls, basically like two walls.

Justin:

It wasn't a shared space.

Justin:

So that necessitated, when we moved in here, I was like, we can't do this

Justin:

kind of hoarders pile stacking of wood.

Justin:

And so I spent me and a couple other people that I kind of started the process.

Justin:

We built a scrap rack that was basically like, here's where the scrap goes.

Justin:

If it doesn't fit here, it's got to go out.

Justin:

And that was usually the mentality it's changed a little bit since we kind of

Justin:

took the full space over, still the same idea of, you know, if we can use it and

Justin:

the kind of plywood scarcity has changed.

Justin:

Some of our mentality too, with it's gotten so expensive or like, well,

Justin:

we can use this a piece this big, you know, whereas before it was like

Justin:

out I don't know, trying to stack things in a way that you, if you

Justin:

can't see all of it, in my opinion, you're never going to use all of it.

Justin:

Like if it's layered in depth.

Justin:

So that was kind of part of our design of we'd probably have a lot

Justin:

different scale problems, though.

Justin:

I'm semi you make a lot more scrap than we do, or have a place to you have

Justin:

the opportunity to store more of it.

Justin:

I bet.

Jem:

Which isn't necessarily a good thing.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

All right.

Jem:

Now we had similar thinking of like, when we moved into the new workshop, we

Jem:

made a dedicated spot in the racking.

Jem:

I was like, these two bays are the only spot where remnants should go

Jem:

and once it's full out and it's, yeah, Sevenly really helped developing that

Jem:

relationship with the Makerspace for old guys, because they do take all

Jem:

that little stuff that was previously pretty junky and would pile up in.

Jem:

We had piles around the workshop that goes out the door now.

Jem:

So yeah, it's not too bad.

Justin:

We've all, everybody, most everybody I've had

Justin:

worked there including myself.

Justin:

I'm probably the worst.

Justin:

I have a lot of like, guilt about getting rid of anything material wise

Justin:

like that I'm like, oh, that's useful.

Justin:

I can, you know, what if we glued it all up and made a weird, you

Justin:

know, nobody ever does that.

Justin:

So I think that was the biggest change for us was finding what we felt was

Justin:

somewhat responsible way to get rid of it

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

instead of just the dumpster.

Justin:

And that changed more than anything, how much we had sitting around.

Justin:

I think that we can very reliably post almost anything scrap wise

Justin:

on Craigslist and it disappears.

Justin:

So whatever your version of that is like something where you can

Justin:

post and say here's free material.

Justin:

And that, that changed our scrap scenario a lot, I think because we

Justin:

would definitely keep a lot more on.

Justin:

But in our rainy months, it's kinda crappy here.

Justin:

Cause it's like, we don't want to put it out in the rain, but we ended up

Justin:

with more scrap inside for a while.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Do you categorize or stories in a certain way?

Jem:

There is a task on our weekly cleaning roster flight, random

Jem:

cleaning roster, name generator in our table that pings off in

Jem:

slack every Wednesday morning.

Jem:

And so it's always someone's job to do a bit of a salt to the off guard area.

Jem:

And so it's basically just pulling stuff out and re combining it with its friends

Jem:

of like putting all the Birch together and putting all the hoop pine together

Jem:

and stuff like that still becomes a bit of a, like a little tipping danger zone.

Jem:

I OHS issue very quickly, but yeah, it's a reasonably sorted.

Jem:

You can kind of walk up to it and go, I needed a bit of radiata 18 mil

Jem:

somewhere there and grabs on the app.

Jem:

So yeah.

Jem:

That's all right.

Justin:

Do those kinds of tasks actually get done like every week,

Justin:

somebody actually does that task.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

Reasonably well.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

So I found the biggest improvement to actually getting stuff

Jem:

done was being ultra specific.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

When we introduced a rolling roster.

Jem:

When we introduced that cleaning roster last year, the tasks were quite broad.

Jem:

It was like, well, there were slashes in it.

Jem:

It was like off cuts slash blue, whatever spray booth.

Jem:

And say, just for example, if tasks were slashed or not specific

Jem:

enough stuff, wouldn't get done, but by making stuff ultra specific,

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

I think it's very likely for people like, that's what I'm doing.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

Okay.

Jem:

I'll go and do that.

Jem:

And that, that worked really well.

Justin:

We had a chore list similar to this.

Justin:

It might peak of things were organized and smooth and running

Justin:

well, and we had probably the most common roster people too.

Justin:

And it worked for like six to eight months and then somebody left and

Justin:

the pandemic hit and it just went out the window and I've never gotten it

Justin:

back to you know, the right state.

Justin:

But I, yeah, I get what you're saying.

Justin:

No, that's how I work the best when things are hyper-specific like that too.

Justin:

Or if there's too many like clean, you know, shop, it's never going

Justin:

to get done, whatever that was.

Jem:

Yeah, it was around the same time when I made that

Jem:

realization for myself as well.

Jem:

Like when I wrote to do lists or task lists for myself, I was like,

Jem:

no, it cannot be a slash task.

Jem:

Like, cause I won't do it.

Jem:

It has to be specific.

Jem:

With the cleaning stuff, I won the, about the economics of it,

Jem:

of like the whole production team Downing tools for only half an hour.

Jem:

But you know, then half an hour turns into 35, 40 minutes.

Jem:

Every week, what does that cost in lost productivity versus, you know, just

Jem:

paying a professional to come in and clean the toilets and clean the kitchen

Justin:

Yeah, definitely thought about that.

Justin:

It sounds like your, your business cut surely rubbing off what's.

Justin:

This is that the person that always pushes you on the productivity time?

Justin:

no,

Jem:

no, no, yeah, probably I'm sure it is rubbing off at some level.

Jem:

Yeah, it definitely is.

Jem:

But I feel like that's something I've thought about for a while of

Jem:

it's always a tricky balance of production output versus paying for stuff.

Justin:

The thing I've always wanted that I feel like would pay great dividends

Justin:

is those little, have you seen the shop version of the Makita Roomba?

Jem:

I almost bought one last week.

Justin:

I know a, a woodworker here.

Justin:

He does pretty well, and he has two of them.

Justin:

One went down and he bought another one.

Jem:

Woah

Justin:

He's a pretty small shop, but, that one in particular

Justin:

just makes so much sense to me.

Justin:

Like I've heard, they're kind of stupid, there are no Roomba, in

Justin:

terms of intelligence, but they do pick up quite a bit of stuff.

Justin:

I've been kind of teasing forever.

Justin:

I'll post something on Instagram.

Justin:

Who wants to crowd fund buying one of these I'll torture.

Justin:

Test it for you.

Jem:

I came so close to buying one the other way, because it's

Jem:

Sarah business manager was away.

Jem:

I'm on holiday, on holiday for a week.

Jem:

And I was like, what am I going to buy this week?

Jem:

That I can reconcile through the accounts that she just went see?

Jem:

And I had the, the Makita robo vac open on my browser all week.

Jem:

And I couldn't quite justify myself, but yeah, I'd love one of those.

Justin:

You know, it would be a morale boost, right?

Justin:

Like it's, it's one for the team.

Jem:

Its like a shop dog

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Except for you don't have to feed it and

Justin:

sweep up after it.

Jem:

Oh, that does reminded me of a funny anecdote another week when Sarah

Jem:

was on holiday, just random timing, but I was on Grimsmo's saga pen list.

Jem:

You know, Grimsby was a lottery system,

Justin:

Yep.

Jem:

had an email pop up for a saga and I was like, oh, it's the first time I've

Jem:

ever been offered a grim smoke product, or then I can't attend content this down.

Jem:

So I bought this beautiful pen which ones converted to Australian dollars

Jem:

is quite a, quite an inexpensive band.

Justin:

But.

Jem:

And it just happened to fall through the accounts in

Jem:

this week that Sarah was away.

Jem:

I was like, cool.

Jem:

I'll just reconcile that away into office expenses.

Jem:

And.

Jem:

Sarah had made some comment the week before, like joked that Sarah loves

Jem:

office supplies always has a right well-equipped to like stationery cupboard.

Jem:

And she'd made some joke about stationary is always urgent and important.

Jem:

I thought I'm I'll remember that.

Jem:

And then

Justin:

Put that

Jem:

next week

Justin:

zero,

Jem:

did, I put it in the notes in sincere as I reconciled this

Jem:

$500 Grimm's in my opinion.

Jem:

Yeah, I don't think she's ever found it.

Justin:

I'm assuming she doesn't listen to this.

Jem:

I dunno.

Jem:

I think she's listened to some of them.

Justin:

Yeah, she will.

Justin:

Now I'm sure

Justin:

somebody

Jem:

will know

Justin:

to her.

Justin:

I won't do it.

Justin:

I don't know.

Justin:

Sarah.

Jem:

what's happening in the background there.

Jem:

Fun things.

Justin:

That's our table saw it's pretty close to the office.

Justin:

I don't know if Ricky Ricky's the wizard at the tables house.

Justin:

Who's always using it for something

Jem:

Nice.

Justin:

building actually, which is pretty cool off the share something.

Justin:

I think he came up with the idea.

Justin:

It was like in between the idea of Like a display for the Nack wall

Justin:

to put it a show like that makers market I was talking about, we were

Justin:

coming up with, how would we do this?

Justin:

Should it be mobile?

Justin:

Should it not?

Justin:

And we kind of jettisoned the mobile thought of was just like,

Justin:

that's too much to figure out.

Justin:

But then as he's finishing all of these, you know boxes were like,

Justin:

well, where the heck are we going to put all of these, finished goods?

Justin:

Where do they go?

Justin:

And we don't really have like a clean room.

Justin:

We were in a packaging forum.

Justin:

They only clean room in fact is our bathroom

Justin:

this room

Jem:

in there.

Justin:

this room,

Justin:

We've always kept finished parts in the bathroom because it's very low use.

Justin:

Right?

Justin:

Like we're all pretty cool with that.

Justin:

So he's building this mobile off of like panels we can't use.

Justin:

Cause they've changed dimensions a little bit.

Justin:

He's building a mobile version of a Nack Wall with two sides.

Justin:

So we can hang stuff on it and then roll it away to, to like either store

Justin:

or basically like a finished rack.

Justin:

That's kind of interesting.

Justin:

Definitely not necessary, but kind of in a way, cause we couldn't figure

Justin:

out where to put all that stuff.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

What's Ricky's background.

Justin:

I think just did a lot of woodworking and making and then I think

Justin:

he was working in a shop locally that did sign work, like making signs and

Justin:

they got a CNC or something like that.

Justin:

And then he either got offered or volunteered to learn how to run

Justin:

it and did that for quite a while.

Justin:

And I found him in the pandemic, he's looking for a job

Jem:

Cool.

Justin:

I'm not letting go.

Justin:

Cause he's, he's, fantastic.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Hold on to the good ones.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Oh, my one,

Justin:

I

Justin:

was like

Justin:

to

Justin:

accidentally

Jem:

No,

Jem:

I'm avoiding that.

Justin:

my, a good friend Chester lend me

Jem:

Ooh,

Justin:

because I have one and a sheared off the hot end tip,

Justin:

trying to

Justin:

change it, to

Jem:

sitting on a preset and I thought that doesn't look.

Justin:

tried to upgrade it to a hardened steel version was

Justin:

supposed to be a quality upgrade.

Justin:

And I just wrenched off the Verace one.

Justin:

It's stuck in the end.

Justin:

So now I've got parts coming.

Justin:

But otherwise I would be printing more of the baby pants.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

But I went for an oil change and I ended up with an engine swap, I guess.

Jem:

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is waiting for a baby pants in the mail.

Justin:

Yeah, I know I'm trying, I'm trying luckily Chester's

Justin:

trust her and Marshall.

Justin:

They on MC laser labs and I've been friends with them for a

Justin:

while, but they, I was messaging him about, about my complaints.

Justin:

Cause I knew he had changed his tip.

Justin:

I was like, did you do this?

Justin:

And he's like, no, I didn't break off the tip, but he's like actually

Justin:

relieving for you know, a little vacation you want to borrow her.

Justin:

So I was like, yes.

Jem:

Sorry.

Justin:

Yeah,

Jem:

Same model is yours.

Justin:

yeah.

Jem:

Yep.

Jem:

Cool.

Jem:

Is that the Mach three or whatever it is?

Justin:

K S three.

Justin:

I think there's a plus sign in there too.

Jem:

so many things to buy.

Jem:

Dammit.

Justin:

Got a pen or a printer.

Justin:

That was your choice.

Justin:

Yes.

Justin:

I know.

Justin:

What's your plan.

Justin:

What are you doing

Jem:

That's my plan.

Jem:

I need a plan.

Jem:

Look, I had a big win on the pencil sharpener getting double

Jem:

ended kit of parts machined.

Jem:

So I need to revisit some of that code.

Jem:

I got it running and the parts fully into the box.

Jem:

I was like, oh, fantastic.

Jem:

This is great.

Jem:

I walked away.

Jem:

I came back a minute later and it crashed.

Jem:

And the sole blade was like jammed halfway through this stuff.

Jem:

And it's got a little.

Jem:

Glitchy code things going on.

Jem:

I can't work out.

Jem:

I don't know if it's just my messy code and the control is

Jem:

like, it doesn't make sense.

Jem:

Code should be binary.

Jem:

It should either work or not work, but there's a couple of things that happen

Jem:

sometimes like just stops mid program.

Jem:

Y and then I'll go in and look at it and like fiddle,

Jem:

fiddle, and then it comes good.

Jem:

Anyway.

Jem:

So I don't know.

Jem:

I need to play with that a bit more before it's fully production ready

Justin:

We've got a glitch in our controllers, as far as I can tell,

Justin:

or all of a sudden the shop saber it'll, it's done this forever.

Justin:

Like if you restart the program, sometimes it'll like restart and

Justin:

the plunge that should be a rapid plunge will just be like super slow.

Justin:

Like it goes to like 1%,

Jem:

as does this do

Justin:

what the hell is that?

Jem:

What the hell?

Jem:

I've always put it down to a fusion post issue.

Justin:

Okay.

Justin:

Maybe it is then, but it's only on restarts right.

Justin:

For us.

Justin:

And then it kind of sticks for awhile.

Justin:

And I don't know why, like, it'll be like the rest of the day until

Justin:

something I don't I don't know,

Jem:

robots, shouldn't be able to do that.

Jem:

yeah, as, as has a really similar glitch where certain geometry,

Jem:

depending on where you put the stop point in fusion, they'll go to cut.

Jem:

Like I said, the sh parts on a sheet and they all cut fine.

Jem:

And then it goes to this one part.

Jem:

And depending on how you've placed the light in is the best thing we've

Jem:

put it down to at this stage, it goes down to the yeah, like 1% feed

Jem:

override or something like crazy slow feed rate, just like burns up cutters.

Jem:

If you don't catch it really weird.

Justin:

The other weird glitch of our post-process or for the shop, Sabre is

Justin:

if you happen to put too many of the feed rates, I believe it's like the

Justin:

ramp and the feed rate and the some other one, if they're all the same.

Justin:

So they're all like a hundred, it will just default to full speed on everything.

Justin:

It like doesn't put in enough F you know, whatevers, it just

Justin:

goes ham 800 inches a minute.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Somehow never have broken anything, but it's just kind of this weird

Justin:

quirk, you gotta like go in and going to make a one different.

Jem:

Have you done any post-process editing?

Jem:

Are you

Justin:

Yeah,

Justin:

yeah,

Justin:

yeah.

Justin:

A lot of like, you wouldn't be surprised.

Justin:

It's basically like, making it prettier and like having more information

Justin:

in the header and like every time there's a program change, it now

Justin:

puts the title of the program in

Jem:

Oh,

Justin:

stuff like that.

Justin:

That my next one, I just did the same.

Justin:

I think Saunders talked about this.

Justin:

I put last thing I did was I put the time with the post in

Justin:

the, like, when it was posted.

Justin:

Cause the change log time, isn't always quite accurate.

Jem:

Hmm.

Justin:

And then the next thing I want to do is potentially put the

Justin:

file name, like the fusion file.

Justin:

I would love to put that in the post.

Justin:

Because sometimes we have too many files and I can't find where it came from,

Jem:

Yeah,

Jem:

I know that problem.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Justin:

you?

Jem:

Hmm.

Jem:

Not really confident that that level of code I've opened my post

Jem:

processes and dug through them, made a few little cosmetic changes.

Jem:

But yeah, not confident to make sort of useful changes yet, but

Jem:

I'd love to do more with it.

Justin:

I mean, it's obvious, but I usually run, I don't label it draft when

Justin:

I throw it in a few, like, so people could use it potentially in the cloud

Justin:

and then only everything else is set to active or like a, like an approved version

Justin:

until it's been tested a little bit.

Justin:

But I have been a little loose with that.

Justin:

Like, Hey, I added this cool new thing and I immediately want everybody isn't.

Jem:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jem:

I'd love to get more confident with coding stuff.

Justin:

Saundra is his videos are pretty helpful.

Justin:

I think that's probably what I've looked through.

Justin:

I have notes on going back to it and then I'm like, oh yeah,

Justin:

that's how you make that happen

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

Yeah.

Jem:

I'm documenting all the stuff to do with tool changes and height offsets

Jem:

in the pencil sharpener at the moment.

Jem:

So cause every time I go to do it, I've completely forgotten because it's really

Jem:

cookie how I set tools and upsets in it.

Justin:

tool.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jem:

I'm trying to document all of that at the moment

Justin:

I would like to request a better video of the pencil

Justin:

sharpener double underworking because

Justin:

I felt like I got big time, like teased when whatever the video was,

Justin:

I was like, oh, there's not enough.

Justin:

It's stopped.

Justin:

It's like the pressure of watching videos and they don't show the end.

Justin:

I was like, what is, was only at the beginning.

Jem:

the benefit.

Jem:

So

Justin:

Okay, well, I gotta go pick up some parts friendly,

Jem:

Yeah,

Justin:

so

Justin:

good to chat.

Jem:

Always.

Justin:

Yeah.

Justin:

Next time.

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About the Podcast

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

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About your hosts

Profile picture for Jem Freeman

Jem Freeman

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

Founder of Portland CNC & Nack