Veterans Day with John Poehler – Dusty Jobs Podcast – E11

by Erin Long | Nov 16, 2020 | Uncategorized

Today is Veterans Day and our guest John Poehler is one our Reps from the West Coast. He also flew helicopters in the Marine Corps, including Marine One for the President. Listen to this podcast to hear about John’s career in the Marines and also about his transition to dust collection.

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Dusty Jobs Podcast Episode 11 – Veterans Day with John Poehler

Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.

Donovan: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Today we’re doing a special Veterans Day episode. Joining us today is one of our representatives, John Poehler. How are you doing today John?

John: I’m doing great. How are you?

Donovan: Great.

John: Thanks for having me.

Donovan: Thanks for coming on. John’s company is Semper Fi Industrial Solutions out in California, right?

John: That is correct.

Donovan: How’s it going out there? How’s everything out in California?

John: So far, with the present conditions we’re living in we’re actually doing pretty well. I think overall industry is beginning to improve as we fight our way through what we’re presently going through.

Donovan: These are some challenging times but it’s good to know you’re doing well and healthy out there and things are going good. That’s great to hear. Now the reason we have you on today is because you have some past military experience.

John: That’s true.

Donovan: So you were in the Marines, right?

John: I was. I joined the Marine Corps, I guess, officially with commission in 1990 and then retired in 2012.

Donovan: So during your time in the Marines I see you’ve got a picture there beside you in the background. Is the a helicopter?

John: Yes, correct. It’s my office, and the wife lets me put up pictures in the office. They’re all helicopters for the most part.

Donovan: There you go. Is that what your role was most of the time in the Marines? Was that your job? Can you tell us a little bit about how you started in the 90’s and then kind of walk us through your time in there if you don’t mind.

John: I mean originally I’m a Wisconsin kid. I went to the university of Wisconsin and was commissioned in the Marine Corps in December ’90. I then went off to a couple different things but ended up in flight school down in Pensacola, Florida and Corpus Christi, Texas. I ended up going to a fleet squadron out at Camp Pendleton in California, and I was there ’93 to ’99, roughly. It was all helicopters and several deployments out of those different units all to Asia and southwest Asia. Then in ’99 I went back to Quantico in Virginia. I joined another squadron there, HMX-1. I spend about five years in Quantico itself.

Then I came back out, deployed again out here on the west coast out of Camp Pendleton. Great group of guys. Not only great boss, a couple great bosses, but just great young Marines and sailors that I was fortunate to be with. We went up to west Al Anbar in Iraq. I came home from that in ’07. I ended up going to a Marine Corps air station in Yuma, Arizona, and, again, another great boss, another great two and half or three years with a great group of young Marines and sailors out there, primarily doing search and rescue out in the desert area of Yuma and surrounding areas. Then I retired out of Yuma, Arizona and moved back to San Diego California.

Donovan: Nice. So, during that time frame what would you say was the most exciting thing you got to do? Did you get to do anything interesting or different, something that just really sticks out you?

John: I’m very fortunate. I was able to fly the vast majority of my time because I was in different squadrons for the most part. I was very fortunate. I had great commanding officers for the most part. I worked with phenomenal young Americans, both Marines and sailors. Absolutely phenomenal, the best this country has to offer. In terms of the missions that we flew, a great variety. Again, I was very fortunate. From fleet squadrons, and deploying with the unit to a squadron in Quantico, Virginia that did presidential service to Yuma, Arizona doing search and rescue and working for the local community, both the local community and state and federal agencies. It was all a wonderful experience across the board. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So I probably can’t pick out any one thing. Every duty station brought something special.

Donovan: That sounds like a really interesting time. Never a dull moment. Now, I’m going to ask you this: Did you get a chance to fly the president?

John: *laughs* Yeah, a couple times.

Donovan: Oh, well that’s got to be pretty exciting.

John: Oh, extremely. Again, if I haven’t said it, that was a phenomenal group also of friends to this day, and we still meet up and have dinner or breakfast, coffee, whatever the case may be. Maybe grab a beer. Whatever. Phenomenal group. We’re all aging a bit now. It’s hard to believe that it’s been fifteen, twenty years ago that I was there. It was a wonderful experience. Wonderful travel.

Donovan: That sounds great, and like I said, thanks for all you’ve done for serving. It seems an interesting jump from flying the president in a helicopter to now working with Imperial Systems in dust collection. How in the world did that come about?

John: It is funny. It is humorous, but for me it has been an absolutely wonderful journey. When I retired from the Marine Corps, again, you’ve been doing this for so long, twenty plus years, you don’t know what your supposed to do. I got out, very typical, I became a contractor, a DOD contractor for a year. I worked at Camp Pendleton. Low and behold, an older gentleman – you know, I’ve been very fortunate with mentors and friendships. An older gentleman from church, he was an usher, he is an usher. He reached out to me one day and told me about this industrial rep business. He was a rep here in southern California. I’ve known him for several years.

Anyways, one thing led to another and before you knew it I was working for a manufacturer and lasted for about four years. I met wonderful people, including Tomm Frungillo. He was my boss for a while. Anyways, I ended up going on my own, and, again, great mentorship from a lot of other reps and friends and they kind of guided me on how I could do this on my own. I’ve got to say that Jeremiah helped me tremendously through that process. Low and behold, literally through the support of my wife who said, “Yeah, you can do this.” We just started in. It was a slow process at first but the team that Imperial has put together – I’ve got to give you kudos. Again, I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by a great group of people and support people. Here I am, coming on three years later if not three years later.

Donovan: I know we really appreciate having you out there. You always do a great job. You handle everything that gets thrown at you, for sure, without a question. It’s nice to know that we can still call you at eight in the morning here even though it’s five in the morning there. You’re always up and ready to go.

John: Heck yeah.

Donovan: That’s great, so John you mentioned Tomm Frungillo on here. Tomm was actually on one of our previous podcasts talking about innovation. He’s working with us now. You knew him before he was working with us, didn’t you?

John: That’s correct. He was my boss during my time that I was with Camfil. In fact, I want to say in 2013 Lee Morgan was running Camfil and he interviewed me up in LA. I think he was heading overseas. I had a wonderful two hour interview with Lee. Again, I ran into another wonderful man. He been a good mentor for me in this industry. That’s what led me to Tomm, and Tomm, again, had been a great mentor for me during that time period.

Anyways, I ended up coming to Imperial slightly before Tomm did. When I heard he was coming on board it ended up being a wonderful, again, experience to have Tomm and be able to work with Tomm and your whole team. I deal with Tomm on a daily basis now almost and it’s truly pleasurable.

Donovan: Tomm is our larger equipment rep for that area out there in the California area. You’re our local equipment rep for that area. When we’re talking about the California Arizona area, what’s the industries that you’re really seeing out there? Tell us a little bit about that part of our country.

John: In the end, California is an interesting place. I’ll throw Arizona and parts of Nevada into that also. California, we’re coming on forty million people. With that many people you’re going to have industry. Due to a lot of issues, I’m going to say that there’s not a lot of large companies out here, but there are a lot of mom-and-pop up to medium sized manufacturing companies here. It’s really a broad brush of different industries. From agriculture, to food. Theres a lot of bio. Theres a lot of metalwork, a lot of woodwork. It really depends on where you’re located in the state. Imperial Valley and Central Valley, California is primarily ag, and you name it, in terms of ag. Everything is produced here. If you get into the more built up areas like Los Angeles, San Diego, the Bay Area, then you’re going to get more into aviation and a lot of tech. Theres always school projects going on and a lot of military projects that are happening. Theres mining as you get more into the desert areas. Then Arizona, Phoenix to Tucson, there’s a lot of metal work going on there with a lot of automotive and aerospace. So it’s really a mix of anything. In areospace and auto there are a lot of different types of metal products too. So there’s a broad breadth and depth of industry throughout those markets.

Donovan: That’s keeping you on your toes and giving you a little bit of everything I’m sure. You get to learn a little big about grain this day, and a little bit about weld smoke the next day, right?

John: That is absolutely true. One day you’ll be in a silo with sugar and the next day you’ll be talking about weld fume at an automotive facility.

Donovan: That’s great, being able to figure all that out and continue on with building that out there for us and helping us with our footprint out there and letting people know they can keep their environment cleaner and safer with a CMAXX. We’re glad you’re helping us do that out there.

John: I thoroughly enjoy it.

Donovan: So I asked you what your interesting thing was during your military time. What has been the most interesting thing that has happened to you during your dust collection time?

John: Without a doubt, it’s – what’s that TV show? “Dirty Old Jobs” or “Dirty Jobs”? It’s absolutely fascinating for me walking into different facilities every week and seeing how things are made, how things are manufactured, how things are produced. Whatever the case may be, it is just absolutely amazing, especially in southern California and California as a whole, in Arizona too, there’s a lot of aviation, a lot of mom-and-pop level to mid level aviation companies out here. It’s fascinating to walk in and go, “Oh, you make that widget. Great. I remember testing aircraft, and you needed that widget, and you guys are the ones who make that widget.”

So, that’s been fascinating, but also, whether you’re dealing in agriculture or metal products or some type of woodworking projects, local schools, military places – it doesn’t matter. It’s always fascinating to walk into those facilities and meet people and see what we can do to help them. It really has been a pleasurable three years.

Donovan: I’ll say it again, we enjoy having you on our team. We think it’s great. So, let me ask you this: how much do you feel that your time in the military helped you prepare for overcoming situations that you experience everyday in the dust collection world. If you said what that looks like, just for the other veterans out there who maybe are in your situation who are getting ready to retire and look on to the next thing. What you would say to those guys? “Hey, this is how this translated for me.”

John: That’s a great question. It’s a million dollar question, and I didn’t know the answer when I got out, and I put thought to that over the years. You have this skill set. No matter what that may be, you have this skill set that you developed while you were in the military. For me, a lot of it was flying helicopters, but there’s another level and it’s based around that big word ‘leadership’. Underneath ‘leadership’ are several traits, and the military, specifically the Marine Corps does a great job in developing their leaders, and they do it because they understand how to train people to problem solve.

In order to problem solve you have to go through decision making. In order to do decision making you have to do some kind of course of action development. You need multiple courses of action and that leads to problem solving, that leads to final decision making, and someone calls it ‘leadership’. Nonetheless, on a daily basis you figure out worse case scenario, and if you can solve that everything else is easy. That’s kind of how I handle issues day in and day out here. It really makes it very smooth, but that leadership capability that people don’t – when they’re getting out of the military they’ve been doing it for a while, and they don’t realize that it is a skillset that is needed in the civilian world. So many people go right into defense contracting and there’s a plethora of opportunities in industry and probably elsewhere in the US for young folks or older folks like me to jump into and make a difference.

Donovan: Yeah, that’s great. Hopefully if someone out there hears this and can hear your story – your success in the military and then being able to come out and transition to other stuff. Hopefully that gives the some hope and some direction on what they can do too.

John: I hope so, and again, I don’t know where this is all going, but if any veteran ever wants to talk, by all means I hope they can have my number, whatever the case may be or email. However that works. I’m always available to discuss.

Donovan: I’m sure if anyone is interested in getting a dust collector you’d be interested in talking about that too.

John: In a heartbeat.

Donovan: There you go. So, John, you have your own website, right?

John: I do.

Donovan: What’s your company’s website?

John: semperindustrialsolutions.com. The name of the company is Semper Fi Industrial Solutions. I took the ‘Fi’ out to shorten it. It’s been kind of comical that it’s still a pretty long email and website address.

Donovan: There you go. If you’re looking to get a hold of John, or you just want to thank him for his service, there’s a good way to do it. You can reach out to him that way. Also, if you need anything in that California area, feel free to reach out to us at Imperial Systems. We’ll get you in touch with him. John, do you have any last words of encouragement for any veterans that are out there or anybody who is serving right now?

John: No, just that I’m incredible humbled and proud to be with them and to know them and I truly appreciate their service and that’s what the 11th is about. So, by all means, I just want to say thank you.

Donovan: All of us here, our team at Imperial Systems want to thank you personally for what you’ve done in serving our country, and thank everyone else out there who has served our country and put the time in. We just want to say thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Tune in next time, and who knows what we’ll have up.

John: I look forward to it. Thank you.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Job’s Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.

History of Dust Collection with Charlie Miller – Dusty Jobs Podcast – E10

by Erin Long | Nov 12, 2020 | Uncategorized

This episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast features our very own Charlie Miller. With almost 50 years of experience Charlie details the history of coming up in the business and how he got to Imperial Systems. He also goes over a brief history of Dust collection and the invention of the baghouse. Charlie also gives us his insight on what the current state of dust collection is as well as what we might see in the future.

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Dusty Jobs Podcast Episode 10 – History of Dust Collection with Charlie Miller

Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.

Donovan: Welcome to another Imperial Systems podcast. Thanks for joining us today. With us today is Charlie Miller. How are you doing today Charlie?

Charlie: I’m doing just fine. How about yourself?

Donovan: I’m doing great. Charlie is one of our sales engineers here at Imperial Systems and he has been doing this for – man, how long have you been doing this now Charlie?

Charlie: I started in 1971, so this is my 49th year.

Donovan: 49th year. Now Charlie is, I would say, our most senior and veteran sales person here. He has a lot of knowledge and experience with the industry. We’re here today just to learn a little bit more about dust history, where it’s come from, and little bit about the dust collection industry, a little bit of dust history on that. Let’s hear a little bit about Charlie’s history. Charlie, tell us a little big about yourself. Tell us how you go started in dust collection. What’s your story? Where did this whole journey begin for you?

Charlie: Well, I’m a Pittsburgh boy. I grew up here, and right after I graduated from high school I moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and I started working for a company. It’s actually was a company headquartered here in Pittsburgh that had a very small division in Cincinnati that was their air systems division. They designed and made building products, ventilation products, roof ventilations, powered ventilators, powered louvers, things like that.

Donovan: What were you doing there? What were you doing for those guys? What did you start out doing?

Charlie: I started out in the shop. I was in the sheet metal union. I started on the shop floor. I operated a press brake and a shear. I spent a lot of time cutting louver blades and forming louver blades.

Donovan: Still have all your fingers?

Charlie: Yeah, I was pretty careful about that. I worked form them for, oh, I don’t know, maybe a year or year and a half. I’d always liked drafting and I expressed a desire to join their drafting department. They asked me, “How much drafting experience do you have?”

I said, “I took a couple classes in high school, things like that.”

So, they said, “We do have an opening in drafting and we can put you in there but we want you to go to the community college and take a few more drafting classes.” I agreed to do that. So I started in their drafting department. That’s actually when I started going to college by the way because I was right out of high school when I moved to Cincinnati. So, I went to the university of Cincinnati, and took a few drafting classes and decided I wanted to go on. So I got into their engineering program while I was there. I actually spent ten years at night college getting my engineering degree.

Donovan: Oh, wow. So this was while you were working as a draftsman, and then you were doing your education at night?

Charlie: That was when I started, yes. Anyway, I worked for that company for, oh, about nine years. The economy took a downturn, and I was laid off. So, I was laid off for a little while I got picked up by another company in Cincinnati, Kirk & Blum, which at the time was one of the biggest sheet metal contractors in the nation. There were only a few that were bigger than them, and I think Kirk & Blum were in the top three. I started in their engineering department on the board making drawings, making systems drawings. Up until that time I didn’t know much about system work. I didn’t know anything. So I was fortunate to work with a couple of senior design people who actually taught me the correct way to design dust collection systems.

Donovan: So you went from just kind of working on parts and pieces of different systems to actually putting the whole system together?

Charlie: That’s correct.

Donovan: You help us out with a lot of that here.

Charlie: Well, I try.

Donovan: Well, I know everybody here really appreciates your knowledge and experience in that realm. We’re glad to have you on. So after Kirk & Blum did you end up here?

Charlie: Well, I was with Kirk & Blum, I’m not sure how long I worked for them in their engineering department. Kirk & Blum liked to hire internally, okay? At the time I didn’t know it, but they had one of their senior sales engineers didn’t have very good health. He told them that he was going to retire. So they approached me and asked me if I would be willing to work with this gentleman and start making sales calls with him because they wanted to groom me for a sales position. I said, “Well, yeah, I’d love to do that.” At the time I didn’t know that this gentleman was not in good health. I didn’t know he was retiring. I didn’t know any of that stuff. I just knew I was going to get out and start looking at jobs and help him do some quoting.

So, about six weeks of that I find out I was being promoted into sales and this gentleman was leaving. Again, with that I was very fortunate to work with some very, very senior sales engineers that had been in the business for a long, long time. Kirk & Blum being the company that it was actually it was a global company because they had sales, we had sales in Europe. I know one of the jobs I worked on was in Saudi Arabia. They didn’t have plants in the other countries. They sold everything domestically. They sold all over the world.

Donovan: So you’ve had work that are jobs you’ve sold, jobs you’ve worked on that’s just everywhere now, huh?

Charlie: Yeah, a little bit.

Donovan: That’s fun. A little bit of Charlie all over the world.

Charlie: Yeah, not really all over the world, but there are a few over there. I know I have some systems we put in in Saudi Arabia for the Air Force base over there. Theres a few other places. I think we sold some equipment that went over to Korea.

Donovan: Now, the story I heard about how you came on with us is Jeremiah ended up bidding against you on a job and was so impressed with your quote, and I think he lost to you. He lost the job to you and then you ended up coming on board with us. He kept harassing you to come be a salesman for us. Does that sound about right or am I…

Charlie: That’s almost correct, up until the point that you said Jeremiah lost the job because Jeremiah won the job.

Donovan: Oh, he won the job!

Charlie: He won the job, but everything else is true. Jeremiah had somehow saw my quote while he was at the customer’s. I don’t exactly know how that happened, but he said that he got so mad reading my quote that he was going to hire me. You have to remember, this was back ten years ago, and Imperial Systems ten years ago was not the Imperial Systems we have today. Jeremiah was selling. We had another guy here that actually started in the shop and was selling. He wasn’t doing systems, he was just helping out. Then you had Chalmer. Chalmer was selling. I was just stretched to the limit. He was trying to run his company and he was out there traveling. I think he wanted to hire me mainly because his wife was getting a little upset with him being on the road so much.

So he called me at Kirk & Blum and offered me a position. On his first call I thought, ‘This is some kind of joke.’ Yeah, yeah, he’s just another head hunter. Okay, I’ll think about it. Then he called me back a second time and asked me about it, and I said, “Well, I don’t know. Let me think about it.” I actually brushed him off a couple times. Well, the third time he called me I said, “Well, this guy’s really serious.” At the time I was actually thinking about early retirement because I really didn’t like the direction that Kirk & Blum was going in. The Blum family had sold the company to CECO, and I just didn’t like it after it wasn’t a family company anymore. I didn’t like the feel. It was like the employees didn’t really matter anymore.

So, I was actually thinking about retiring. Coming up here to Imperial was like going back home. I did have some things that I had to worry about because my daughters lived with me. Although they were grown, mature adult women they still lived in my house and I had to make sure they were happy with everything before I agreed to coming up here. So, we talked it over and my daughters said, “Go for it.” I came up and met with Jeremiah. We had a good conversation. I was a little dismayed when I first got here because, let’s face it, Imperial Systems wasn’t real impressive, you know?

Donovan: We were little back then, huh?

Charlie: The old plant wasn’t real impressive, and that was before the expansion, so it was really tiny. I went in and I met the people and I liked Jeremiah immediately, especially when I found out that he was a bike rider. So I accepted the position, and I came and worked for him.

Donovan: And now we’re here.

Charlie: And now we’ve grown tremendously since I’ve started. It’s amazing how much we’ve grown in ten short years.

Donovan: Are you saying that’s because of you, Charlie?

Charlie: No, no, no. I’m not saying that at all. I give all credit to upper management and the foresight they had to do what they did.

Donovan: I think we’ve put a pretty good team together here.

Charlie: I think we have an excellent team together. I think the salesmen we have now, on board are very knowledgable and they do a really fine job.

Donovan: Yeah, I would agree. Needless to say, that definitely means that you have a lot of knowledge in this industry. You have been doing this for a long time and today, what we’re really going to dig into now is try to help us understand how this whole thing got started. I mean, dust collection has been around for how long now?

Charlie: Well, dust collection really grew up with the industrial revolution, which started right after the Civil War. Industry started booming in this country. Railroads, mining, oil, and especially in this area with being the home of the oil industry. Companies just started exploding all over the place. The very first dust collectors that were designed were cyclones. The very first cyclone was designed by a guy named John Finch, I believe his name is, in 1885. He had a company in New York called The Knickerbocker Company. It was a textile mill. He designed the very first cyclone, and patented it for his business. By 1900, cyclones were widely used everywhere. They were like a staple in the industry. That remained the best technology that was available up until the early 20s when the first fabric filter dust collector was designed and patented by a guy in Germany. I think his name was Wilhelm Beth, and he designed the first – he patented three designs for shaker dust collectors.

Donovan: Gotcha. So we’re talking prior to this we have the cyclone, which basically is just a tube that circulates the air around and as it circulates around the heavy dust falls out of the bottom, right?

Charlie: Yes.

Donovan: Maybe some particulate, smaller dust makes it back out, but for all the heavy stuff it goes to the bottom. Then the gentleman form Germany took it one step further, right? That’s what happened next.

Charlie: Well, yeah. It was a completely different design. A cyclone works just the way it sounds. You have a little mini cyclone inside that housing and the faster the air spins it throws the dust out until it reaches a vortex point at the bottom and then a second a spiral turns up the middle and comes out the top. Those cyclones are great for, I don’t want to say coarse, but down to about 20 microns they’re pretty efficient.

Donovan: They still hold their place in a lot of dust collection today. We still build them here. It’s not like they became obsolete, but more dust collection came about.

Charlie: They’re good. They’re inexpensive dust collection devices where you don’t need really, really fine filtration. If you’re discharging outside, I mean, you can’t see 20 microns.

Donovan: That’s very small.

Charlie: The fabric filter actually brought the dust into a compartment and passed the air through a fabric media that separated the dust from the air stream and then the air streamed on the other side of the filters. The shakers would shake the dust off and it would fall down into a hopper to be discharged.

Donovan: Now, this is where the term “baghouse” comes from, right? This is where baghouse started, and a lot of people still call all dust collectors a baghouse, but this is really where it got started, right?

Charlie: That’s pretty much correct, yes. That what where the term came from.

Donovan: It’s like a housing with a bunch of bags sticking down out of it.

Charlie: That’s right. Of course, over the years his design was improved upon. A lot of people got into the game. You know how many different manufacturers we have for dust collectors. But the filters improved. They got more media in them. They got finer weaves. They just got more efficient. The next evolution of the dust collector was not until the early 1970s when the first cartridge collector was developed. With a cartridge collector, they just took a baghouse dust collector, replaced the fabric filters with a cartridge media. The main advantage I guess to the cartridge collector is that the filtration is much, much finer than the baghouse.

Donovan: So it allows you to get even more dust out of the air.

Charlie: That’s correct. It’s like our CMAXX filters are efficient down to .3 microns. That’s real small.

Donovan: That’s like taking fume out of the air. That’s very small.

Charlie: Yes it is. Our CMAXX is great for fume systems. It’s great for weld smoke or plasma smoke or anything like that. It’s a great collector for that.

Donovan: So who was the first person to actually come up with this whole cartridge idea?

Charlie: Oh, do you really want me to tell you that?

Donovan: You can say it, it’s alright.

Charlie: The first cartridge collector was developed by Torit. They’re the monster name in the industry.

Donovan: I think a lot of people still refer to any dust collector with that name. It’s kind of like a Kleenex brand.

Charlie: That’s exactly right. They’ll say, “Hey, can you come up and look at our Torit?” And then I find out its something besides a Torit.

Donovan: Right, and it could be even a baghouse or a cyclone, and people call them all Torits. Sorry, didn’t mean to sidetrack you there. Go ahead. Keep going.

Charlie: That’s okay. I’m old. I forgot where we were going. Ask me another question.

Donovan: Well, we were talking about how the Torits were the first ones to come out with it, but their style was a vertical collector, right? Or a horizontal collector?

Charlie: That’s correct. Their style was a horizontal collector. They still tout that as the best way to arrange them and I disagree, because you know how they work. The dust comes down and falls on them and just lays up there. They lose, you know, thirty percent of their efficiency right off the bat.

Donovan: When you stack the filters on top of each other it cascades down onto the next filter, onto the next filter, onto the next filter before it reaches the hopper. So your top filter goes on to the second filter, on to the third filter until it reaches the bottom. It does allow you have a little bit of a smaller footprint, though, when you’re having it as it does allow you to go vertical with it. I know that’s one of the differences between them. After that style came out, after the horizontal style came out on the cartridge collector now we move to a collector style that’s a little more like what we have, is that right?

Charlie: Yeah, that’s pretty correct. It’s amazing how many people copied Torit on a horizontal style filter. Ours, of course, is a vertical filter. So, the dust comes up from the bottom. It doesn’t come down from the top. Theres no way you lose any filtration surface when its collecting the dust. So, personally, I think that the vertical cartridge is a superior arrangement for the filters.

Donovan: Now, I was thinking about this too, Charlie. As things progress, you said the first baghouses were shaker styles where they actually took the bags and kind of shook them and that’s how it tried to knock the dust off. Even that has changed over the years. Even that style and way of cleaning those cartridges and filters, baghouse filters, that has changed too, right? We have a lot of different techniques for that now.

Charlie: Most dust collectors today use compressed air. They use a tank on their collector that stores compressed air. They’ll have tube sheets that blast air down into the filters to clean them off. That’s the way our CMAXX works. That’s the way most collectors work today. Shakers really are not…I mean, they’re still being made, but they’re not as prevalent today as collectors using compressed air.

Donovan: So even the baghouses are using compressed air these days?

Charlie: Yes. Now, our BRF uses compressed air – our medium pressure BRF uses compressed air, but it has it’s own PD pump to provide that so there’s no plant air that’s needed to work that.

Donovan: It’s a whole system on it’s own. So you don’t have to worry about drawing air out of your system in your plant and drawing away from other things that you’re using it for.

Charlie: There are areas where the baghouse, our BRF, is a better solution than the cartridge. Some of the things when we look at a job, we have to see what is the best technology here. Now our CMAXX is always going to be our flagship. That’s our number one collector. Unlike some of our competitors that make cartridge collectors, they don’t have a baghouse to go to. They’ll push their cartridge collector for anything. Whereas Imperial will say, “Well, this application really isn’t good for a cartridge collector. We really should be putting a BRF on it.”

Donovan: I have seen too that we got the whole way back to the cyclone, which is the original, and sometimes you need not just one solution, but multiple solutions. I’ve seen that too where a cyclone will go in front of a baghouse or in front of a cartridge collector, right? That’s another thing. So it’s interesting that while cartridge collectors and things have changed, that technology is still valid and that idea is still good in certain settings where you’ll have a cyclone and then put it into a baghouse.

Charlie: You see that a lot in recycling plants. Tire shredders, things like that, where you don’t want all that heavy fluff from the tires that are being shredded to go into your filters because that will clog up a dust collector, and will clog up the filter media almost immediately. So we always put a cyclone in front of our BRF on recycling jobs.

Donovan: So it’s almost a pre-filter almost. It helps with the heavy dropout on that, right?

Charlie: That’s true. It gets the bulky stuff out of the airstream so only the fine dust – and we’ve already talked about it. The cyclone is not really a high efficiency filtration system, but it is good to remove the bulky stuff and then the finer dust can go out of the top and go through our more efficient dust collectors.

Donovan: So, Charlie, here’s my question now. We’ve talked about where dust collectors have come from. We’ve seen a lot of progression through the years. We’d like to think, and we often say that right now the CMAXX is pretty state of the art. We’ve done a lot of things to it to make a great dust collector that has a lot of features and benefits. Where do you think the future of dust collection – well, actually we forgot a whole subject.

Charlie: What was that?

Donovan: Now, we’ve got into explosive dust more recently. That has been the latest in dust collection. You’ve been in the industry during that time frame where it has really become a concern, right?

Charlie: Yeah, well, you know the whole thing about the safety. We can go back before that. The first dust collection systems weren’t really designed with worker safety in mind, or really the environment in mind. They were more just to make somebody’s process more profitable. It wasn’t until 1970 that we had OSHA or the EPA which are both government agencies that oversee worker safety in OSHA and the EPA is the Environmental Protection Agency that protects the environment. Those were the two big laws that were passed that really helped our industry because companies were now being forced to worry about worker’s health and keeping a clean environment for them and an area that was…

Donovan: Safe

Charlie: Safe, exactly. And the same thing with the EPA. People, before the EPA, were just dumping stuff outside right into the environment. So those two laws themselves helped tremendously. The third thing that came along was today’s concern about explosion prevention. That’s gotten more stringent over the years. What triggered that was the Imperial System explosion in 2008.

Donovan: The Imperial Sugar?

Charlie: I’m sorry, Imperial Sugar, I’m sorry. Yes.

Donovan: And that was quite the explosion.

Charlie: Yeah, well, we had explosions all along but it was never thrust in to the forefront of the American people. Flour plants exploded all the time, but until that explosion where they saw fourteen people dead and over forty injured, then they decided something had to be done. That’s when they started making the NFPA guidelines more than guidelines. The NFPA laws came on, and you had to be compliant.

Donovan: It keeps betting better for the worker, which creates a better environment. In the end, that’s good for everybody.

Charlie: The newest legislation that’s out there now requiring people to get a dust hazard analysis.

Donovan: Which we’ve talked about on here, so if you guys aren’t familiar with dust hazard analysis, go back, listen to one of our previous episodes. We have that information. You can check that out. Sorry, keep going Charlie.

Charlie: Things are going to keep progressing. The laws are going to change. Somethings going to come around where they have to do something else. The EPA guidelines are actually laws I guess. They change every couple years. They revise it and change something on it.

Donovan: They’re always trying to make it safer. Make it better for the worker and that’s one of our missions here too.

Charlie: Absolutely.

Donovan: We’re trying to create a healthy environment for those people and I think the future of our company is to continue to try to do that with any innovation and any way we can do that.

Charlie: And you can just look at our product line and the fact that we’ve done all the stringent testing we’ve done on our collector. We have the Rhino Drum now, and all the options we have for keeping our equipment safe from an explosion. These are things that are important. If you have a catastrophic failure some place, and one of your employees is maimed or killed, what’s it going to cost to you? You can’t put a cost to that. You can’t put a price to that. So, you know, the explosion stuff is very, very important and almost all the dusts are explosive these days, unless you’ve got rock.

Donovan: It’s always good to have that tested and checked to make sure you know what you’re dealing with and to help create a safe environment to for those who are working. Is that where you see the future of dust collection going? Continue with safety?

Charlie: I think somewhere, eventually, they’ll develop a transporter that will take the dust and just zap it someplace into space.

Donovan: There you go. Straight out of the building.

Charlie: Now you know my Star Trek background.

Donovan: Well, Charlie, thanks for coming on. Thanks for giving us your knowledge. Thanks for sharing you past experience in your own life and your past experience with dust collection. I just want to say if anyone has any questions or anything else, maybe we’ll try to have Charlie on again to answer some questions. You can always email them to us. We’ll catch you next time.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.

Robotics with Paul Carucci – Dusty Jobs Podcast – E9

by Erin Long | Nov 9, 2020 | Uncategorized

In this episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast our guest Paul Carucci talks about Robotic automation and how to integrate a new system. Paul mentions how he started up and what you might need or look for when looking for a robot. Donovan and Paul also discuss what the future might look like with robotic automation.

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Dusty Jobs Podcast Episode 9 – Robotics with Paul Carucci

Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.

Donovan: Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Dusty Jobs podcast. Today we’ve got Paul Carucci with us from P.A. Robotics with us. How are you doing today, Paul?

Paul: We’re doing good. Thanks for having me.

Donovan: Thanks for coming in. We’re just going to be talking a little bit today about robotics and automation. You’re company has been in existence for how long now?

Paul: Seven years.

Donovan: Seven years, but you’re been in the industry for…

Paul: Over fourteen

Donovan: Over fourteen years. You have a little bit of knowledge in this, and experience.

Paul: Theres a little bit there. I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means.

Donovan: You know more than I do. I know that much. We really appreciate you coming in today and helping us understand a little bit more about the robotics industry and kind of what’s going on there, where it came from, where it’s going. We were talking a little bit before this. The first one you did was fourteen years ago. Where did that start out at?

Paul: It went up to New York. It was a mower manufacturer.

Donovan: A mower manufacturer?

Paul: And it’s still in production today. It’s pretty neat, seeing the old machines. When you have your first on that’s still out there. It wasn’t my company at that point, but it was still neat that it was the first one I had built, first one I had installed, programmed, trained, taught the guys and the original guy is still there.

Donovan: The original guy is still running it?

Paul: He’s over the department, but he’s still there and plays with it everyday.

Donovan: I’m sure that’s part of the reason it’s still going too, you know. If you get somebody in there for a while and they take care of it. So move us forward from there. That was your first robot. You were working with a company, and you did that for…

Paul: Until 2013. They closed their doors. They weren’t doing what they wanted to in the industry. They were expected it to grow exponentially faster than they were. They just decided to get out, and I wasn’t ready. I liked what I was doing. So, it was a trying time, and it was a decision to make, to jump two feet into it. My wife is always behind me and very helpful. So we jumped into it. It took about a year to get going, to get people to realize that you can do what you used to do without all the infrastructure behind you. My biggest customer today bought the first machine off of me. When it came in on their floor he took me to the side and said, “I just want to let you know that I’m impressed. When you’re on your own it’s a little bit different that what you had before. I actually like this way better than what you guys had before.” It was a super booster for me to get going.

Donovan: Well, I would imagine too when you’re all on your own and able to make the calls you can do it the way you want to do it.

Paul: Everything I wanted to change that they wouldn’t allow me to change got changed right now.

Donovan: You got a little more maneuverability, a little flexibility.

Paul: You have to listen to the customer. The customer drives everything. If you’re not willing to listen to what they didn’t like about your system, you might as well not be continuing because eventually you’re going to go out the door.

Donovan: That’s right. That’s how it goes.

Paul: Customers motivate and drive a lot of things.

Donovan: They pay your paychecks, right? So, when we’re talking about customers, we start to think about a robotics system, when you look at that. We might have some people out there listening now that are thinking about getting a system. How do you help walk a customer through qualifying whether they need a system, whether they don’t. What are the things you look for whenever you go into a company? Maybe they give you a call, “Hey Paul, can you come down and look at this? I think we need a system.” What are some questions you would fire out there for someone who’s looking at a system? What makes sense, what doesn’t make sense, stuff like that.

Paul: Well, we look at production volumes. You know, are you making big batch runs? Small batch runs? Parts? Do you make fifty of this part a year or do you make 100 parts a year? Are you a lean manufacturer and you do small batch runs but all year long? Do you do large batch runs? How big are your parts? How much welding time are we looking at per part? We want to make sure that return on investment covers everything and we’re not missing anything.

Donovan: So lets pretend I’m a customer right now. I look at you and I think I’m making a lot of parts. What would you define a lot of parts as when you’re saying a big batch run or a small batch run?

Paul: Do you have enough parts to keep a machine busy for forty hours a week? If you’re not keeping it busy forty hours a week it’s tough to make that jump. If you’re going to run it twenty hours your ROI is twice as long. Companies do single shift versus three shift too. You definitely have to keep it busy. So if a man’s doing the job, or if you have three to five people doing something, a robot is going to do three to five what a single person is going to do. So if you take your basic welder, and he’s putting out parts, the robots going to do three to five times as many. Where a single man loads everything up, and welds the parts in a fixture, and pulls it out, now you’ve got one person loading a fixture, and while the robot is running he’s loading the other fixture.

Donovan: I’ll play a little devil’s advocate here, right? If I’ve still got a guy standing there, why do I want to robot? Why don’t I have that guy doing the welding?

Paul: You don’t necessarily need your welder level ready guy to run the machine. So, you have a programer for the robots. You’re always creating a higher level job any time you bring a robot in. Somebody has to program it, and make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. Then, you can have more of an operator level guy run the machine. Keep your welder for welding.

Donovan: I’ve got you. On those custom jobs, on those one off pieces. You can let this thing run and do the mundane task that maybe sometimes guys get a little bored doing. Their work might not be as accurate because it’s not engaging enough. Things like that, that’s what you’re saying.

Paul: A normal welder will get bored if he does the same thing all day every day. Now, not everybody. There are people who love that work. They’re far and few between compared to the person who wants to do the harder level stuff.

Donovan: If you’re just running the same line all day long for and eight to ten hour shift, I can imagine that would be harder and harder to pay attention to running that same line.

Paul: I wouldn’t like that job.

Donovan: So what’s the industries that you see as the most commonplace when you are going into it? We’ve got some people out there thinking, “Well, would this work in my industry?” What are some go to’s and somethings you would always say no to?

Paul: We do a lot of welding applications. You can use a robot for just about any task you want. Production is a big thing. The industry doesn’t matter necessarily. If you’ve got parts that you need welded together, you can look at robots. Do you have productions to justify the robot? That’s one of the bigger things. I don’t know what industry wouldn’t…if you have an industry where you have repeatable work…you don’t want the robot for something that’s inconsistent. It does the same thing every day.

Donovan: So when you’re looking at qualifying whether you want a robot or not, if I’m hearing you right, the question is, “Do you have enough volume? Do you have enough hours for it? Do you have a repeatable job? Do you have the facility for it?” That would probably be the three qualifying factors, right?

Paul: Yeah, and “Do you plan to grow?” The biggest reason people are bringing robots in, too is because of production costs. If you can ramp your production up with the same amount of man power, everybody thinks “Oh, we’re replacing jobs.” It’s not. What you’re doing is creating more throughput through the facility. Now it take more people for the backend – both ends, beginning before it. You’re creating more parts to bring in, and you put more parts out. It grows a company. I’ve never seen a company loose manpower because they brought a robot in. They always grew.

Donovan: I always think about our own facility here. We have our guys that are welding, and we have guys that are building things, putting things together. They’re the assembly team. I can imagine that if were able to get a couple things through the weld section faster that means you would need more guys in the production to build it faster. It kind of just speeds everything up. I would imagine it kind of helps with the accuracy of everything too. I would imagine that’s a big draw to it.

Paul: You have to have good parts in to get good parts out though. A lot of people think they can just throw it at a robot and it’s going to be magic and come out great. If you have junk you can’t expect miracles. Now, a robot with touch sensing, we can cover a few variables, seam tracking and different things.

Donovan: Now, when you say touch sensing, what does that mean? I’m a rookie to this.

Paul: Say you have a part that’s fairly close, but it may vary an eighth inch. So your weld seam is going to be off an eighth inch. That’s way outside of tolerable levels of movement. So you can physically touch the part, find out where it’s at, and relocate your weld equipment.

Donovan: It’s touching it. It can read where the weld…

Paul: Finding the offset.

Donovan: Nice. Well that’s very helpful, I’d imagine.

Paul: You’ve got to have a good start point for seam tracking. I can actually, during a fillet weld, can actually track a seam if the seam is moving during the weld process.

Donovan: Really?

Paul: Yeah, but you’ve got to have a good start point for seam welding.

Donovan: So, as long as you’ve got a good point to start on, it can figure it out from there?

Paul: Yes. Well, I mean it’s programmed, but if it varies slightly during the weld process it will track and follow it.

Donovan: I didn’t know it could do any of that stuff. That’s great.

Paul: There’s a lot of little things out there.

Donovan: What’s the most difficult application you’ve had to deal with? Have you ever had one that’s just been a line, like man this has been a challenge but it worked out well in the end?

Paul: Uh…

Donovan: I stumped you. I didn’t mean to stump you.

Paul: When you get big, odd parts. A person absolutely must automate the big stuff. That’s the biggest challenge, but it’s also the biggest reward at the end of it. When you get something that has a lot of variables and you go through and work out all the bugs…You know, tooling is a big part of robots. Good tooling allows you to handle a lot of things. You have to know where your zero base points are. Fixed versus the variable end of the part.

Donovan: So the bigger the part, there’s more places where you have to start, more places where you have to end, more angles to account for.

Paul: More variables.

Donovan: More variables, and that starts to become the challenge, getting the big stuff. But little stuff – zip, zip, zip, zip. Well, you know, we do a lot of welding here too. We’ve come up with some stuff and we’re trying to help the robotics industry, and that’s how we developed our relationship with you. So, that’s where we’re at. The future of our company is trying to move that way and help out robotics. Where do you see robotics going? Where do you think you might see more of it?

Paul: It’s only going to grow. It’s getting harder and harder to find people to fill the welding positions. I think in the united states we’re going to be bringing a whole lot more back with the COVID and everything that happened kind of pulled things back. Getting parts and stuff from overseas was tough. I think you’re going to see things grow within the US…I guess I lost track of where we were going.

Donovan: I mean, you’re saying we’re already kind of in a trade slump at that point. Unfortunately for years a lot of people didn’t look at welding and those types of jobs as an actual viable option. It might have been that our society and culture pushed us away from that. So we’ve got a little bit of a gap. We’re probably going to have to find a way to fill that here because of the COVID and because of other things. People are bringing things back to America. If you’re not a certified, qualified welder, well, maybe you can still help run the robot is what I’m hearing you say, right? We can still start bringing American jobs in and keeping people employed, especially at a time like this where there’s a lot of people shifting jobs and looking for new employment opportunities. Learning how to run a robots or supervise a robot might be a better option than learning how to weld.

Paul: It’s a definite. My best team for when I sell a brand new system, I recommend from the company that I need two guys, two people. I prefer a welder and an engineer level guy, a person that’s got a good head on their shoulders for the computer side of it. Those seem to make the best team. The computer level guy might have a CAD background or whatever for fixture and tooling but the welder guy – you can’t get away from working with welders without a welder for the industry that I focus in. So that’s been my best team going forward, is those two people. They need to work well together. The person running the machine doesn’t need that.

Donovan: So if you have two people on your team that understands those two traits. You need a computer person. You need someone who knows what a good weld is supposed to look like, what a good weld is supposed to be like. If you have those two helping out, you could put them on one of those machines. Maybe I could even run one, I don’t know.

Paul: Anybody can learn to run one.

Donovan: If anybody can do it, then I can probably do it. That’s encouraging. If this doesn’t work out for me maybe you can hook me up with a robot job somewhere.

Paul: I don’t think we’ll do that. Nothing against you. I don’t think you’re ever going to go down  here.

Donovan: Well that’s interesting. Have you seen more people because of the COVID, because of that kind of mentality? The robot doesn’t get sick, but you still need people to run it.

Paul: You do.

Donovan: It’s not an independent thing.

Paul: No. They don’t get sick but you still have to have inbound and outbound parts available. So there’s a definite need. But there’s a whole lot more that goes into a robot. That’s why I said, “People think they’re taking jobs, but they don’t.” They increase jobs, generally. Now, there’s automation out there that does take jobs away. A robot takes a certain job away, the actual welding aspect, but it creates more jobs on both ends of it. It never goes away.

Donovan: So if you’re thinking about buying a robot out there, and thinking, “Man, I could get rid of a couple people.” That’s not going to be the case.

Paul: Not generally.

Donovan: So that’s one aspect of it. We’re seeing more things go towards automation. Do you see anything else? Any big innovations come out? Anything that you think, “Man, this could really be a change point”?

Paul: I’ve been watching into the plasma welding industry. That’s something that’s new and coming up. It’s not super new, but it’s definitely developing. It’s similar to a TIG application. You don’t generally see a lot in the robotics industry in TIG. They’re out there. They’re getting more prevalent. It’s that the process is clean. Plasma is cleaner or as clean and a little bit faster. You can do a little bit of different things with it.

Donovan: Helping to create a little bit of a cleaner environment, and safer…

Paul: Parts. Yeah, you know. Clean up after parts. TIG is one of your cleanest processes. Plasma is falling into that, but you can do it a little bit faster. You can do thicker parts with it.

Donovan: So you can pick up your production time and do a little bit of a heavier part.

Paul: Yeah, getting penetration is the big thing. So, if you can get deeper penetration on your welds it’s a little bit of a faster process. You’ll never compete with MIG on speed, but the quality of weld is cleaner on MIG.

Donovan: So it’s got it’s strengths where it needs to have them.

Paul: Yup.

Donovan: Well, Paul, I don’t know if there’s anything else you’d want to give out there to anyone who’s listening when you’re thinking about robotics. Is there anything else we should consider whenever you’re doing that?

Paul: I mean, if you’re considering robots, don’t just look at the cheapest price. I’ve got a lot of guys that say “Well, I can get this cheaper.” Well, what are you getting for it? At the end of the day your integrator is your key to success. We’re a small integrator, but my focus in business is the customer. So, at the end of the day, if my customer is down I have a problem. So, a lot of the bigger manufacturers out there, bigger integrators, they don’t focus nearly as well as I do, I think, on keeping the customer happy and pushing that end of the business, the service end of the business. A happy customer for me gets me a lot further down the road than just selling the machine.

Donovan: Nobody likes getting that phone call when someone’s upset.

Paul: We answer the phone 24/7. You get me. I’m the owner of the business and you get me on the phone. Someday I hope I can push some of that off but when you have a down machine it’s my focus. If my guys can’t do it, whatever it is, I’m going to take care of you and get you going.

Donovan: Now that you’ve said that, I’m going to ask you, because you gave me another question here. What are some things that you kind of want to stay away from whenever you’re looking at a machine? What are some aspects – obviously price is going to give you a higher end machine. But when you’re looking at it, I mean I don’t know if I look at this if it makes it a better robot than that robot. Are you looking at your systems integration package? Your software? What are the things that really help set apart a top dollar machine from a bottom dollar machine, let’s say?

Paul: There’s obviously safety. Safety is a big thing. You have to fall under current codes. Are you making sure that you’re preventing everything possible, from a person getting hurt? We’re always looking at how we can make the machine safer. People always look for ways to defeat the safety. You’re always at that challenge of “How can you make it safer for long term?” There are companies out there that follow the absolute bare minimum to keep it cheap. That’s not necessarily your best bet though.

Donovan: That’s not good, if someone’s getting hurt or their health is at risk. That’s one of the things we focus on a lot around here. You know, the health and safety, that’s our mission statement here and it sounds like you guys have a very similar mentality when you go into it. You want to make sure the application is right for the person. You want to make sure it’s a safe application. You’re keeping the customer and the guy that’s running the thing in mind. I mean, I think that we’re all on that same common goal around here. We’re all trying to make sure it’s a healthy, safe environment for those employees and for the people that are running that. At the end of the day we want them all to go home to their families. We want them all to be safe and be able to come back and enjoy working the next day. Well Paul, thanks so much. If anybody wants to get ahold of you, what’s the best way to do that?

Paul: You can catch me on my website. That’s the best way.

Donovan: That’s www.pa-robotics.com?

Paul: www.pa-robotics.com and my phone number is one there. If somebody wants to talk to me direct, my phone number is right on there.

Donovan: And if you can’t find any of that just give us a call right here at Imperial and we’ll turn you over to Paul. Hey, thanks for coming on. We really appreciate your time. Thanks for giving us a minute. Thanks again for joining us. I hope you listen to us next time.

Paul: Thanks.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.

Which Dust Collector Do I Need To Buy?

by Erin Long | Sep 28, 2020 | Uncategorized

ANSWER KEY:

Question 1

The size and texture of your particulate will help decide what kind of dust collector you need. Large chunks or abrasive material might need a cyclone or other device to remove them from the air stream. Fibrous or sticky dust may require special filters. Particulate as small as weld fumes requires the efficiency of a cartridge filter like the DeltaMAXX Prime. Tell Mike to eat his sandwich outside and the birds will clean up after him.

Question 2

Many kinds of dust can ignite. The flammability and explosiveness of your dust decides what types of safety features you will need to meet safety standards. Combustible dust presents a serious hazard. Dave should not be lighting things on fire at work. Just saying.

Question 3

If most of the dust comes from one or a few machines, you may need a source capture dust collection system. It picks up dust at each area with an arm, hood, or table. If dust occurs all over the facility, an ambient system can exchange the air in the space with clean air to remove dust. Not sure what to tell you about Larry.

Question 4

Controlling dust protects from all these problems. Preventing accumulation of dust limits the potential for an explosion. Limiting worker exposure prevents health problems due to inhaled particles. Dust can contaminate other processes or get into places it doesn’t belong. And we all know that no one wants to hear Tom complain about his energy drink again. What is dragonfruit, anyway?

Question 5

Dust collectors may be found inside or outside. With combustible dust, a dust collector needs to have proper venting to the outdoors or a flameless explosion vent. Considering the size of a dust and fume collector, you may want it outdoors. If you plan to use it as a coffee table decoration, we recommend having a large coffee table and a reinforced floor.

Question 6

No one likes to shut down production to work on the dust collector. In reality, no one likes to work on the dust collector at all. Two bits of good news: first, choosing the right dust collector for your needs will decrease maintenance time, and second, you can schedule our ServiceMAXX team to do your dust collector’s needed maintenance. Please do not wait till something breaks. We’re sure you don’t do that. But you probably know someone who does.

Question 7

If the air entering the dust collector has high heat or humidity, this affects the functioning of the system. Regular filters, especially cartridge filters, might not tolerate the heat. Humidity can cause dust to stick to filters or weaken the material. We have options for heat-tolerant and humidity-resistant filters. We don’t know what’s wrong with George but it sounds like maybe he should try a better deodorant.

Question 8

Dusts that cause serious health problems need dust collectors with special safety features. The list includes carcinogens like hexavalent chromium and toxins like lead. HEPA filters capture very fine, small particles. HEPAs can work as a backup system to capture any tiny amounts of dust that get through the main filters, or if a leak occurs. And stop making things up about Steve. You know he hates that.

Question 9

You might have talked to some companies already. Maybe the people you spoke to didn’t impress you. We’ve talked to them, and honestly most of them don’t impress us much either. You’ve come to the right place, and we look forward to talking more.

Question 10

Trying to understand all the different dust regulations and standards will give anyone a headache. Even finding all of them can be impossible. If you don’t have time to dig through NFPA 68 to find the equation for an explosion vent angle, we don’t blame you one bit. Find a helpful resource (like us, perhaps?) to do the research and save you time. And don’t listen to Uncle Jim. He’s making it up. There’s no such thing as the “OSHA Five-Second Rule for Dropped Donuts”.

Business & Politics with Congressman Mike Kelly – Dusty Jobs Podcast – E8

by Erin Long | Jul 17, 2020 | Uncategorized

This episode of Dusty Jobs Podcast features our guest Congressman Mike Kelly. The Congressman shares his recent experience having the Corona Virus. He also talks about how he came into politics and his views on the current political climate. We also discuss American manufacturing and the importance of bringing back industry and what the future might bring.

If you have any suggestions for the podcast please feel free to email us at dustyjobspodcast@isystemsweb.com

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Dusty Jobs Podcast Episode 8 – Business & Politics with Congressman Mike Kelly

Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.

Donovan: Once again, thanks for joining us on the Dusty Jobs Podcast. We’re doing our special made in America edition. Joining us today is Congressman Mike Kelly of the Pennsylvania 16th district. Thanks for coming on today.

Congressman Kelly: Thank you. It’s good to be here. I’ve never been on a Dusty Jobs Podcast before, but being at Imperial, I’ve been here before. This is great. Glad to be here with you.

Donovan: Yeah, well we’re super excited to have you on. Mike, just tell us a little bit about yourself if you don’t mind. Maybe how you got started into politics. You’re in our district here so we just want to hear about you.

Congressman Kelly: Yeah, getting involved in politics for me really came out of a situation where in the Obama administration where General Motors had had some problems and they went to the government for assistance and they got assistance, but then part of the back part of that was then the government started to say, “Well, you’re going to have to get rid of certain dealerships, and certain people are not going to be allowed to be in business anymore.” One of the stores we have, we’re a Chevrolet Cadillac dealer…

Donovan: Because that’s your history, right? You’ve been in the car business fo ra long time.

Congressman Kelly: My mother and dad started our business in 1953. Both of them worked at a Chevrolet warehouse in Pittsburgh pre-World War II. My dad went off to the war, came back home, and back to work for Chevrolet. He was on the road for Chevrolet and in 1953 he got his first dealership in a little town called Verona in west Pittsburgh. So, you know, we got back a long way into that. In fact, if you looked at my family history the Kelly side, my grandfather Kelly was a conductor on the B&O Railroad. My grandfather on the other side of the aisle was in the fruit business. His name was McTighe (?). The other half of the Kelly combination was my grandmother, Mary Simulsburger (?), and they were in the livery business. My dad would alway say when I would say, “How did we ever get into the car business?” He’d say, “You know what, your Grandpa Simulsburger was in the livery business.” And maybe it was kind of a takeover from that, and we just kind of rolled, as it would be, into this business. So, my dad worked for Chevrolet from after the war until ’53. He got a chance to get his first dealership. He got a little one car showroom, about four service bays, and they would work seven days a week. At that time, we would stick the card – not me, I was just a child at the time. I was five years old. I used to go down to the railroad siding with my dad and he would take these cars off the train, he’d take them home in our basement. Back then you had to service the car to get it ready before you could sell it. He would do that work in our basement. The big thing then, the option, because pretty much the cars were standard, but he was good at sewing seat covers. So one of the accessories that they would sell to customers were seat covers, and my dad would make those seat covers.

Donovan: A little upgrade.

Congressman Kelly: Yes. So that’s how we get started. Moved to Butler in 1957.

Donovan: That is a great American history story right there.

Congressman Kelly: It really is, but it’s not uncommon.

Donovan: Right.

Congressman Kelly: So whenever you talk to people. When you say, “How does your family get into this business or that business?” A lot of it was just generational. Although for my dad it was different. He was the first one in his family. My grandfather Kelly was upset with him. My dad told him “You know what Pop, I have a chance to become a Chevrolet dealer, and I’m going to become a Chevrolet dealer.”

And my grandfather Kelly said, “My God George, what is wrong with you? You’re the first Kelly to ever wear a white shirt to work. They even give you a car to drive for nothing. Are you out of your mind?”

And my dad said, “You know what Pop? Look, its just that I’m kind of in the business I’m in now, I can’t determine my own future. If I’m in business for myself I can. So if I’m going to work hard I want to work hard for myself and for my family.” And that’s how we get in the business. So in ’57 we moved from Pittsburgh up to Butler. Chevrolet Cadillac Agency on Main Street in Butler. In 1997, as it were, then I bought the dealership from my father.

Donovan: Oh, okay.

Congressman Kelly: So, I became the dealer operator, owner operator in Butler. Then in 2001 I had the opportunity to pick up a Hyundai franchise, bought the Hyundai franchise, incorporated it on our dealership lot, and then in 2003 or 04 I got the Kia dealership. So we’re on a ten acre site that is actually the front corner of our farm.

Donovan: Oh, I got you.

Congressman Kelly: We’ve added on and added on, and it’s been an interesting run. It’s been good for the most part, but you have those days where you say, “Oh gosh, I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.” We go through good business cycles and bad business cycles. Surviving is the key and I think any of us that are in business know that you learn from your mistakes. Surviving near death situations really makes you smarter for the next time and you’re very cautious and I think you’re forced to be conservative in your thinking, and I think you required to be because everything is on the line everyday.

Donovan: Not just for you but for the people you’re taking care of, your employees. I think that’s a great story. So fast forward. You’re owning the dealerships now. You get to the point where the government is starting to interfere? Trying to tell you what to do?

Congressman Kelly: They took one of the franchises away. I got a letter, a twenty-eight page letter. The letter is kind of boiler plate until you get to the last paragraph. It says “Sign the release form included with this communication and you’ll no longer be a Cadillac dealer or you can go and fight this and say I want to go to arbitration.” So I got a call from General Motors and the zone manager said, “Listen, we sent you a communication.”

And I said, “Yeah, it’s twenty-eight pages.”

And he goes, “What did you think of it?”

And I said, “You must be kidding me. You don’t really want to know my answer.” I said, “I will tell you this. I’m going to arbitration.”

The guy on the other end of the line started laughing. He said, “You? Mike Kelly? In little Butler, Pennsylvania are going to go into battle against the US government? You can’t possibly win.”

I said, “Well, you know what? I don’t know about that. One thing I do know is that if I don’t go into the fight I for sure can’t win, but I’m not going to back away from this. It has taken a long time since 1953 to get to this point. I bought this business from my father. I didn’t inherit it. He didn’t give it to me. I bought it from him. I’ve got a big mortgage to pay. I’m going to fight you guys tooth and nail to try to keep the franchise.” And you know what? We actually got arbitration and we win.

Donovan: Nice.

Congressman Kelly: Yeah, we win. Then going forward we go through that first couple years of the Obama administration. We fight the fight. We win the battle, and the next thing I know there another election coming up. There was a gal named Kathy Dahlkemper who was serving in, at that time it was Pennsylvania’s third congressional district. Before Ms. Dahlkemper the was a guy named Phil English. Phil English had been there I think about fourteen years. I got a call from Phil. He said, “Hey, are you going to be in the dealership?”

I said, “Yeah, I’m here. I gotta be.”

And he goes, “I want to talk to you.”

So he comes to the dealership and I said, “Phil, it’s really good to see you. Sorry you’re not still serving in Congress.”

He said, “Well, that was a wave election. President Obama is in office. Ms. Dalkemper is now our representative.” He said, “But what I wanted to talk about what you running for Congress.”

I said, “Me? No, no, no. Listen, I got a pretty full schedule right now. We’ve got about 150 people that expect to be payed every two weeks. I think I better stay here and work at the business.”

He said, “Seriously. We need people from the private sector serving in these positions because its too much about professional politicians and people who have never had a worry about making payroll, people who have never had to worry about taxes. They have’t had to worry about that. You may be a guy that could make a difference.”

So, I talked to my wife. I talked to my kids. My wife initially said, “Absolutely not. I know how this works. They go after your kids. They go after you. They go after your family. It’s just not worth it. It’s horrible.”

I said, “Well, the alternative is if someone from the private sector doesn’t serve, you’ll keep the same model that you’ve got going on now.”

But my kids said, “Dad, no, at least try.” So I was one of like fourteen or fifteen candidates in the Republican primary for the election in 2010, the fall of 2010. Got through the primary and then got into the general election and then won in the general election. So I went into office in 2011. So we’re finishing up since 2011. It will be ten years.

Donovan: Yeah, so you’ve been in the private sector in 2008 when things were a little bit tough. Now you’re on the other side during this current time where its a little bit, kind of getting a little tough again, huh? But you’ve gone through some tough stuff. You just had the COVID-19.

Congressman Kelly: Yeah, I had the coronavirus.

Donovan: So tell us about that. I mean, how did that affect you? How did you feel? Is there a lot of misconceptions about it out there? From your persona experience, what do you think?

Congressman Kelly: My personal experience, because we were home from Washington, and it was St. Patrick’s week in the middle of March, and we were working every day. We were working every day, and I come home from work my wife said, “You don’t look good.”

And I said, “Well thanks.”

And she said, “No seriously, you don’t look like you feel good.”

I said, “I feel fine.”

She said, “Well, I’m not sure that you do or not. You’re going to bed early. You’re getting up early to go to work, but it seems to me that you’re sleeping a lot more than you normally would.” Well, you know, I wasn’t seeing it the way she saw it. First off, you loose your appetite. I had no appetite at all. You have no sense of taste. You can’t taste things. I had muscle spasms. I had headaches. The biggest part of the coronavirus is the respiratory problem. I did not have the respiratory problem, and I had friends that had it the same time I did and they said, “Are you on a ventilator?”

And I said, “Of course I’m not on a ventilator. I couldn’t be talking to you.”

They said, “Are you on oxygen?”

And I said, “I’m not on oxygen.”

“Are you in the hospital?”

I said, “No, I’m at home.”

They said, “Really? What do you think the difference is?”

I said, “Well, you know early on my wife said “Please go get tested for this.”” So the test is a long swab they insert up your nose and really  you think its going to come out the corner of your eye. No, I’m serious. It’s very uncomfortable. A couple days later my doctor called me back and said, “How are you feeling?”

I said, “I feel fine. Tired.”

He said, “You know what? You tested positive.”

Donovan: Oh man.

Congressman Kelly: So I said, “Okay, well Bill, then what do I do? I know I can’t be out in the public, so we’ll self quarantine for a couple weeks.”

He said, “No, this is going to be more than that for you. I want you to look into something. There something called hydroxychloroquine. Your general health is good, but I want you to read up on it, and I want you to discuss it with Vicky and see that you think. I think it’s something you may want to try, because if this settles in your respiratory system it’s something that can be very serious.”

I said, “Let me read up on it.” Read up on it. Got back to him a day or two later and said, “You know what, Bill? I’m going to try it.” So very early on in my battle with the coronavirus I was taking hydroxychloroquine.

Donovan: And that worked for you?

Congressman Kelly: And you know what, for me it worked. I know there was some controversy over it and most of the controversy came down to well if President Trump endorses it, it must be bad. Well, because, listen, with some people, no matter what the President does its wrong. But it has been since proved to be an alternative that you should look forward to. The good part about having the coronavirus and recovering fully is that you get your blood tested and I have the antibodies. So, because you have the antibodies you can now enter into this immune therapy where they will take the plasma from your blood and they’ll use that in trying to develop a vaccine that could defeat the coronavirus and maybe keep somebody alive. Easy process, painless. You go to the blood bank. They take your blood. Your blood goes right back into your body minus the plasma that was taken out. I’ve done that three times now. I’ll probably do it another three or four times. I can do it about every ten days. For that part, that’s been good.

Donovan: My wife and I also just went to give blood to see if we had the antibodies and see if we can help out. We came back negative, that we didn’t have it, but I know exactly what you’re talking about. We were actually hoping maybe we had it so maybe we could try to help out like you’re helping out.

Congressman Kelly: As I said, even out of the worst situations usually there’s something good. So for me and my situation, was I sick for a while? Yes, I was sick for a while. Uh, loss of appetite. I lost thirty pounds in about ten days.

Donovan: Oh my.

Congressman Kelly: Yeah, well I put a little bit back on. It was just because I had no desire to eat. I couldn’t taste anything. So I was trying to drink water and eat little things of applesauce. That was about it.

Donovan: So in the same way the coronavirus kind of caused you to slim down, I think we’ve seen a little bit of the slimming down of the American economy. I know you probably have a little bit of a different perspective of that because you’re seeing it more at a federal level and seeing how things are playing out. I’m just trying to get your opinion on that. How do you feel that the economy is doing right now, and maybe how it’s going to go in the future? What do you think about that?

Congressman Kelly: I think the president’s reaction right away was to go get some programs put together so working in conjunction with the Congress to come up with economic relief programs that would really help out. The PPP program is one that is very essential. We look back at that now. Over five million businesses were able to participate in this loan process. 51.1 million American workers were able to still get that paycheck. They didn’t get laid off. They were able to still get paid. I think people loose the concept of what does that mean. Well here’s what it means. If you’re not laid off, you’re not on unemployment compensation. If you’re not laid off and you’re being paid, that means you’re still contributing with your wage taxes into the Social Security and the other taxes. You get taxed on that money, and for the businesses it mean that they were able to stay open. Now in Pennsylvania Governor Wolf and Secretary Levine had decided that there’s non-life essential businesses and so a lot of businesses were forced to shut down but it wasn’t because the business had a flawed business philosophy. It wasn’t some kind of a blunder. It was something decided by the administration, the Pennsylvania administration, that these businesses would be shut down. In some cases it was controversial what was being shut down. States that surround us didn’t have the same restrictions. In some places your competing in a market where right across the state border they are wide open and yet you’re shut down.

Donovan: We’re sitting twenty minutes from Ohio right now. They were definitely on different regulations. Some of our employees are even from Ohio. We’re very familiar with what you’re saying as far as different businesses didn’t quite make the playing field as even in the economy at that point whenever that was going on. We are glad for everything that’s going on as far as the federal government and what they’ve done to try to help out. Do you see anything else coming down the line that might be kind of helping getting things going?

Congressman Kelly: Yeah, I do. I think that the president is very aware. Thank God we have someone from the private sector, not a professional politician who has never had to worry about their business being successful in order to still make payroll, and never had to worry about regulations holding you back from being able to produce a product or the service that you’ve done. You look at the regulations sometimes like, “Who came up with these ideas?” Not anybody that’s ever been in business. It’s the politicians and policy makers who have never actually walked that walk. So they’re coming up with those ideas. I’m not saying that they’re bad people. I’m saying that while they may have been well intended, they were flawed. So we look at that. I think any of us from the business world, the private world, I think we look at things so differently because we can’t afford to make a mistake. You’re walking a high wire without a net underneath you if you fall to catch you. You actually hit the ground and you get hurt. I just think that, what we’ve always been in America, we’re a country made up of people who love to work. They love challenge. They love something in front of them that people say, “You can’t possibly get through this,” and they say, “You know what, watch me. I will.” So, I think that’s basically who America is. Now I think one of the things that’s happened, though, and again, politicians making policy and not having any background in the businesses that they’re making policy for. So, why do I say that? Well, I will tell you this. When we went away from America making things in America, being supplied by America and we’ll use foreign entities because it’s a little bit cheaper. So the finished product will be a little more affordable. We found out during the pandemic that, you know what, these people from around the world are going to help you when it’s profitable for them. They’re not going to help you when it’s not. When they can take advantage of that, they’ll take advantage of that. There’s nobody that has shown up more in Americans’ mind than, I think, China. China has done a number on the United States and for years I sat and would listen to policy makers and talking about trade because the committee that I’m on, on Ways and Means, because part of our jurisdiction is trade policy I would hear people say the most outlandish things. People that grew up in America, that live in America, that represent Americans saying, “Well, I would rather it come from China. I would rather it come out of Vietnam.” I would rather, I would rather, and my question is wouldn’t you rather it came right from the state you live in? Wouldn’t you rather it came from the town that you live in? Are you kidding me? What don’t you understand? It always came down to “Well it’s too expensive sometimes to make it in America,” and I say, “The greater expense is not making in America someday, when not only our jobs but our national defense will be threatened and our national security because we’re relying on somebody from outside our country to help us to build what were building. So, I think we’re facing that right now. Like the USMCA, The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Why did the president want that renegotiated? Jobs! He said, “Why? Why would we allow this to happen?” So we did the USMCA, and it has been a lot of jobs back. He’s looking now at the other trade agreements we have around the world. I think he’s smart when he says, “You know what? I would rather do one on one trade agreements than the United States versus the Pacific, the countries in the Pacific Ocean.” No, we’re not going to do it that way. He’s got a completely different approach to it. His reason is different because he’s actually had to make payroll. He’s actually had to keep his businesses open. He’s had to actually go to banks. He’s actually gone bankrupt a couple times, and fought his way back to the top again. So you have that type of real life experience, and it’s the old story you tell your kids when they’re growing up. Be careful. Don’t touch the stove. It’s hot. All of us that have children know that a child has got to touch the stove because they don’t know what hot means. Once they’re burnt they understand it. I think America has touched the stove a lot of times, got burnt, and understands. Don’t touch that. It’s a hot stove. We’ve got to protect ourselves.

Donovan: I know for the guys in our shop, when we talk to them, one of the things that they really like is the whenever they’re buying American products it feels like when you purchase that, or when we get American steel, it’s not only that you’re helping to keep that money here, you’re actually helping to provide a job for your neighbor. You can provide a livelihood. You can pay for someone else’s kid’s college by giving them a chance to work as opposed to that money going overseas. I know in our shop and around here that’s the way we feel whenever we see that. American made, you know, and bringing jobs back to America. Do you think because of all this that we’ve experienced throughout this pandemic that this will drive some manufacturing back to the United States? I mean, do you see that coming?

Congressman Kelly: Definitely. I definitely do and I think more than anything else. I did reference the president already because his whole life has been in the private sector. Has he been successful? Yes. Has he had his failures? Yes. Has he had to fight his way back? Yes, but also now you have more people from the private sector looking at serving in public office. I don’t care if its a school board. I don’t care if its a township, working in a township, working in a county, or even at the federal level. You need to have that balance of the policy makers having actually been on the field and played and have their nose bloodied a couple times and had some defeats and learned to come back from it as opposed to people who are really good. I use this term sometimes and people get mad at me for saying it, but it’s the truth. A lot of the people I work with are great on a laptop, but they’ve never been on blacktop, and there’s a huge difference. There is a huge difference. Somebody will say, “Well, let me draw it up and I’ll tell you how it works.” Better yet, tell me what you’ve done in your life because if you’ve never done it you can’t possibly draw it. You can conceptualize, but unless you realize, unless you’ve walked that walk, I don’t really want to hear what you have to say. I’ll consider it, but I’m not buying it without actually trying it.

Donovan: Right, right. Well, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else that you wanted to talk about, or anything else we could cover.

Congressman Kelly: Let me say this because I think the key to a lot of what happens in our country, and the same right here. If I were to ask you “What is Imperial?” And you say, “Well we do this.” No, no. What is Imperial. And you would say, “I’ll tell you what Imperial is. Let me take you out in the shop and introduce you to our welders. Let me take you to our design people.” It’s all the teams that we build, right? So, we’re all looking for that talent and I don’t care if you’re serving in Congress. I have to tell you, the staff that works for Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional District. They do not work for me. They work for Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional District and all our constituents. They are the hardest working, most blessed people in the world. During this pandemic they have been working from home. They have been fielding an excess of 4,000 calls a week. Now, I’m not talking about fifty or sixty people. I’m talking about sixteen or seventeen people that get up every day and do the same thing everyday and that is serve, serve the constituents. People tell me, “Well, you konw, hey Kelly. I just want to thank you for what you did. I didn’t vote for you.” I said, “Well first of all, let me tell you this. You don’t need to thank me. Write up a thank you note and send it to the staff. Secondly, I didn’t know you didn’t vote for me until right now, but that’s not going to affect it. We’re going to work the best way we can to make sure we serve the people that put us in office. Getting back to what makes Imperial great is the team. What makes America great is when America is a team. I think that right now, I would hope people would look past some of the verbiage that’s out there today. I’ve never seen us more divided or more polarized as a country. When I talk to people I say, “What is it that bothers you?” Most of them will say, “Well, tweets.” I say, “Tweets? That’s what bothers you? Tweets?” What about the job market? What about your pension? What about the quality of our healthcare? What about what we’re going through right now with the police? My God. These men and women in blue that put their life on the line every day are not being chastised by a group of anarchist and vandals. When you look at the places this is happening, the people in charge of the safety and security of the people – why would they turn a blind eye to that? “They have to blow off steam.” You don’t allow people to break the law and say, “They’re just blowing off steam.” No. They’re destroying public and private property. You get arrested. You pay restitution. You don’t walk away from it. You don’t pull down our history and then celebrate it and say, “Well, you don’t know who this man was.” I say, “I do, and I know something else. You don’t have a freaking clue who you just pulled down.” So, look, our history is our history. We learn from our history. Was it perfect? No. It’s not perfect, but I will ask any of the people in America: Is there any other country that has to put up a wall to keep people out as opposed to keep people in? America is still the most desired address in the world. People go across deserts, go across oceans to come to America for the same reasons they always did, freedom and liberty. When I see what’s happening today I say, “My God, how can you talk despairingly about a nation where 1.5 million men and women in uniform gave their lives to give you that opportunity that you have today.” So please, quit looking at the TV and start looking at your life. Look at the place you work. Look at the place you worship. Look at the place you live, and tell me that you’re going to sit down tonight and make plans to move someplace else in the world because it’s just become so bad for you. It’s not true. America is still the greatest country, the greatest nation the world has ever known.

Donovan: I hear what you’re saying and I think the way I would sum it up is the way we’re going to get through this is by us depending on each other.

Congressman Kelly: Always.

Donovan: The American people and the American worker if there’s anything we’re good at is pulling ourselves up and figuring out a way to get through it. We appreciate having someone who has been there in the trenches before, and has been through a recession and is understanding how to tackle these problems in the government trying to help guide that and direct that for small businesses like us and for other small businesses out there. You have a real world perspective on what it takes to get through some tough times and how to take care of some people that have been under your care for generations. It’s great. I just want to say thanks for coming on.

Congressman Kelly: Thank you, thank you.

Donovan: Thanks for everything you said.

Congressman Kelly: I just want to leave you with this thought. A couple of years ago at our fiftieth class reunion we were sitting around with a bunch of the kids I graduated with and I said “You know what, are we the luckiest people in the world to grow up in the town we grew up in, the times we grew up in with parents and preachers and teachers and coaches? Gosh, were we lucky or what?” Now there’s about ten people sitting there and they’re saying, “Yeah, you know what? We were lucky. We were really lucky.” Except for one girl. One girl looked at me and she goes, “I don’t think we were lucky.”

I said, “Seriously? You don’t think we were lucky?”

She goes, “No, I don’t think we were lucky at all.”

I said, “Well, Linda, if we weren’t lucky what were we?”

She looked me in the eyes and she said, “We were blessed.”

And I said, “I will never again in my life tell people I was lucky. I will tell them I was blessed.” I think that’s who we are as a nation. We are truly the most blessed nation on the face of the earth with a lot of responsibility for the rest of the world and we show up. We show up. If there’s a tsunami somewhere, we’re there. If there’s a hurricane somewhere, we’re there. If there’s a tragedy somewhere, we’re there. We’ve given not only our wealth, we’ve given our lives to defend people around the world. Theres no other nation in the world that’s done that. Only in America. Only in America.

Donovan: I think we’re going to make it through this.

Congressman Kelly: Yes, yes we will.

Donovan: And we’re going to come out helping people on the other side.

Congressman Kelly: We sure will.

Donovan: Mike, thanks for coming on.

Congressman Kelly: It’s good to be with you. I love being with Imperial. This is great. We love you guys. You make great stuff. Made in America, for Americans. It’s good.

Donovan: There you go. Trying to keep Americans healthy and safe, and create a better work place for them. Thanks for all your help you’ve been for us getting things going here. We just want to say thanks for joining us on the Dusty Jobs Podcast and we hope that you listen again next time, and have a good night.

Congressman Kelly: Thank you. Thanks so much.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.