Dust hazards in the workplace continue to draw attention. NFPA Standard 652 on Combustible Dust has set a deadline of September 2020 to complete a dust hazard analysis. What is a DHA, though, and how do you do one?
Here at Imperial Systems, we were lucky enough to interview Bob Korn, a veteran process safety professional from DEKRA Process Safety. After doing many dust hazard analyses (and lots of other safety assessments), Bob broke down the process of how to do a DHA that will meet all your NFPA 652 standards.
Dust Hazard Analysis from a Pro
Bob has been in the field of industrial safety and protection for more than twenty years. He joined us for a podcast to clear up some of the mysteries about doing a dust hazard analysis.
Bob explains that there are three parts to a full dust hazard analysis. First, you need to know the characteristics of your dust. Does this mean you need to have your dust tested? Sometimes your industry has data that you can use in place of a test. The only problem is that this data needs to be on exactly the same dust as you have.
If you need a dust test, many companies can help you get one. They’ll give you a report that gives you information about how to handle your dust. You’ll need this report to be able to conduct a dust hazard analysis, and you’ll need to keep it available.
After you’ve had your dust tested, it’s time for the dust hazard analysis. Bob and DEKRA have a lot of experience providing many types of process safety analysis, so we asked him to walk us through the steps.
Dust Hazards and Finding Safety Risks
Testing your dust won’t be helpful if you just file the data away. You need this information to conduct your DHA. Bob and his colleagues conduct process safety analyses as a career, and Bob was kind enough to walk us through the steps.
Bob explains that there are four main areas of concern they focus on first.
Can enough dust loft into the air to cause ignition?
Are there likely ignition sources?
Bob also discusses how you can’t just look at what he calls “standard operating conditions” or “upset conditions”. Many companies only look at standard operating conditions, when everything is working normally. Bob says you need to consider the upset conditions when something goes wrong.
For example, you may think your dust hazard analysis has located and controlled the obvious ignition sources. However, if something goes wrong, you might have a brand-new ignition source. Bob asks “What happens if this belt comes off or this pulley gets stuck, or this sensor doesn’t work, and you know, what are the potential risks to associate with that?”.
Many combustible dust accidents happen when equipment wears out, a process changes or someone does something they normally don’t do (like hot work in a dangerous area). The infamous Imperial Sugar explosion, for example, happened because of an equipment change. Despite all the combustible dust, the explosion was ignited by a minor equipment change on a conveyor belt under the silos. A professional safety process analyst will look for processes that have the potential for failure or a dust explosion.
Conducting a Dust Hazard Analysis the Professional Way
Bob explains that after the dust testing, the process safety professional will plan a walkthrough of the facility. Several members of the company’s team can be valuable in this process.
Bob says, “You typically have an EHS person, one of their safety people. You want an operations person, someone that’s familiar with each of the unit operations that you’re going to be looking at. Maintenance people are very useful in the dust hazard analysis. They’re the people who really know the ins and outs of the facility.”
The team will walk through the entire building, looking at each process and each machine. The team also checks for fugitive dust or accumulations of dust. These housekeeping issues can be the cause of serious combustible dust accidents.
After the walkthrough and assessment, Bob explains the report that his company puts together for the client. If not using a company like DEKRA, a facility will need to put together a report themselves.
“They’ll prepare a report that certainly documents their observations and their findings,” Bob explains. “The team identifies the gaps in the safety measures that are existing, or just missing completely. And then make recommendations to close those gaps. We will then risk-rank those recommendations from high, medium to low.”
This rating allows companies to prioritize situations they need to deal with. Some lower-priority issues need to be addressed, but the health and safety risks could be much greater if a high priority issue slipped through the cracks.
Bob also notes that sometimes an issue is so severe that they will recommend the company stop the process or machine immediately until the problem is fixed.
What To Do After the Analysis
Once you’ve received this report or completed it yourself, the next step is to start addressing any problems that were found. Even if you can’t fix all of them right away, at least you can document the efforts you’re making to take care of them.
The high, medium and low priority ratings that Bob and his colleagues assign help companies spread out the money and resources where they’re needed most.
Bob also notes that employees at the company may not have a full understanding of combustible dust hazards, or their other process hazards. As an essential safety tool, training can prevent issues from continuing.
“Depending upon the client need we offer either onsite training from simple one-hour overviews to webinar training,” Bob says. “We also include workshops in those training that we can tailor to similar operations that that client might have on their site.”
Your Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) is the authority in charge of NFPA compliance at your facility. If they come by after the September deadline for DHA completion, you’ll be able to show them you’ve taken all the important steps:
Had your dust tested
Conducted a dust hazard/process hazard analysis
Addressing or have a plan to address problems
Trained your employees to recognize and handle problems
Have all of your documentation of this in order
If you’ve followed all these steps, you have followed the major steps toward keeping your facility safer from combustible dust and other safety issues.
This episode is full of the ins and outs of how to go about getting a full Dust Collection system for your facility. Jeremiah talks about the different things you have to consider when you begin your search. They also discuss the challenges that come into play when dealing with explosive dust. Also if you need, Imperial Systems is always here to help guide you to the best design for your facility.
If you have any suggestions on Dust Collection Equipment please feel free to email us at dustyjobspodcast@isystemsweb.com.
Dusty Jobs Podcast Episode 6 – System Design with Jeremiah Wann
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Thanks again for joining us here today. We have Jeremiah Wann again. How are you Jeremiah?
Jeremiah: I’m doing great. How are you doing?
Donovan: Good, good. Hey, today we have a couple of questions that came in. We’re going to answer some of those. One of them was on system design. So we got Jeremiah back in. Jeremiah, tell us about yourself and what you know about system design, a little bit of your own history.
Jeremiah: Right, okay. Well, my name is Jeremiah Wann. I’m the CEO of Imperial Systems. Day in and day out that’s what we do here, system design. Is this more of a weld fume type question?
Donovan: We’re going to be covering some weld fume system design. That’s what we got asked to cover. You’ve been doing this for, what?
Jeremiah: Over twenty years.
Donovan: Over twenty years?
Jeremiah: Mmhmm.
Donovan: So you have a little bit of experience in this realm. So lets just start walking through it from the beginning. So lets say I’m a customer, and I’m coming to you and I’m saying, “Hey, I have weld smoke in my shop. What do I do?” Just basically where do I start? Where do I need to start to figure out where to handle this issue?
Jeremiah: Sure. Well, you know, it’s a conversation we have daily. In fact, I was just talking with a guy a little bit ago. A common scenario is that a customer calls in or emails saying that they have weld fume issues and they need to address it. So, what we do typically is we either send someone out on site depending on where its at and the time frame we have to get it done. Usually someone will go on site but if not we can work with pictures and then sketches and stuff to at least get started.
Donovan: But an onsite visit is the best situation, right?
Jeremiah: Always, yeah always the best thing to do for sure. Typically what we need to do is find out what they’re doing. Is it MIG? Is it TIG? Are they soldering? What’s the application, right? One of the things we like to look at too is obviously is it robotic, is it manual. How many hours a day are they welding and what’s their downtime?
Donovan: So let’s say I’m the customer. I call in. I say “Hey, I’m having this situation. You’re going to come out. You’re going to look at my system.” What should I expect are the questions that you’re going to ask me once I get out there? What should I have ready for you as a customer who is trying to solve my weld smoke problem. What is some stuff I should be ready with?
Jeremiah: Right, its pretty easy. That’s what’s nice about this side of this is we take full responsibility. Essentially what I would like to do is go take a walk around. Go see the application. See the operation, if it’s up and running. Sometimes we get a call saying “We’re putting a plant in. Here’s what we’re doing.” Really all we need to know is just what do the weld cells look like? Is there weld cells? Sometimes there’s just big open high bays with overhead cranes. We can do that too. They all have their challenges. Basically, let us get in front of you. Let us find out from you what specifics you have. Are you welding stainless? That’s one thing today that’s kind of a big thing. We want to make sure that there’s not hex chrome present.
Donovan: Now, if there’s hex chrome present does that create another set of standards? Another set of issues? If I’m welding hex chrome what should I be worried about?
Jeremiah: Well the main thing is our filters can handle it. Our filters will clean it properly and bring it back into your plant for that matter to where you can breathe the air again. You just have to put HEPA filtration after the primary filters to get that out.
Donovan: So it would just be another thing that you’re trying to qualify what needs done to maintain that air quality.
Jeremiah: Yeah, that’s not a problem. We also may deal with the way we capture it. So, if there’s something like hex chrome in it where you really don’t want that smoke going up inside the guy’s weld helmet or across his body. So, usually we want to use some sort of close source capture with a hood or with an arm or something. Downdraft if you can.
Donovan: So lets take just take one step back. You’re going to come look. You give us an evaluation of what our facility looks like. You have to identify what they’re welding on, what the smoke’s producing, where it’s coming from. Then from that point you try to decide kind of system you need?
Jeremiah: Sure, sure. So, yeah at that point what we really like to do is determine what size parts they’re doing. Are they in weld cells? Are they out in the open? I’ll just break it down for you. You really have a few different types of systems that you can do weld fume in. If you have a high bay, you’ve got big parts. You’ve got overhead cranes. You’ve got a lot of obstacles. You may be welding tanks in one part of the shop one day and the next day you may be welding semi trucks.
Donovan: Yeah, big stuff.
Jeremiah: Yeah I mean like small tanks one day and semi trucks the next day. You never know what you’re going to see in our business.
Donovan: Like a custom shop.
Jeremiah: A custom shop. So in that case really the only way to do that outside of little portable units with arms on them which, we can talk about that a little bit. I’m not a big fan of those.
Donovan: Well, I can only imagine trying to drag one of those behind you all day. It would be a challenge.
Jeremiah: Yeah, there’s definitely a challenge with those. Really the only other way to do it is to just do ambient. What that means is to just put ductwork up above the crane rails or down below the crane rails on the stools of the crane, if at all possible. Basically we just work off of air changes at that point. We may do eight to ten air changes an hour base on the volume of the building. You can also do more like localized ambient. So if you’ve got a hundred thousand square foot facility but you’re only doing welding in a thousand square foot of it or whatever, you can do ambient above that area as well.
Donovan: Kind of put a unit in there to handle that smoke drifting into the rest of the facility.
Jeremiah: Yeah, and that’s what we do here. We have a 95,000 square foot facility and we only weld in probably 30 or 40,000 of it.
Donovan: Theres no need for duct collection where we’re storing boxes.
Jeremiah: Yeah, where we’re doing assembly it’s really clean. We don’t do that there.
Donovan: Yeah, so that would be an ambient system solution?
Jeremiah: That would be an ambient system. The other way to look at it would be where, oftentimes when you go into a plant, and say they’re building lawnmower parts or automotive carseats. We get into all kinds of different things, but those are small parts. So lets say they’re making those on fixtures or robotically. At that point then you can do source capture. If they’re robots, then, you know, usually the robots are enclosed and they’re really easy to put a hood over. So that’s more localized. So with a robot you may put a hood over it or if its already got an enclosure you just vent that enclosure.
If you’re welding in cells then you can either do a side draft hood or downdraft hood, or an arm that we talked about earlier with the portables. The issue with the arms, or I guess I’ll start with the nice thing about the arms. The nice thing about the arms is if they’re used properly they can probably capture 100% of the smoke for the most part. They use less air because you have a six inch diameter pipe versus with ambient you’ve got to take more air into consideration.
The downside to it is that nobody uses them. It’s tough because even in our old plant we spend a lot of money putting about twelve arms down in this one area and thought, “This is going to be the way to go. We definitely want to use it.” Of course we put a CMAXX in with it and our cartridge filter. As the owner of the company, it would drive me absolutely crazy because we have a really good crew of people here. No doubt about it. They’re all in, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done. But they did not like moving that hood all day long. So they’re welding pipe, or they’re welding a frame up, and every six inches you have to stop, not just to reposition the weld again, but now you have to think about that hood. That’s really the last thing on that welder’s mind, or it should be. He’s got to worry about a quality weld.
Donovan: That’s one more step for them to do.
Jeremiah: We just haven’t seen them work well for that.
Donovan: So in that situation you’re saying maybe a hood in weld cell is a little bit better? Or a downdraft table is a better solution at that point?
Jeremiah: Yeah, and sometimes we’ve done hybrid systems too, where really the majority of it we’re going to be able to capture with the ambient but over in this area they’ve got stainless or something they’re welding on, or they’re doing little six inch or eight inch parts all day long. That’s a perfect hood application. Just keep putting that part back on there. No big deal. I get it. We don’t have it anymore but we used to have a weld seamer at our old plant where it would weld five foot joints of pipe all day long. You can put a little three inch flex hose on that and boom, no problem. So, we always take those into consideration. Ultimately we’re trying to design the best system for our customer. We have to be competitive. We have competition, but more importantly than that, we have to design a system that they can use for the next 25 years.
Donovan: Well, I’ll tell you what, Jeremiah, the more you talk about this it seems like there is just not one size fits all solution. Like, it’s just not out there, right? You kind of have to do an evaluation at the beginning, see what you’re dealing with. I know you and I were talking earlier that some of the things you have to consider is that weld fume used to be weld fume, but now sometimes its considered an explosive dust.
Jeremiah: We just had our seminar here with the industry expert on combustible dust. We’re always trying to brush up our skills here and keep our sales team and our engineers on point with what the industry is doing and to make sure we are doing things to code. We talk about it alot. That’s one fo the first things we do. We say, “Have you had your dust tested?” Of course in the welding industry or metal manufacturing people just look at you funny because “Well we’re welding carbon steel,” you know? Up until about five or six years ago we used to kind of think the same way. “Well we’re welding carbon steel.” I get that in wood, or I get that in sugar, or I get that in whatever.
Donovan: Cornstarch.
Jeremiah: Cornstarch, of course. All these big ones. Carbon steel weld fume I don’t get it. What happens is there are byproducts in there, there’s oil sometimes in there. The metal can oxidize. Theres different things that can cause combustion in weld fume. Some of our biggest accounts now, multi-billion dollar companies, are saying that’s our standard. We’re at 70 KST and that’s what’s we want to do. We like to bring it to the light and do what’s right for the customer.
Donovan: That probably also comes into consideration when you’re thinking about what solution you need. That would determine whether you need your collector inside, you need it outside. It’s not just as simple as sticking something on there to suck it up like a shop vac would do. You need to know what you’re dealing with the have the right solution.
Jeremiah: You bet. I mean, we could have another five podcasts on combustible dust and NFPA. Since this is weld fume and weld cells that we’re talking about here. When you do combustible dust and you’re trying to put the collector inside NFPA states something like if it can be outside it should be outside. That “should” means that if at all possible we can engineer around and get it outside we should. Sometimes you just can’t, it’s not possible. Big automotive plants or forklift companies just to name a couple. It really needs to be inside next to the robot.
Donovan: What do you do when you have explosive dust inside? That sounds like a real hazard. What do you do in that situation?
Jeremiah: To the point where some of our top customers, you know, they’re putting in a $100,000 weld fume system and they’re not upset at all about adding another $40,000 worth ofcombustible dust isolation type equipment. Chemical type isolation or mechanical. So, that’s how real it is, you know? I just want to say that. What we do in that case it put explosion vents on it and vent it to the roof. That’s one possibility. You need to isolate the inlet so the explosion or flame front doesn’t mitigate back through the hood, back to the robot or worker. So we’d put an isolation valve on that. In addition to that, there’s things like our new product, the Rhino Drum. Have you heard about it?
Donovan: I’ve heard about it, yeah.
Jeremiah: So, it’s a good product. It’s the first ever tool free, combustible dust tested 55 gallon drum. It’s designed to stop an explosion from the discharge of the dust collector. Now we’ve put an isolation valve on the inlet side. We’ve got the Rhino Drum or an Airlock on the discharge side. After that we’ve got the collector itself to deal with the explosion. So you can either vent through the roof or if you can’t vent through the roof you can put a flameless vent on there. You can look on the website and see what that is. Chemical isolation is also a real nice, easy way to deal with things.
Donovan: I would imagine that whatever collector you have in there, whether its ours or someone else’s you want to make sure that that thing can handle an explosive dust. You have workers. You have equipment. You have everything that’s in real close proximity to that. You can’t just put anything in there is what I’m saying.
Jeremiah: That’s a good point. We take that extremely seriously, to the point where on our first testing that we ever did we spent well over a quarter of a million dollars. That’s been a while back. When we first started getting our equipment tested by a third party, what we wanted to do was make sure it can withstand an explosion.
Donovan: If you’re designing a system, if you’re looking at designing a system when you’re going to have to get one, these are all things you need to consider. You can’t just go buy a used collector from the eighties and hope that its going to handle what you’re doing.
Jeremiah: Yeah, you’re obviously risking a lot if you were to do that. I think, you know, consult, whether its us, consult with a professional or another dust collection company and just do your homework. Make sure that they’ve done their homework. We did, you know, the first go around was a quarter million dollars. We’ve done many since then. I don’t know how much money we have wrapped up in making sure that our collectors and our equipment meet the standards, that it will withstand an explosion at the rating we put on our equipment.
Donovan: So once you have the layout, how you’re going to put the collector, where you’re going to install it, how do you even know how big of a collector or how small of a collector you need? How do you figure that out?
Jeremiah: Theres a couple different things you have to take into consideration. Obviously, you know, like I said earlier, are the parts sticky? Is there oil? A lot of times in stamping applications there are release oils on there, lubricants on there. So that can get kind of messing when you’re welding it. Thats something to consider. How many, if they’re running MIGs on robots, is there one MIG, or is there four MIGs in there per robot? So these are things we look at. Ambient systems will take a different air to cloth ratio than maybe a close capture one would. We basically have internal formulas where we decide if its a robot cell, how many air changes do we put in that robot cell to make sure that no smoke gets out? Thats the idea, really, that you just don’t want any smoke getting out of that cell. That’s obviously good for the safety of the people. It’s good housekeeping. You want to make sure all your bearings and seals and all that stuff on your equipment that you spend a lot of money on lasts a long time.
Donovan: So, just to kind of go back we’re going to walk through step by step. First thing you have to do is get someone in there to look at the system, to see what you’re dealing with, to see what kind of dust you have, to see if its explosive, right? So that’s kind of step one. Step two is once you’re in there, you see what kind of system requirements you have. It might be an ambient system. It might be a source capture system. It could be little bit of both, right?
Jeremiah: Right.
Donovan: From that, you go to the actual size of the collector and kind of see what you need to make it safe.
Jeremiah: It’s pretty easy, really. I could see where if you don’t do it day to day it could be overwhelming or feel overwhelming when you see it. When you see smoke, that’s an opportunity to call us, or call anybody for that matter. Get an expert on the phone and bring them in. We try to make it really easy to do business with us. That’s a big deal for us around here. The last thing we want is for our customer to be struggling. We kind of take all that off their plate.
Donovan: We have guys like you. We have other guys out in our shop that have been doing it for a long time, and have a wealth of knowledge here to help out anybody who is trying things out.
Jeremiah: We have sales engineers all over. We have them here and remote. We have a big network of representatives across the map. We can cover you for sure.
Donovan: We don’t want anybody to feel like they have to tackle this on their own. A lot has changed over the years. Some information is still good. Some of its old. We want to make sure you’re making the right decisions and making sure everybody is safe and have a good clean work environment and that’s what we’re here to do. That’s what our goal is as a company, to promote the health and safety of those who are working in your environment.
Jeremiah: I think it’s big too, from my standpoint. I’m the owner of the company and for me it’s always fun bringing people in the plant. You can say all day long that you really care about your people. You can brag about your machinery. You can brag about work you put out. You know, whatever that might be. When it really speaks volumes is when you’ve spent $100,000, or $10,000. Don’t get me wrong; it could be a lot less. A mid sized system may be $100,000 just to clean up the work environment. I mean, you may have spent $100,000 on a plasma table, but if that shop is full of brown smoke, what message is that sending to your customers, and your employees for that matter? I always think about it this way. These guys go home to their families at night. They’re bringing that weld fume into their home. They’re doing laundry. They go and hug their kids at night, and I kind of feel like its my responsibility to make sure that they’re not bringing this dirt home. That they’re not bringing this dust home. I feel pretty good about that.
Donovan: We want to help other people be able to have that in their facility too.
Jeremiah: Absolutely.
Donovan: Hopefully this has helped you if you’re out there looking for a weld fume system. We hope you’re able to figure out a little bit closer to what your requirements are. It might seem overwhelming. It’s not really that complicated of a process. Don’t feel like you’re on your own out there. We’re here. We’re glad to help you. Feel free to give us a call. Check out our website. Drop a line. We’re glad to help. Theres people here all the time. Jeremiah, thanks for coming on.
Jeremiah: You bet.
Donovan: Thanks for taking something that seems a little complicated and making it simpler so we all can understand it. Write in your questions to dustyjobspodcast@isystemsweb.com. If you have other questions about how other systems are designed. Maybe if you have another application. We’re glad to tackle that for you and help you feel like you’re not out there on your own.
Jeremiah: Yeah, for sure.
Donovan: Thanks for listening this time, and we’ll talk to you again.
Narrator:Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
Tomm Frungillo from Imperial Systems joins us from his home to talk about innovation. Tomm talks about our flagship product the CMAXX Dust and Fume Collector and how it is always in a state of improvement. Donovan and Tomm also speak on the culture of Imperial Systems and how it revolves around safety and efficiency for the customer.
Dusty Jobs Podcast Episode 5 – Innovation with Tomm Frungillo
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 Dusty Jobs Podcast. We’re still here in our homes filming today because of the coronavirus. On today we have Tomm. Tomm, how are you doing?
Tomm: I’m doing well, Donovan. I hope you are, and I’m glad to be here with you.
Donovan: Yeah, glad to be here with you too. Tomm, where are you sitting right now?
Tomm: I’m in North Carolina, my home office. As you know, I’m up there about a week a month, normally, and traveling all over the country other times, but like everybody else we’re at home and getting things done.
Donovan: Yeah, so Tomm’s here to join us today. Tomm, tell us a little bit about your role with Imperial Systems.
Tomm: Thank you. I’ve been with Imperial close to two years now as director of sales and marketing. I’m really trying to, along with that, spearhead innovation with the company and coming up with new and better ideas to serve our markets.
Donovan: Yeah, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Innovation; some of the ones we’ve done in the past but mostly the ones we’ve done real recently. Let’s start out with where our innovations started in the past, Tomm. You’ve been in the industry, like you said, for a long time. What some things that you notice that have been pretty innovative about Imperial Systems in the past.
Tomm: Well I think when you look at the history of the company it started with innovation and creating a rep firm that turned into a systems organization that turned into an equipment manufacturer and I think its always kind of reinventing itself. About ten years ago the flagship product, the CMAXX, was created and there were a lot of innovative things. It wasn’t the first cartridge dust collector in the history of the marketplace, but it was an innovative collector with things that were designed into it. I came on to kind of continue to spearhead the culture of innovation and creating new and better equipment and new and better things for the marketplace.
Donovan: I know as I came on with Imperial one of the things that I appreciated was that how the stories I was told from the past on how the innovation was done really for the benefit of the end user. One of the things I always loved to hear is that ours has a domed roof and that came from one of our end users down in Florida who was always having rain water sit on top of their machine and said, “Hey, is there a way you guys can help me out with this?” And we came up with the domed roof. Theres a lot of different features like that that are already integrated into the machine. Just in the last year we came out with a couple new ones that I think are just great and I was hoping you could unpack those for me today Tomm.
Tomm: Yeah, well there are several. Every manufacturer of equipment or otherwise is looking, especially in this day of lean manufacturing, is trying to do things better, more efficiently. So, I think anything a manufacturer can do to help benefit the manufacturer is great. But ultimately, what we try to do, is figure out what we can do, what we can come up with that’s new, that’s benefiting the end user. Thats the important thing. So that’s the way we approached it for many years now, and certainly the past two years since I’ve been here where we’ve come up with improvements to our flagship CMAXX product, specifically the Safety Pentagon, that are five safety items that improve the end users position. That maintenance worker that has to change cartridges. Instead of looking at just how it benefits us, its always looking at how it benefits that customer.
Donovan: What are the five things that were changed out recently that make it a better and safer product for our end user.
Tomm: Sure. The main ones I think are the anti-ramp lift rails. So if you’re installing a cartridge it goes in and one goes behind it. In the past, even on our old ones and everything that’s out here in the marketplace now, you have the opportunity to ramp one cartridge pan onto the other in traditional designs. We’ve eliminated that. It’s very important so the customer is not ramping which can release dust and toxins into the air if its not seated properly. Another one is the fact that in previous units you could close the door and not have the cartridges seated properly. In one of the Safety Pentagon items we eliminate that from happening. Those are the kinds of things we look at to make sure that from an end user, from a maintenance guy’s standpoint you make it as easy and as safe as possible for them.
Donovan: Yeah, I’d say that is one of my favorite features. Theres three different ways, that if its not in there right, its going to keep that door from closing. What a better way to know if somethings not right, if the door doesn’t close? If you can’t get the door closed, you know somethings not going right.
Tomm: That’s right.
Donovan: It’s just exciting to see stuff like that, and I happen to be there during one of our brainstorming sessions internally. We were just looking at the machine and coming up with the door stop on the lift rail. It’s just great to see that at our company its not just a bunch of engineers sitting a room thinking about it. We were having a meeting with our service techs, with our sales department, and all the guys from engineering and that’s where that idea came from. I’m glad to know that you’re here to continue that on. I know you have a couple strategies for that too, right Tomm?
Tomm: Well, yeah. We’ve created a culture of innovation. So, this is not only basically sitting our whole group, not only our engineering group, our sales and marketing group, our service group, we sit down as you know, once a quarter and analyze where we are with certain things, what’s really good, what can be improved on, and then come up with improvements on existing equipment. In addition to that, what’s new? What haven’t we thought of yet? What’s going to be the CMAXX of five years from now? Ten years from now? So, its really creating a culture of innovation. That’s important. As you know, we meet on that quarterly. In addition to that, we are always asking our customers how we can make things better. Customers come up with great ideas and we try to implement those ideas.
Donovan: I’m looking over your shoulder there and I see the Shadow hanging up there. That’s one of those ideas that came from a request from one of our customers, if I remember correctly. Isn’t that right?
Tomm: Absolutely. A customer that we’ve done some work with and wanted to do more work with. We said, “Hey, where are we lacking? What would you like that we’re not providing?” They said, “We would like a small footprint, short profile, price point focused unit on particular cutting tables that we have. We don’t want this thing to be a monstrosity. We want the focus to be on our product. We want your product to be in the background, kind of in the shadows.” And so we came up with the product called the Shadow, which doesn’t overtake the money making product of the customer, which is the cutting table, but it’s a plug play, meaning that they can bring this thing right in, run power and air to it, ductwork, and it’s ready to go.
Donovan: Nice
Tomm: Yeah. It’s a short profile, it sits in the background. Turn the switch on and it runs. It does it’s job and its at a price point that they can swallow.
Donovan: Now through the innovation of building that machine I know that we designed it for that application, but we’ve found a bunch of different uses for it. It can handle weld smoke. It can handle a lot of different things. Where that product started and where it might end up are totally different spots.
Tomm: Well that’s very true. We are going to limit it in footprint because originally we wanted to keep it size limited. So, like on the CMAXX where we can go to one hundred and twenty cartridges or more, this is going to be limited to a six cartridge unit. There is a six, a two, and a four cartridge unit.
Donovan: Now, are there any other limitations on it?
Tomm: Well, there is. Part of it being a price point unit is that we’re not building it like we do the CMAXX, which is very heavy duty. So, it’s not able to handle combustible dust. That’s one of the limitations. It’s not meant to do that.
Donovan: I know that we have a lot of customers that deal with combustible dust. Speaking of that, we had a customer come to us not too long ago and talk to us about how they are having issues with their rotary airlock valves on their combustible dust.
Tomm: More often than not we’re dealing with combustible dust and the CMAXX does a great job with that. The BRF, another product, does a good job with that. One of our biggest clientele is in the blasting industry and they’re dealing with potentially combustible dust. Traditionally they’ve always had to put cast rotary airlocks, NFPA compliant, expensive, rotary airlocks on the bottom of their dust collectors. So, customers came to us and said, “Hey, are there some options here other than that?” So, again, back to the innovation drawing board came the Rhino Drum. That is a drum set up kit that is able to handle an ST-1 combustible dust, and do it safely, and meet NFPA compliance.
Donovan: I’ll tell you what, Tomm. Personally, since I’ve had the opportunity to demo that, and use it in the field, some of the features on it that I love, that we didn’t even have to do but we did anyways; the way the lid slides out of place and makes it easy to slide the drum out. That personally is my favorite feature on it. It just makes it so much easier than trying to monkey with some chains or other stuff. That’s what I’ve enjoyed about the Rhino Drum. Not to take away from the safety of that product as much as the safety of the person that’s using it, that they’re not dealing with that airlock. They’re also safe from any explosion. I mean, I’ve seen the videos. We blew that thing up.
Tomm: Yeah, of course it’s always fun to test those things for combustibility and explosion protection. I think as you know we’ve sold some Rhino Drums to not explosive applications too just because of the ease of that twist lock. People like that better than the traditional drum cover kit. Aside from that, it’s substantially cheaper than and NFPA compliant airlock. It’s very safe and addresses that ST-1 dust. So it’s a really nice product. Simple, but innovative and nice.
Donovan: One of the product I like too is when we’re talking about the hopper, and where things build up, is our Dust Level Sensor. That to me is really great. I know I’ve talked to some customers in the past, and Tomm, I’m sure you’ve seen this too, where the problem they have with their dust collector is that unfortunately no one is checking to see if they’re cleaning out the hopper. Man, that causes some issues.
Tomm: Well, it can. You know, you build up material in your drum, which if not checked can go into your hopper which can then go into your cartridge area. I have, and you probably have Donovan, most people who have been in the industry a while, cleaning out a dust collector manually is no fun. So, ideally you want to know what level of dust is in your drum, is in your collection device, and that’s what the Dust Level Sensor does. It does it at a price point that’s attractive. There have been other options out there on the marketplace. The good ones are expensive, and the bad ones don’t work very well. We’ve come up with a good combination that works well and is not very expensive. Again, we were looking at what the end user asks for and needs.
Donovan: Yeah, and one of my favorite features on that one is that it has an output so that it can do anything. Once that bin hits a certain level, it can turn your machine off, it can send a horn out, it can put a light out, whatever you wire it to. It’s just to make sure that its a safe and clean environment for whoever going out there, that its not building up. Ultimately, it’s saving your machine and saving downtime.
Tomm: Exactly. Again, the benefit of the customer. What are they looking for? What do they need improvements on? That’s the culture we’re trying to build here, the culture of innovation, the culture of continuous improvement. I think that we’ve done that, but like always, it can always be better. It can always be improved upon. So, that’s what we strive to do on a daily basis.
Donovan: Exactly. If you’re listening to this out there and you have some questions or you have some issues that you’d like us to help you solve, feel free to contact us. Write in. We’re always innovating. We’re always trying to make things a safer and healthier environment for you out there working, and working on dust collectors. If there is a way we can help do that for you, we’re glad to come up with that next product, that next solution for whatever going on. Tomm, anything else you want to say about this?
Tomm: I appreciate the time. I think we’re going to do more of these. I think, hopefully, that they’re informative for folks in the industry about technology and innovation, and of course about our products and how we think they’re the best in the industry. So I’ve loved doing this, and I’d be glad to do it again Donovan. I appreciate the time.
Donovan: Yeah, thanks for coming on Tomm, and thanks for listening.
Tomm: Thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
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In this episode we go over some current events dealing with the Corona Virus. Our guest Matt Stearns, owner of Millennial Money Management, talks about the economy and what that means for the manufacturing sector. Donovan and Matt discuss what has happened to the market so far and speculate on what we can see for the future. Imperial Systems is still up and running.
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 Imperial Dusty Jobs podcast. As you know, today we are doing this from home. Due to the coronavirus, we are self-isolating. But we do have a guest today via internet. It’s Matt Stearns. Matt, tell us a little bit about what you do and why you’re on here?
MATT: Hi, Donovan. Good to be with you today, along with Imperial Systems. I am the owner/founder of Millennial Money Management in Meadville, Pennsylvania. We’re a full-service wealth firm. We do financial planning and also in-house wealth management. So I’m here to talk a little bit about the economy and the market, and whatever other questions you might have.
DONOVAN: Great, great. Well, thanks for coming on. We know your time is valuable and we appreciate your insight helping us unpack a little bit of what’s going on, you know… we’re both sitting at home right now because things are a little crazy, and trying to figure out maybe how we got here, where we were, and where things are going to go, and glad for your insight on that since you watch those things on a daily basis. Let’s… how about we start about a month back. Where were we about a month back as far as the economy, Matt?
MATT: From an economic standpoint, really before the fear came into the marketplace about the coronavirus, things were looking pretty strong. Unemployment was at an all-time low, stock market at am all-time high, labor participation rate was good, consumer spending was high, people were going on vacations, and everybody looked poised for more growth in 2020. We were kind of leading up to the election here, and there were some questions that needed to be answered in the future, but from an economic standpoint things looked quite strong. And as we know, they’ve turned on a dime here recently, so there’s a lot to unpack here in what’s just happened in the last four or five weeks.
DONOVAN: Right, right. But I mean, we started off this year strong. We started off good. I know in manufacturing for us in particular, we were having a really good year at Imperial Systems, and it just seemed like almost everything happened… slammed on the brakes, flipped off the lights; it was almost like a screeching halt. Is that what you were seeing too, or… kind of bring us up to date on where we’re at now.
MATT: Yeah, it really felt like a fast-moving wave traveling all across the globe. It started obviously in China, and then when we had an economic shutdown in China for a brief period, I think it disrupted some supply chains minimally, but then it grew to South Korea, and the rest of the world started to pay attention to it, Europe and the United States, until eventually we started having cases in Italy, and we started to see European countries shut down, and now it’s here and we’re shut down. It’s disrupted global supply chains, so it’s affected a lot of industries across the board, a lot of service industries, but also manufacturing, and that’s a big result of the way that goods move across the globe, and the way we were restricting them because of the potential virus threat.
DONOVAN: I hear what you’re saying, and you know, we’ve got the kids at home right now because we’re home-schooling since they shut the schools down. We decided we should try to get a trampoline and came to find out all the trampolines are made in China… you can’t even get a trampoline in the United States. So we’re starting to see the effects now, just in our personal lives in a little endeavor trying to do that, and I can imagine that we’re seeing that across… just manufacturing in general, and a little bit of our dependency on some products being brought in from other countries.
MATT: Yeah, I think that’s a perfect example. To really speak of the extent of how serious the situation is, if we can’t get simple products like trampoline springs or whatever it might be that’s holding them back, how’s that affecting industry, and it’s alarming to me; I’m seeing disruptions in the supply chain for our defense industry, for example, because China is holding up production for things that we need to… that are in the interest of the national security, so it’s definitely a very serious situation, and we’re starting to see real economic numbers now that are being reported, that kind of show us that this has been pretty impactful and obviously most of the country’s in shutdown right now. Lucky for you guys you’re able to keep working, because of your focus on airborne health and safety, but a lot of industries are being heavily impacted and it is a little bit eye-opening to see how fickle those global supply chains are and how dependent we are on them, and they can unravel very quickly.
DONOVAN: Right. And I know for us at Imperial, being made here in the United States and being made right here in western Pennsylvania, it’s nice to be able to keep our local economy going and keep the guys working here, and also being able to help with anything we need stateside during this crisis, wherever we might be able to help out, we’re trying to do that. But so when we see that, as you start to talk about how this is affecting global supply chains, how it’s affecting… how do you see it playing out in our manufacturing sector? Do you see… if we start to look down the line, down the future a little bit… how do you think things might go?
MATT: Sure. So first of all, for the past three or four years since the new administration has come in, I think we’d seen a little bit more attention being given to the domestic manufacturing economy and the companies here in the US, getting some steel mills back up and running and supporting US manufacturing, and so that was helping, so we were watching that help, but obviously there is still a large dependency on the global supply chain. On a macro scale, we’re seeing our GDP, it looks like it’s going to be close to zero, are the projections for 2020. Q2, or Q1, excuse me, OK, so the first quarter of the year, we’re expecting GDP to fall compared to last quarter ten percent, and then another twenty-five percent decline in the next three months, so April, May, June, Q2. So it looks like the economic impact in the near term is going to be pretty severe. Those are really, really large numbers in GDP terms, so to put that in perspective, the worst quarter in a financial crisis was Q4 of 2008, and our GDP decline was eight percent, negative eight percent, and I’m talking about numbers now, ten and twenty-five percent. So this is a huge impact, and we’ve really never seen something so sharp and so sudden happen. Obviously, it’s a circumstance like we’ve never seen before. But it is going to be dramatic.
DONOVAN: I know, and you and I were talking about this before we got recording, but I remember you saying that one of the things that might help is unemployment. If we can get people back to work, that could really be something that gives the economy a boost in the arm. You got anything else to say about that? I know we were talking about that before, but…
MATT: Yeah, so obviously we just came out with our first jobless claims, so that’s people who just filed for unemployment, that was in the last week time frame since we’re recording this video, 3.3 million new jobless claims. That’s just unprecedented, and for each week here… the week we’re in now is probably going to be higher than that, the following week might be higher. So you’re talking ten million people that are going to be filing for unemployment in less than a month’s time frame, probably, is where it’s going to pan out. That’s pretty severe, and the problem or the concerning part of that is that it takes a long time for reemployment to happen. The economy could come back, get back on its feet, profitability can get back on its feet from the standpoint of companies are able to start selling products again, but companies are slow to hire back on because right now they just burned maybe a month’s worth of cash or money that they had saved up or they’d taken out more loans. So they’re reluctant to hire people back on until they get their balance sheet straightened up. So reemployment is the problem, and it traditionally takes a very long time to happen, especially after a really large spike like this. So one of the ways we can pull out of this is to rally together and get all these people re-hired as quickly as possible.
DONOVAN: Getting Americans back to work.
MATT: That’s right, and it’s got to be driven from an employer standpoint that says hey, I know we’re not in the same financial position that we were, but if the whole country pulls together and gets these people rehired, it will lessen the pain dramatically and our economy will rebound much quicker.
DONOVAN: Right. Now, I know this is not your one hundred percent realm of expertise, but if you had to just speculate on this, we’ve seen a lot of like you said, global disruption in our supply chain. Do you think down the line there might be any more of a shift toward more American companies building more American products because of just, to add some stability to their own production lines?
MATT: Well, I think there, is, has been a push, like I said, and I think it does have to do with the new administration, and that’s an apolitical statement, OK? But the problem is, and we have to be realistic about it, is the cost of manufacturing here in the United States. And so I’m not sure what needs to happen to get that sort of push back on, but if it’s another sort of “Made in the USA” type of marketing campaign or whatever it might be, to get people on board with hey, let’s rally together as a country, open up these manufacturing sites, understand that it’s going to cost more, you know, to get our inputs and materials, understand from a consumer perspective that we’re going to have to pay more for that good, but we’re supporting American jobs, we’re keeping our supply chain here in the United States, and also from a defense standpoint, you know, whatever we need from a national security standpoint, we can produce all of that if need be as well. So I think it’s a mindset thing, because we’re not going to be able to compete on price, so we’re going to have to just pony up and be willing to do it, and it’s going to be a psychological thing.
DONOVAN: Right, right. So I think that’s what we need in these times is some hope and seeing where we can go, and a clear understanding of, if we get together as a community, as a nation, what we can do to help get through this, not just by washing our hands and trying to be as safe as we can, but thinking down the line to how we can help get our economy back on line and get everybody back to work, and do what we can. We were also talking about earlier, the number one thing is we just gotta do what we can as individuals to try to be healthy and safe, so that the sooner we get rid of this health issue, we can get back to working and get the economy going. Right? Isn’t that what you’d say, Matt?
MATT: I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s a rallying cry here that this virus is impacting every single American, and it’s time for America to come together, to put their differences aside, political or whatever they may be, take care of yourself first and your family, and look after your neighbors, and the quicker we do that, employers looking after their employees, the quicker we all can rebound, get back on our feet, and get back to the way that things were, you know, just a few months ago. So I think you’re right on point, Donovan.
DONOVAN: Well, you know, our mission statement here is try to provide a healthy, safe work environment for everybody, and we’re hoping we’re going to do that individually by doing everything we can, and health and safety is one of our number one concerns here at Imperial. So just want to thank you for coming on, I want to thank everyone for listening, giving us a minute to talk about how we’re still doing strong here at Imperial and working in manufacturing. Matt, thank you for giving us a little insight onto the economics of where things are and where they were, and just once again, thanks for coming on.
MATT: Thank you very much, Donovan. It was a pleasure being with you. Hopefully we get to do it again sometime.
NARRATOR: Thank you for listening to the Dusty Jobs podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
Dust Hazard Analysis from a Pro
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