It is a new year and a new season, and we also got a new studio. Donovan got a minute to talk with Chalmer Ritzert our VP here at Imperial Systems. Chalmer talks about his tier 1 auto manufacturing background and how that helped build the future for a more efficient and better company. He also touches on all of the new things going on in the shop, and how we are always continuing to get better.
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. We’re in our new studio today filming our second season, episode one of the Dusty Jobs Podcast. We’re glad that you guys could all make it back. If you like how this looks and you think we’re doing a good job here we’d be glad to show you our entire facility. We do virtual tours and virtual demos now. If you like that, you can log on to our website and let us know. We’d be glad to give you a full tour. Today as a guest we have our Vice President, Chalmer Ritzert. How are you doing today Chalmer?
Chalmer: I’m good Donovan. How are you?
Donovan: I’m doing great. I’m doing great. Thanks for taking a moment out of your busy schedule to come and tell us a little about yourself and your history. We’re going to talk a little bit about how Imperial is growing and changing and some things we have going on here.
Chalmer: Absolutely.
Donovan: Yeah, so that’s exciting stuff. Now, if I remember this correctly, you haven’t always been in dust collection your entire career, right? Your career started somewhere else, right?
Chalmer: No, I have not been in dust collection my entire life. I’ve been in manufacturing over twenty five years now. I actually started in the automotive industry.
Donovan: Now, that was straight out of college?
Chalmer: That was straight out of college. I did my internship, and then I worked for a company in the automotive industry, a tier one automotive manufacturer. We made parts for General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, numerous companies. Our main customers was General Motors. We were actually an injection molding company. We made interior and exterior doors, dashboards, those kinds of things, and then exterior bumpers and side fascias and boilers. You know, all the things you’d see on the outside of cars and we shipped them directly to the automotive manufacturers to put on the cars.
Donovan: Got you. So you guys were in a parts facility and had machines that shot injection into a mold and then it popped out a part? Is that right?
Chalmer: We had enormous injection molding machines. We would make hundreds of thousands of parts a week. If they were exterior we would paint them and assemble them, send them, really, all over the world, but send them to assembly plants where they would put the parts in, sequence them in place, and put the parts on the cars. We would do the same thing with door panels, with dashboards, with center bezels, and those kinds of things.
Donovan: Now, you weren’t working the paint line there or –
Chalmer: No.
Donovan: What was your role?
Chalmer: So when I first started out of college – my degree is actually in environmental health and safety. So, I was first hired as environmental health and safety and there was about seven hundred employees in one facility and we had another seven hundred in another facility and I was responsible to do environmental health and safety. In a painting operation, environmental is a huge piece. Safety is another huge piece. So I kind of cut my teeth as a twenty-two year old kid doing that kind of stuff. I did all the permitting. I did all the reporting. I did all the inspections. I did everything for that. That was kind of what I went to college for. Somewhere along the line I got the opportunity to fill in for the manufacturing manager of the company. He had left and they said, “Hey, will you fill in for this guy?” I was into everything.
“Will you fill in for this guy while we try to fill the position?”
I said, “Sure, I would love to fill in for him. The only thing I ask is that you give me an opportunity at the position as well. Thats kind of where everything started. I slowly started to move out of the environmental health and safety. I still maintained all those responsibilities, but I moved into manufacturing manager where I had about four hundred employees at that time and I was responsible for all the injection molding in the company. Three shifts, seven days a week. Just a very high stress, high volume, high quality – you know, I got all my experience in terms of lean manufacturing, in terms of high pressure, in terms of making sure that parts were on time and parts were perfect and those kinds of things early on in my career. I used to have this full head of hair, and then I got into automotive.
Donovan: Didn’t we all?
Chalmer: Now look at me. That is a direct result of being in the automotive industry. Anybody who’s in the automotive industry will tell you that it is one of the most high stress, high volume. It can just be crazy at times.
Donovan: That’s so interesting that from that environmental position into that management position, and I’m sure when you were in that environmental position it just gave you an opportunity to see how everything was working. That just lent itself to probably having a better understanding.
Chalmer: So, for me, first of all I had some people in my life in the company that were great mentors. Second of all, being the environmental health and safety person you’re kind of involved in everything. You’re involved in the day-to-day, doing this and moving people around. You have to be, from a job rotation and ergonomic standpoint, making sure people are fitted for the job and work stations are right. You get into engineering. You get into machine design. You get into all those kinds of things. So I’m involved in the day to day operations and I’m kind of around it all the time. I’m kind of involved. I’m kind of having conversations. I’m doing those kinds of things and the guy that was the manufacturing manager, he literally just left one day. They were kind of high and dry. So they’ve got a three shift operation, four hundred people with no manager, but what was really interesting was the very next day they put me in charge and the very next day they were going to the people in the department saying that I was the safety manager yesterday. Today I’m in charge. Oh, and I’m twenty three.
Donovan: How long were you in that role? Did you stay with that company for a while? Did you move on to another company?
Chalmer: I did. I stayed with that company for eleven years doing that same thing, and that company, unfortunately, closed, which was a sad day. It closed in the mid 2000s. I went from there to a different type of automotive company where they made shipping containers for automotive parts for the tier one suppliers. So when you would make the parts at the tier one supplier they would buy a reusable metal rack and those racks had to be specially designed for all those parts to go back and forth.
Donovan: So that’s a little more heavy fab?
Chalmer: It’s very heavy fab. So I went from injection molding to metal work. To welding, to that kind of thing, and I was with that company for a while. It was, unfortunately – I laugh, but it also closed. None of this is my fault, but I like to say that I learned a lot of lessons along the way because of the failures of the companies that I was with. You know what I mean? Manufacturing is manufacturing, but you start to learn different processes. From a manufacturing standpoint I was really good at the automotive kind of thing. I could play the game and I could make things happen. I was solid in the environmental portion of things. Who would have guessed that I would ever end up in dust collection?
Donovan: Well, yeah. How in the world did you go from…
Chalmer: Well, it gets even better, because I leave the automotive industry and I actually got involved in the largest company in the world that made promotional products. We made and decorated promotional products. It’s the largest company in the world that does it.
Donovan: When you say promotional product, I’m not even sure I know what that means.
Chalmer: Water bottles, pens, MP3 players…anything that has a logo on it from a company we made.
Donovan: So you’re saying that if I go to a trade show and I’m filling my bag up with stuff, all the stuff is what you guys made?
Chalmer: It’s got to come from somewhere. There was a boom in manufacturing and in the economy in 2006 and 2007, around there, and this company had grown and then they had bought a new facility, and it was just an empty building. They hired me as the plant manager to take over and build that facility up, and I did that. We got up to about three hundred employees in about a 400,000 square foot manufacturing facility. It was pretty neat. It was a real good opportunity for me. In 2009, the economy dropped and the place closed.
Donovan: We all know what happened in 2008.
Chalmer: So, the company that Chalmer was at closed down. As they were starting to announce that the place was going to close there was an ad in the local newspaper that said “Operations Manager Needed.” I called the number. It was just a little short note. I called the number and the rest is history. Here I am.
Donovan: You got Jeremiah on the other line.
Chalmer: I actually didn’t get Jeremiah. I got the lady who was the accountant at the time. She said, “He’d like to meet with you. Come in and bring your resume.” That kind of stuff. We met a couple of times. It was weird for me because I had been a high volume automotive, you know, doing those kind of things. Lots of employees, hundreds of employees. Managing all the workings and that kind of stuff. I show up for my interview and its a small place. They’ve got, like, eighteen employees at the most. It was just a different vibe altogether. I pulled into the parking lot for that first interview and I’m thinking, “Maybe this isn’t my fit.” Something pulled me inside and I went in and I met with Jeremiah and he and I hit it off. We have a good relationship and we’ve had a good relationship since day one. I was like, “You know what, I’m going to give it a shot.” I’ll be honest with you, it was the best decision I ever made in my life.
Donovan: As a person who works here, we’re glad to have you. We’re glad you chose to come here. You’re a great go-to person for a lot of things.
Chalmer: I appreciate that.
Donovan: And if anybody is out there listening, this is not the announcement of the shut down of Imperial Systems. We are still going strong.
Chalmer: So I would like to reiterate all of the good lessons that I learned by being involved in those. Because I know now not to do those kinds of things, and I know the kinds of things that will make us successful.
Donovan: I’ll speak to this. The success we’ve had in the last year and the way we’ve been able to pull through it as a company, the year 2020. Where that could have went and where we are actually at is incredible. I think that is largely due to you and Jeremiah and everybody here pulling through and using a lot of wisdom in what we have, and knowledge, and experience. In my opinion, I think we came through 2020 stronger than we went into it.
Chalmer: Absolutely. You can say about the pandemic and you can say about the issues that it caused but I believe that issues like those will only make you stronger. I believe we make good decisions. We made some poor ones. I wouldn’t say that we’re perfect, but we made some good decisions. We managed things well. To be honest with you its easy to make good decisions when you have a backing of really good people. I would say that’s the blessing of Imperial Systems for me. It’s the people that work here.
Donovan: Thanks. I know we all appreciate hearing you say that. I think the other thing that really helped lean towards our success during this year is that our whole model, our whole idea, our whole process here is being a lean manufacturer and not having a lot of waste, and not having a lot of overhead because we’ve taken this lean model. I know that’s something you champion a lot and that’s a lot coming from you and your history in automotive. Can you speak to that and our philosophy on that here?
Chalmer: So, automotive is very high on the lean manufacturing principles. It could be Six Sigma. It could be 5S.
Donovan: Let me pause you for one second, because maybe we’ve got somebody out there listening who doesn’t understand what lean manufacturing is. So we might have to define that for them. Could you give us a quick definition on what lean is?
Chalmer: For me, the best way to describe lean is “how you can do your job easier”. For me that is the most simple, broke down way to explain how we can make the job easier for people. If you’re looking at lean, at the ultimate end of the day, how can you make it easier for that person and eliminate waste, time, or whatever.
Donovan: Taking less steps. Using less material.
Chalmer: Sure. To be honest with you, it’s a lot of common sense is what it is.
Donovan: I think the other thing you say that we talk about – we have a Wednesday morning meeting and one of the things I’ve heard Jeremiah say and you say is, “If there’s something that annoys you, let us know because we will try to fix it.”
Chalmer: Absolutely. Fix what bugs you.
Donovan: Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you there. Keep going. How has that impacted our company, our culture, our community here?
Chalmer: So, when I was involved in those lean manufacturing projects – huge manufacturing projects – and I saw success. Where I saw success was where it was broken down individually and kept as simple as possible. Then I would see that grow. I would say about five to six years ago we were made aware of a local presentation on a process called 2 second lean. I had been skeptical. To a certain extent I can be skeptical about a lot of things. I had been traditionally trained in the Six Sigma, 5S, and those types of processes. I went to this conference and they were talking about this 2 second lean. It is such a simple process. It is so simple. It literally is ‘fix what bugs you’. Jeremiah and I both fell in love with it right from the get go. Its really hard to institute a huge, sweeping thing, but 2 Second Lean is so simple that people just kind of buy into it and go with it. For us, we identify waste. We empower people to identify waste, to look for waste, but the key to it for us is that I don’t want you to come to me and say, “I’ve got a solution. What do you think about doing this?” I want you to come to me and say, “Look what I did, and I made my day better, and I fixed this,” or, “I did this,” or, “I moved this, and I made my day better.” We’re trying to empower people to have the authority to change their own day, to fix things on their own. It’s been hugely successful. They don’t need that kind of permission to move…
Donovan: That garbage can two feet closer.
Chalmer: Yeah, sure. I mean it’s that little stuff that makes such a huge difference in people’s day. When you add that all up at the end of the year the process is so much better. The product is so much better. People are so much happier.
Donovan: It’s great. If you do a virtual demo with us, and you do a virtual tour with us you can go through and you can see all our carts and how everything is labeled and there are shadow spots where all the tools go. It just helps the guys in the shop to stay organized and allow them to not be wondering where things went and not having to pull all your tools from here to there. Everything’s on a cart on wheels. It’s really neat to see all that.
Chalmer: You just put a little effort behind that stuff. A lot of that stuff is not very expensive to put into place. A lot of that is Harold in assembly doesn’t want to walk twenty feet every five minutes to pick up a different tool. Well put all Harold’s tools right there where he’s working.
Donovan: Let him load the cart up with all the bolts he needs and wheels the whole thing over.
Chalmer: It’s common sense, but if you don’t do it, if you don’t put some effort behind it, you’re going to waste all that time.
Donovan: And I think the other thing that I’ve noticed since I’ve been here is that not only are we willing to do the little things to make our process more lean and efficient and possibly one of the most up to date fab shops in our area, I couldn’t tell you how far, but I know we’ve been making some moves to…I mean, you could talk more about that. You’ve been pretty essential in making all that happen.
Chalmer: Sure. Again, we learn by failing. When you first start out in a business and you’re growing a business, you use what’s available to you to get the job done, and you use what you can afford. As you grow you start to look at different options. We make investments in equipment and processes that make people’s lives easier and that make our product better. What we find is that inevitably every one of those things pay for themselves very quickly. For example, in the olden days, in the first iterations of the CMAXX, those were all wet painted. It was a brutal process to wet paint these things. It wasn’t environmentally friendly. It just wasn’t. So we invested in one of the largest batch powder coating operations around.
Donovan: When you’re saying large, you could fit…
Chalmer: I could park two of my trucks in our bake oven easily. We make big stuff. We make big stuff. You make big stuff, you’ve got to paint big stuff. We invested, and we did a lot of research on how these various powder coating operations worked and what kind of material handling system we wanted to use and what kind of guns and what kind of powder. There was a lot of research that went into it. We came down to this operation now where we can paint a fourteen or fifteen foot diameter baghouse and put it in our oven and bake it. There are no batch ovens around that could even come close to doing something like that.
Donovan: Not only did that make our product stronger, it lasts longer. It’s healthier. It’s more environmental, but it also made it faster.
Chalmer: We went from in an eight hour shift maybe painting two rounds with wet paint to painting twelve to sixteen rounds with powder coat, made the quality better, made the product better. In addition, we have zero environmental footprint here. There’s no exhaust from the paint. The wash that we use is environmentally safe. It doesn’t go anywhere. It’s evaporated off.
Donovan: It’s great for all those guys working on the paint line. It’s healthier for them.
Chalmer: And for the community. Theres nothing going into the water here. Theres nothing going into the air here. We’re very conscious of our environmental footprint.
Donovan: And it cuts our lead times down for our customers. It lets us get our products out to our customers a lot faster. So we’ve done that. That’s our one thing. That’s one of many. You got anything else you want to touch on that we’ve done recently?
Chalmer: So, we invested in a new brake press to try and speed the process up. The newer brake presses are fast and they’re considerably more accurate. What happens is we are able to break parts quicker. We’re able to brake more parts, eliminating welding in a lot of cases, or shortening up the amount of welding that’s necessary. Our parts fit better together. We’re able to brake the parts that we do brake faster. What once was a huge bottleneck in our process is now one of our best manufacturing efficiencies out there. We have just recently gone down the road and started to invest in a laser. For years we’ve used plasma cutting. With plasma cutting you have high accuracy. It does a great job. I’m a huge fan of it. You can do big stuff on it. We needed to pick up some speed and a laser is faster. It has its limitations in terms of size and those kinds of things, but it certainly gives us the speed and the clean up afterwards. Theres no slag or anything on the steel. The cleanup afterwards is considerably better. So we’ve invested in one of the newest and greatest lasers for our facility. It will be installed here before too long.
Donovan: So if you have a cleaner cut and a better bend, that just takes less time for the guys to weld it. It’s less grinding.
Chalmer: Absolutely. You think about in a normal manufacturing process for sheet metal there’s a lot of grinding and buffing and cleaning up corners and knocking off slag and that kind of stuff. If you can eliminate those kinds prior to paint and stuffs coming out nice and clean we’re making a better product and we’re making it faster.
Donovan: And that’s healthier for the guys too.
Chalmer: It’s absolutely healthier for the guys.
Donovan: Now who was it? One of our welders, his name is slipping my mind. He does all our tubes.
Chalmer: Terry.
Donovan: Terry. Terry was telling me that he got to try a new welder out. Something happened with that. He had to go back to the old one. He felt like he was welding in sand or something. He was telling me it was so slow. What’s this new welder that Terry got?
Chalmer: Terry makes the header tanks for the CMAXXs. He’s the main guy for making the header tanks on the CMAXXs. It can be a tedious process. We had reached out to the welding supplier and they had brought us a demo unit of what’s called a pulse welder. Its just a different way to weld. Terry fell in love with it. It was faster. There was no BBs or slag coming off of the weld, the cleanup or anything like that. It was great. It was a demo. It was a very expensive demo. Terry kept stopping me. “Are we going to keep this? What are we going to do?” Finally we had to give the demo back. So Terry had to go back to his old welder. I remember the day I got to walk out there and tell him, “Hey Terry, your new welder will be here in a week or so,” and he got a new welder. In fact, the new welder worked so well that we’ve actually bought more of those welders for the facility. We’re using them in other areas. Less cleanup, faster, those types of things. There a little more expensive type welder, but they pay for themselves very quickly. So when you’re thinking about things that bug you, and thinking about things that go quicker, and do those kinds of things these are investments that Imperial makes to, even in the downtimes, to try to make our product better, and faster.
Donovan: It benefits our employees. It benefits our environment. It benefits our end users in the end. That’s why we can offer a lifetime warranty on our products because we are so assured of the quality of what’s going out that we feel confident in doing that.
Chalmer: This facility right now is operating at the highest its ever operated from a quality standpoint, from a speed standpoint, from an efficiency standpoint. It’s never operated like this.
Donovan: We’re excited for 2021 and continuing to be a lean company, continuing to make those improvements. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have to have you on again in two years and see where we’re at then.
Chalmer: We’re going to continue to invest. We’re going to continue to grow, and we’re going to continue to push forward and be the best. That’s the intention. If we are the best here, then we’re putting out the best product that you can buy.
Donovan: Well, Chalmer I just want to say thanks for coming on. I know you’re busy. You have a lot on your schedule. Thanks for taking a minute to catch everybody up on what’s going on in our company and how we’re continuing to improve and move forward. I just want to say that if you guys enjoyed this and there’s anyone out there listening we have some more backlog that you can listen to too. If you want to subscribe we’re putting these out every month. Like us on Facebook. We put this on every social media aspect out there. Like, subscribe, do that, and until we get a chance to talk to you again stay healthy, stay safe, and have a good day.
Chalmer: And again, thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
When you need to replace filters for your industrial dust collector, what kind of filters do you need? There are certainly many filter manufacturers offering lots of choices. However, most dust collector filter types come in a few common materials. So, the type of filter you need depends on your system and type of dust.
Overall, the industrial dust collector filter types listed below are some of the most common. But if you have a special challenge, or questions about your filter needs, our filter experts can help you. We’ve figured out filter problems for other customers so we can help you.
Choosing from Many Dust Collector Filter Types
Dust collector filters require replacement on a regular basis. Some people may get a year out of their filters, while some may get a few months. Because of the expense, people might look for the least expensive filters.
We’ll talk about what makes those cheap dust collector filters so cheap, and what other choices you have. The right type of filter will maximize dust collector performance.
Highest MERV rating for standard cartridge filters
Improved filter life
Captures more particles on the surface
FR filters treated with fire retardant
SPUNBOND
Different basic filter material
More resistant to damage
MERV rating lower than nanofiber
The choice for challenging dust or fumes
Can be tried if nanofiber doesn’t work
SPUNBOND HYDROPHOBIC/OLEOPHOBIC
Specialized material for certain applications
Resists damage from water or oil
For filters exposed to moisture or oily material
Specialized or challenging applications
Higher cost but sometimes necessary
SPUNBOND PTFE
PTFE repels most materials
Nonstick coating for sticky materials
For very challenging applications
Increased cost for special coating
Suitable for very tough applications
How to Choose the Right Type of Filter
Our filter experts know which filters have worked on applications like yours before. We can offer some advice on choosing the kind of cartridge filter you need. Still, every application has different challenges. Below you’ll find some suggestions for choosing the type of filter for your dust collection.
Your challenge: small dust or fume particles (down to 0.3 microns)
Possible solution: standard nanofiber filter
Your challenge: collecting flammable or explosive dust
Possible solution: nanofiber FR to resist fire
Your challenge: filtering dust that could damage filters
Possible solution: spunbond
Your challenge: oil, humidity, or water entering collector
Possible solution: spunbond hydrophobic/oleophobic
Your challenge: sticky problem materials most filters can’t handle
Possible solution: spunbond PTFE
These are possible solutions, not guarantees. All dust collection systems have their own challenges with their own materials. Some special applications require unusual filters not listed here. These types of cartridge filters will cover most dust collection needs.
The field of dust collection often presents you with difficulties that can cause problems for your business. The type of filter you use may contribute to the problem.
Contact us at Imperial Systems for help finding the right filter for your system. If you know what type of cartridge filter works for you, ask us about competitive pricing on replacements for all types of dust collectors, including Donaldson Torit, Camfil Farr, Robovent, Micro Air, and many others.
How do you prevent falls from your dust collector? Often, people need to access doors and panels above ground level. So ladders or stairs are a requirement. But how do we make sure our dust collectors meet all OSHA ladder or stair safety rules?
OSHA recognizes several types of fall protection. For dust collection systems, expect to see ladders, especially on tall baghouses, or stairs with platforms on a cartridge dust collector.
OSHA Ladder Safety for Dust Collectors
OSHA has increased its focus on injuries caused by falls. Fall protection affects almost all industries. Specifically for a dust collector, this rule will affect the ladders or stairs used to access the doors and panels. Because of this, employers must make dust collector ladders and stairs safe for worker access.
OSHA recently updated and made changes to its personal fall protection standard. However, not all fall safety standards will affect your dust collector. For instance, some dust collectors have a set of stairs leading to a platform. From the platform, workers can access the doors to the dust collector filters.
Further, if you have a tall dust collection system like a baghouse, you may use a ladder to access it. Many ladders for baghouse dust collectors have safety cages. OSHA has changed some of the rules about safety cages. They have also changed some of the rules about platforms and stairs. So both OSHA fall safety changes can affect your dust collector in the future.
Why Do We Need New Fall Safety Rules for a Dust Collector?
OSHA estimates that almost 350 workers die each year in fall accidents. OSHA’s fall protection standard affects dust and fume collection systems. These usually have hoppers under them. This makes them tall enough to require fall safety.
The standard says that workers need protection if they could fall four feet or more. In construction, this limit is six feet. Construction has traditionally had different standards than the general industry. This includes dust collection and other products that need access.
Citations plaque the construction industry for falls and related injuries. The new regulation offers employers more, not fewer, choices in how they use fall protection.
Ladders and stairs for dust collector access need to meet these regulations. Most dust collectors stand on legs above a hopper, or you need a ladder to reach the access doors.
What are the Options for OSHA Fall Safety?
The new fall and ladder safety regulation brings the construction industry in line with other industries, making all the different regulations easier to follow. It also cuts off a few options that allowed certain exemptions from fall protection.
First of all, each work surface above 42 inches must have a guard rail. Stairways need to be uniform and safe from slips. The CMAXX dust collector meets these standards with heavy-duty stairs, safety railings that exceed the requirements, and a safe working platform.
Your BRF or other baghouse needs fall safety that meets the new standards. Since one can usually access these taller dust collectors with a fixed ladder, new ladder safety standards apply. Above 24 feet, all fixed ladders require an approved safety system or personal fall arrest system.
Cages will not be considered certified ladder safety, or ladder safety of any kind. OSHA set the date as 2036 for the point at which all ladders, including those for dust collectors, must have proper personal fall arrest or other approved safety system.
Why is OSHA phasing out ladder cages as a safety device? Based on research, cages don’t actually make falls safer and can cause worse injuries. If your dust collector installation includes a new ladder, it requires an approved fall protection system even if you have a cage. This also applies if your dust collector ladder has damage and requires repair.
Your Dust Collector Needs OSHA Approved Fall Saftey
Many companies sell approved fall safety devices. This can include a PFPS (personal fall protection system), which usually attaches the worker to a fall arrestor. This allows them to attach their safety harness to the dust collector ladder.
One danger to watch out for is that ropes or cables that support a worker can catch on the edge of a surface. This can keep the cable from sliding like it’s supposed to, or it could damage it. While accessing your dust collector, make sure safety devices don’t rub or catch on other surfaces.
If you use a cartridge dust collector, you may access it with a ladder or stairs. A baghouse probably requires a ladder. Both ladders and stairs must meet safety standards. If your dust collector stairs have sturdy safety rails, they should be fine. If your ladder is more than 24 feet tall and protected by any type of cage, you’ll eventually need to install a personal fall protection device. Cages will no longer be approved safety devices.
To keep up with OSHA standards, we include new recommended safety processes before they’re required. If you have any questions about how to make sure your existing dust collection equipment is in line, give us a call or email today.
If you have other equipment accessed with stairs or ladders, and you’re not sure if you will be okay with OSHA’s ladder and fall safety standards, we can help you find an occupational health and safety professional. Process hazard analysis specialists also make a career of figuring out situations like this.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 downhere.
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.
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.
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