In this special episode we are recording at Fabtech Atlanta 2022 from our booth. We are talking with Brian Norris from Nordfab Ducting. He discusses what they do at Nordfab and what the different types of ducting there are and their different uses.
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, Brian Norris is here from Nordfab Ducting. How are you doing?
Brian: Doing excellent! How about yourself?
Donovan: Good! And if you’re listening this and it seems a little loud, it’s because we are at Fabtech. We’re doing a big trade show this week. And you guys are here too, aren’t you?
Brian: Yeah, absolutely. So we’re over in A Hall, booth 1946.
Donovan: So guys are looking forward to the first day of the show. We’re looking forward to a lot of people coming in and I’m sure you are too.
Brian: Absolutely. We got a full team over there ready to talk to people, and it’s been really busy so far.
Donovan: How many Fabtechs have you been to Brian?
Brian: So this is going on my fifth year with Nordfab, so five years.
Donovan: Do they still have it during 2020, or no?
Brian: Well, yeah that’s a good point. I think we did kind of furlough that one.
Donovan: Yeah, I couldn’t remember.
Brian: So maybe three. Three or four.
Donovan: But it’s always a great show for us. I’m sure it is for you guys too.
Brian: Absolutely. It is a great show. And it’s the last one of the year; we’re excited about it.
Donovan: For people who aren’t familiar with Nordfab: What is Nordfab?
Brian: So Nordfab Ducting is going on forty-four years now of manufacturing ducting. We’re in Thomasville, North Carolina. It’s kind of the furniture capital of the world, so think about textiles, manufacturing, dust, things like that… that’s kind of how we got started. And we kind of revolved into our quick fit plan, which is kind of our package plan…
Donovan: You said quick fit plan…
Brian: Exactly. We call it QF. But it’s our quick fit plan. It makes insulation extremely easy…
Donovan: As opposed to a slow fit plan.
Brian: That’s right. Or let’s say, the screws went in spiraling, or even bolts on a flange product which we got to talk about later…
Donovan: Sure, sure, okay.
Brian: But yeah, quick fit is our less labor-intensive way to install tons of ducting. It’s basically modular, so our pipes come in modular sections and you just clamp them together and go.
Donovan: Gotcha. So your style of duct work is a quick… quick… I’m going to mess this up. Quick fit clamp. There we go, I finally got it!
Brian: And we can call it QF if you want.
Donovan: QF! Let’s do that. That’ll make it easier. So you guys have a QF-style duct work. You mentioned it comes in five-foot sections.
Brian: Correct.
Donovan: And you say it’s less labor intensive. So, everyone who is listening, we don’t have a piece here. Tell me how this works. Explain it to me.
Brian: It’s completely modular. So what’s great about it is you can system up. You can take a system down. You can move it across town…
Donovan: But you’re telling me there’s no screws or clamps on this.
Brian: That’s right. Just clamps together. So we have a rolled lip, and those two pieces of rolled lip are married together and then they clamp right down.
Donovan: So is it a lot like what you get on a barrel lid clamp?
Brian: Yeah, exactly. A lot like that.
Donovan: Okay. But then it holds the ductwork together.
Brian: Yeah, absolutely.
Donovan: And it’s solid enough that you don’t have to use anything else?
Brian: Nope. That’s it.
Donovan: Okay.
Brian: We do have a gasket of what we call a QFS, it’s a quick fit seal. If you have an oil mist application of where you want leakproof, we do have a gasket for that. But that would be the only real thing that you would do differently.
Donovan: Gotcha. Quick fit. QF. Is it okay to use in every application? Is it okay to use indoor, outdoor, is there spots where you should use it or shouldn’t use it?
Brian: Yeah, great question. You can use it anywhere. It’s a tried and tested product. We actually have third-party testing on it as well, so there’s leakage rates and all of that. In an outdoor application, because a system is inherently pulling moisture and there are some leakage points. You would want to add that quick UFS seal in an outdoor application, and then we’ll epoxy some of the branches and elbows as well if you tell us, so we’re not pulling moisture into the system.
Donovan: Gotcha. Because on a dust collection HVAC, we’re going to be at negative pressure…
Brian: Exactly. It’s going to bear pulling from all different areas.
Donovan: And I can say from the dust collector’s side, we don’t want to be sucking the rain in from outside.
Brian: That’s not a good thing. Exactly.
Donovan: So now that we’re putting it all together and it’s real simple and easy, how big of a piece can I get in this quick fit?
Brian: Great question. In our QF system we can do three inches in diameter all the way up to twenty-four inches in diameter. Anything larger than that, which we can go up to 84 inches in ducting.
Donovan: So your duct can be 84 inches from Nordfab…
Brian: But not in QF.
Donovan: QF goes to…
Brian: Twenty-four.
Donovan: Gotcha.
Brian: And then anything over twenty-four, we will do a flange on. So we vance on it, put a flange on it. And you can up anywhere from twenty-five to eighty-four.
Donovan: So we’re talking about a flange together, ductwork. That’s one that you actually have to bolt.
Brian: That’s right. So you got bolt pattern all around the flange. You got to put an individual roll with a nut on it, which is a little bit time-consuming.
Donovan: I can see how… when you get up to that size, how many bolts do you have to put in there?
Brian: I mean, an eighty-four-inch, we’re talking about a huge piece of ducting. It could be twenty, forty bolts.
Donovan: What about on like a twenty-eight-inch piece?
Brian: Ah, well that’s the other thing. We do custom bolt patterns. You could do as little as three or four, or as many as twenty if you wanted.
Donovan: So you could have twenty in that, but if you did a quick fit, it’s just one clip, and you’re done.
Brian: Less than ten seconds. Throw the clamp on. Put the carter pin in. Move on to the next one.
Donovan: So to put these systems together, do you have to come to you guys to get a specific training on how this goes together? Is this something that someone who owns their own woodshop or their own weld shop… could they do it on their own?
Brian: Yeah, in theory anyone could put this together. There are Youtube videos out there on how to put it together. It’s super simple. We have woodshop guys do their own installations all the time.
Donovan: Okay. Are there other companies out there that also have this system in place.
Brian: Yeah absolutely. We have competitors that try to copy and mirror what we do, if you will. But we still think we do it a lot better.
Donovan: So what’s different about you guys and them?
Brian: A little bit of history about Nordfab: We’re ISO-certified 9001 to 14001, okay? We laser cut. We laser weld. And we build quality into the product. We’re trying to give you the very best product we can, built into the product. And we think we do it better than others, and we have a ton of tools that can go along with that. But we think we do a really good job at manufacturing that. And we are a global company. Majority of our corporate headquarters is in Thomasville, NC. The majority of what we sell globally is out of that facility. But we have other locations around the world as well and we’ve been doing it for a long time and we really take a lot of pride in what we do.
Donovan: That’s great! So, let’s take a little bit of a shift here. Obviously, you guys sell ductwork. But if I’m a shop owner, or a business owner, or a weld shop… I know it’s not as simple as buying some ductwork and putting it up there. I mean, there’s got to be some type of formula. I’ve been in a lot of facilities and you don’t just have one piece of ductwork that’s the side of… well, actually you do see that in some places. But from the dust collection side we know that that’s not the best way to do that. So do you guys help at all with someone who just wants to size that system out?
Brian: Yeah. Absolutely. So, one thing we see a lot of people coming to us wanting the help. So we go to market through dealers and distributors. We don’t sell direct. But we do like to take and foster those leads and work with those individuals through a specific dealer in their market and try to help them out. Now we have some tools that help load the in-user end, our dealer out, and one of those that we just launched… and we love our acronyms, so I apologize here. It’s QFV, which is quick fit vid. So that’s our 3-D drawing tool that we’re very proud of. It’s a proprietary tool that Nordfab had developed to incorporate our ducting, our clamps, our accessories, all the things we sell along with our product reference playbook, if you will. So that tool’s very helpful, because what is different about that tool from our competitors is that it will do sizing for you, it will give you pressure loss calculations, and it kind of takes a lot of the guesswork out for someone who’s kind of a novice, and doesn’t understand all that.
Donovan: Right. So if I’m moving into my new woodwork shop, right? And I’m looking at everything, and I know where my equipment is going to be. Then I’ve got to figure out how to make sure all the ducts get sized properly, and I call up Nordfab. Next thing you’re going to do is send me to someone that you guys have already trained on how to do this, is that right?
Brian: That’s correct. So we have dealers all over the country that know how to use this tool and are using this tool to help generate those drawings and those quotes for those customers.
Donovan: And then that person will help work through the design and get my order together.
Brian: Absolutely.
Donovan: And then send it to you guys and then you guys get it out the door.
Brian: Exactly.
Donovan: Gotcha. Gotcha. So, you’ve been doing this for a while. What do you think the biggest mistake is that you see a lot of people when they’re doing this… what do you think it is?
Brian: Well, what we see is, you got a piece of pipe, and then you got to drop down to a machine. People love T-branches. They think ‘Aw, that’s so easy. I’ll just run a T-branch down to that machine. A ninety-degree bend for airflow is not great, right? Contrary to popular belief. So we’ll incorporate elbows that may be on a thirty or forty-five degree and gently roll into that flow, rather than be on a ninety. So, we see that a lot. People want to throw Ts in there and they really aren’t that great for airflow.
Donovan: Might look like the right idea, but it’s not the right idea.
Brian: Exactly. And then the other thing we see is balancing flow. We sell manual and automatic blast gates. And so what a lot of guys will do with our manual blast gates… you get a lot of negative pressure in there… and they’ll actually use the blast gates… you can open them as much or as little as you want…
Donovan: Now you’re using the word blast gates…
Brian: It’s a little misconceiving. It’s more of just a gate that closes, we don’t actually use them for anything blasting.
Donovan: So it’s almost like a knife valve that’s in the pipe?
Brian: Exactly. It looks like a guillotine almost. So it’s sliding up and down inside of the pipe…
Donovan: And the point of that is to…
Brian: Well, there’s multiple uses. One that I was getting at is you can regulate airflow, right? So if you’re not getting the airflow you need, you can open it a little and bleed some air in to help regulate your airflow. And you can also put it as a capture point. So let’s say you’re a small woodshop, you’ve only got maybe a five-horsepower collector but you’ve got eight machines. Well, you’re one guy. You can’t run all eight machines at one time. So let’s close seven of them off, and only open one of them while you’re operating. So your collectors are working at full efficiency.
Donovan: And I know on our dust collector’s side that if you can do that, it actually allows you to buy a smaller unit which then can save you money and energy in the end.
Brian: Absolutely. So that’s another use for that.
Donovan: Now, one of the things I see people, in woodworking at least… they love the flex stuff.
Brian: They do.
Donovan: So what’s your opinion on flex stuff?
Brian: Less is more.
Donovan: Less is more?
Brian: Try to use less flex stuff. The more hard piping you can use, the better flow you’re going to get, in our opinion. We see a lot of people wanting to run all kinds of flex stuff and it’s never straight. It’s got a bend in it and it’s curled up, and it is challenging when you’re trying to collect dust and things like that.
Donovan: On our side, we say that really makes the system work a lot harder.
Brian: It does.
Donovan: Where it could be more efficient to pull more dust away from the process.
Brian: Right. Absolutely.
Donovan: Now we were talking about the slide piece. You started to say that’s how you would balance the system. Let’s say I have this much money this year, and I know I’m going to buy this piece of equipment. But I know that next year I’m going to have more money, and I’m going to buy more equipment. Does it make sense to buy the ductwork for the future? Or does it make sense to buy it later?
Brian: The good thing about quick fit is, you could buy an end cap. You can run a section twenty feet and put an end cap on it and stop the flow of air, right? Put them in the ends. You want to buy two machines later, the quick fix is you just unclamp it and start adding your pipes. So, with our modular quick-fix system, it makes it super simple to add another drop pretty efficiently later if you want to do that.
Donovan: We’ve experienced that too. We have a lot of people who you can go in and help adjust things later down the line. Hopefully peoples’ businesses keep growing, or they just get that new piece of equipment that’s going to help them and they’re not so locked into a framework that it makes it impossible for them to adjust or costs them a lot of money to adjust.
Brian: Exactly. And that’s why this is so great. You decide you want your machine on the left or the right, you just unclamp it, spin your ducting and you plant the back. That’s what makes the quick fit so great. You’re not stuck to one position or place.
Donovan: I’ve also been in places where the whole process has changed, and then they have to rearrange for where their machines are.
Brian: We see that a lot. A lot of companies change machines all the time. They don’t like it there, or they need more space. Things like that.
Donovan: So those are some things maybe if someone is trying to think ahead, they’re thinking about buying a machine. That’s what a lot of people are doing here at Fabtech.
Brian: Absolutely.
Donovan: And when they start getting into that design phase, it might be something to consider, what’s coming up down the line.
Brian: For sure.
Donovan: Well, since we’re talking about other companies’ future growth and what they think is coming down the line, what about you guys? What about Nordfab? What’s coming up for you down the line?
Brian: We’re growing year over year ever since I’ve been down there and even before that, but it’s pretty exciting this year. We broke ground on a fifty-five thousand square foot addition.
Donovan: Wow.
Brian: So we should be under a roof here before Christmas on that. And we got some warehouse automation we’re incorporating next year. So our goal is to have more products and more standard products readily available on the shelf, ready to go so we can ship faster and provide the very best products as quickly as possible.
Donovan: So you’re going to keep doing what you’re doing, but you’re going to be doing it faster and trying to get the product out sooner? Sounds great!
Brian: And what we’re doing with that is we’re incorporating our quote tools and our drawing tools to point you in the right direction with more standard product that’s on the shelf. So when you’re drawing those drawings it’s going to…
Donovan: Let you know what’s available?
Brian: Yeah. It’s going to lead you down the right path so you can get the product faster. We’re working a lot of that stuff and it’s going to be really impressive. We’re excited about that.
Donovan: That does sound great. That sounds like a really good thing you have going on there.
Brian: Absolutely.
Donovan: Well, is there anything else that you think is important to tell people about ductwork, other than probably don’t use spiral duct if you’re going to be in a high-pressure situation?
Brian: Do not! I mean, we had a conversation about that earlier about a guy that turned his collector on and his spiral duct collapsed.
Donovan: We did! We had a guy do that!
Brian: You know our product is twenty gauge, all the way down to ten gauge. So it’s a really robust product. Again, it’s laser cut, laser welded. Our clamps are the very best clamps. We keep reinventing the wheel and squeaking that clamp, and we’re on three or four iterations in the past few years just tweaking and making it that much better. And I think that’s what separates us from our competitors. We keep notching up the intensity every year and trying to do better.
Donovan: Not that the old one was bad, but the new one is better.
Brian: Yeah. And we talk to our dealers. We get feedback. They tell us what they like and they don’t like, and we try to incorporate that and make it better.
Donovan: Same here at Imperial. Well Brian, I want to say thanks for joining us, I appreciate it. I hope you guys have a great show.
Brian: Thank you guys for having us. You’re a great partner with Nordfab and we appreciate the business, and for having us here today.
Donovan: Yeah, yeah! So everybody out there who’s listening, thanks for tuning in, thanks for listening. We’ll be trying to do a few more of these from Fabtech, and hopefully, you guys enjoy them. Until next time, stay healthy and stay safe. You can find us on Instagram and Twitter… we’re on every social media platform. You guys are too, right?
Brian: Absolutely.
Donovan: Check them out.
Brian: And again, we’re at booth A-1946, we’re at Fabtech. Stop by and see us.
Donovan: There you go. All right, thanks so much.
Brian: Thanks guys.
Donovan: Have a great day. Bye.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.Â
We are here in our booth at FABTECH 2022 in Atlanta. We are very excited about getting back to FABTECH. Jeremiah Wann talks about what to see at our booth as well as a little history of us showing here throughout the years.
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Hey. Once again I’d like to welcome everybody to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. We’re at FABTECH live.
Jeremiah: Yeah, no kidding.
Donovan: Today who is joining me is Jeremiah Wann, our owner. How are you doing today Jeremiah?
Jeremiah: I’m doing good, man. I’m sitting in the middle of our booth right now at FABTECH Atlanta.
Donovan: Well that’s pretty exciting.
Jeremiah: Yeah, pretty cool.
Donovan: It’s the first day. How many first day’s at FABTECH have you had now?
Jeremiah: Well, I don’t know exactly. I was thinking its somewhere between nine and ten. I wanted to say ten because it sounds better, like, “We’re celebrating our tenth anniversary at FABTECH,” but I’d have to fact check that. I’m not sure.
Donovan: Well there’s the pandemic and it kind of messed everything up. We’re all over the place with where things are.Â
Jeremiah: I never thought of that.
Donovan: Right. So, we’re excited to be here this year and that’s the point. We’ve got a great booth this year. I’m excited about all of the things we’ve got going on. What are the things in the booth that you think people should actually come by and see and check out here at FABTECH?
Jeremiah: Well, we have a lot of things. The Air-Port’s pretty cool, right? The Air-Port is our new modular weld hood. It’s free standing. It’s got integrated duct inside of the frame, the structure itself.Â
Donovan: Is it just a hood? When you say it’s an integrated weld hood…It’s not just a hood, right?
Jeremiah: It’s not just a hood, it’s not. It’s way more than that. It’s the first ever of it’s kind that actually has the dust collection ducting built right into the hood. So the legs of the hood, instead of taking up four spots on the ground that take up a lot of floor space, they only take up two places.
Donovan: Okay, so it’s not just a hood, it’s that the ducting is built into the hood?
Jeremiah: Yeah.
Donovan: There’s not four legs, there’s two?
Jeremiah: There’s two, it’s a big difference. So we all know that in manufacturing, floor space comes at a premium. Every square inch counts. The busier you get, the more you grow. You can’t just add a new building on that easily. We have to shrink our footprint all the time.Â
The Air-Port has the smallest footprint for the size hood of it’s kind. Where it really fits best is in the robotic welding industry. You can take this thing to an existing robot that you have in place and you want to capture the smoke and you can literally just set the Air-Port hood directly over the robot. It’s plug and play. It’s real simple to use.Â
Donovan: Now, in a lot of those applications a lot of time people are worried about sparks or safety devices.
Jeremiah: Not sometimes. Jeez, in robotic welding, sparks are probably the biggest threat. Because you’re putting the hood so close to the arm, and you don’t really know where the weld arm is going to be. Sometimes its going to be all the way up by the hood, other times it will be down by the ground. That’s robotic welding. So it’s a serious, serious threat, and what we did is when we built the Air-Port we decided that we wanted to go ahead and integrate a Spark Trap into the legs.
Donovan: So it’s built into the hood, basically?
Jeremiah: Oh, yeah. It’s built right into it, and if you come by the booth and check it out you’ll see that it bolts on so you can unbolt it to clean it out if it ever needs cleaned out.
Donovan: Wow.
Jeremiah: It’s pretty amazing. We’ve got videos online that can show you how efficient the Spark Trap is, how well it works. It also has a slot in it for an option, like if you want to hang parts with the crane and put it on a fixture. Pretty cool. A lot of these hoods, because they’re hanging from a ceiling they’re not strong enough to actually take a part from a crane and slide in there like this one. We kind of thought about it all.Â
Donovan: Now, what if – you said hanging from the ceiling – what if I don’t have anywhere for legs?Â
Jeremiah: Yeah, absolutely. We didn’t design it like that to begin with, we thought we just wanted to base it around an integrated duct in the legs, two leg footprint. So we kind of got blinded by that design. Later we realized that there are people that don’t want legs or they don’t have room for the legs or whatever. We said, “We’ll build it with an integrated duct built into the hood up top, but just a hanging model.”
Donovan: So there’s a central duct in the top that also supports the hood so you can actually hang it from the ceiling?
Jeremiah: Yeah, we’ve put these in at Tesla, we’ve put these in at some of the large robotic welding shops and people just love them. If you look on the website, and I can’t remember the exact time it takes to build them right now, but our competition to build an 8’ x 8’ hood might take 8 hours or something like that.Â
Donovan: Oh you mean when you get it to your facility and you put it together.Â
Jeremiah: Yeah, ours comes in on a skid, all the parts all nice and neat, all the hardware is all nice and neat with instructions on how to put it together. I mean, it might take an hour or something to put together, maybe two hours tops. So it’s just a really easy unit to put together. The other ones right now that are being made are being imported from China. They’re coming in in a thousand parts. You have to cut things with a saw. You have to lay stuff out. We had some of our most experienced installers take one out of a box from China, put it together, and they were not trying to skew it at all –Â
Donovan: It think we have a video on that.
Jeremiah: We do, yeah. Check it out, it’s pretty cool. It’s timelapsed, too, so it’s pretty fun.
Donovan: Nobody wants to sit there and watch those guys try to put those things together for how long it took them.
Jeremiah: That would probably be more boring than listening to us on a podcast.Â
Donovan: So that’s just one thing we have here at the booth. We have our CMAXX right here behind us. So if you’re watching this you can see we have our CMAXX here. It’s obviously our flagship product. We can run you through all the great things on that. We have not just the floor one, we have the elevated one. We have its, I don’t know, baby brother? What would you call the Shadow?
Jeremiah:The Shadow is here. I would say that this is the third FABTECH that the Shadow has been at. You’ve got the pandemic years in there. It’s been four years since the Shadow has launched. The Shadow was originally developed for the OEM market. It was developed for the laser manufacturers. So basically what it is is basically a CMAXX, but originally we tried to make it a cheaper, lesser version of the CMAXX to hit a price point. When we came back around and took it to the laser manufacturers, they loved it, and they loved the price point, but they kept saying, “Well, we like that heavier door on that CMAXX,” or, “We like that little bit of heavier gauge material, and we want to make sure we have the same filters and the same lift rails,” all the way down through the line. So eventually the Shadow just became the CMAXX with a different paint job on it.Â
Donovan: Well…
Jeremiah: Challenge me.
Donovan: I’m going to say that it’s a little bit different. Unlike the CMAXX, the Shadow is really easy to move around your shop if you need to. It’s a plug and play unit. Everything is contained in there. It’s not exactly like the CMAXX.Â
Jeremiah: I like to say it has CMAXX DNA. It’s basically built of a CMAXX but it has all the specific functions that it needs that laser people need.Â
Donovan: It has the HEPAs built in. Your fan is already wired up.
Jeremiah: Silencer is built in.Â
Donovan: The collection pan underneath it is right there ready to go.Â
Jeremiah: Integrated slide gate, so if you want to change it while you’re running your laser you don’t have to shut your laser down. It’s pretty cool.Â
Donovan: It takes up not a lot of shop space. It’s small. It’s got a real small footprint to it.Â
Jeremiah: It’s really taken off. Like all products, it’s been a little slow to begin with. It’s actually been one of our faster growing products.Â
Donovan: The other thing I like about our booth is if you don’t want to buy something, you can get things for free.Â
Jeremiah: Oh, we give away all kinds of stuff. There are people mad about that work for us. They’re kind of saying, “I can’t believe you’re going to give away a YETI cooler,” or the one they’re really mad about right now is, “I can’t believe you’re going to give away a $2,800 OneWheel.” I don’t know what to tell them. They need to get over it.Â
Donovan: It’s good to be a customer for Imperial Systems. Come by. Check our booth out and try your chance at winning something.
Jeremiah: I don’t think you have to be a customer to win it. I mean, you just have to drop a business card off in the cooler, and you might win a OneWheel, so its pretty cool.Â
Donovan: If you don’t know what they are, I’d say look them up.
Jeremiah: I think we should post the video on this podcast of me riding the OneWheel around the office.Â
Donovan: We could do that.
Jeremiah: I’m going to challenge to see that, because I am the best at it. I saw you do it.
Donovan: You were way better than I was Jeremiah. I’m glad I didn’t make it to the emergency room.
Jeremiah: Yeah, nobody did.Â
Donovan: We all made it out safe. This is also for FABTECH the first year that we don’t just have one booth, we have two booths. Our other booth is over in the B hall. That is our Imperial Filtration booth.Â
Jeremiah: This is the first year for two booths as FABTECH. This is the first year to do Imperial Filtration at FABTECH, or to ever have a booth at all. This is probably going on year two for Imperial Filtration. It’s a lot of exciting stuff. That business is a different division of Imperial Systems but we’re under the same roof. It’s taken off. It’s really grown a lot faster than we expected.Â
Donovan: So Imperial Filtration is exactly what it sounds like it is. It’s our filter company.Â
Jeremiah: It’s only filters. We only make filters at Imperial Filtration, so that’s all we do. We only make filters for dust collectors there.Â
Donovan: But not just for our dust collector.
Jeremiah: No. If you have a Robovent, or a Camfil, or a Donaldson, or whatever, we make filters for all of those. Direct, plug in filters for those.Â
Donovan: I’d say stop over there and see those guys.Â
Jeremiah: Heck yeah. I’ll be over there at some point today.
Donovan: Are you going to ride the OneWheel over?
Jeremiah: Maybe I’ll get a coffee first and just stroll on over.
Donovan: Well hey, thanks for talking a little bit about FABTECH and how much we enjoy being here. We’re hoping some people will stop by and see us. It’s been exciting.Â
Jeremiah: I just want to say that I think probably historically – hopefully we’ll still have these podcasts later, and I want to reflect back on this one later. I just want to say that I am amazed that from the nine or ten years ago it was where we did our first FABTECH with me and one or maybe two other people in the booth, driving here in my pickup truck with the borrowed trailer that I got from somewhere else and a couple pieces of scratched up equipment that we could put together with a little pop up banner that we had to trudging ahead ten years later and now we’re celebrating 21 years of business. I just want to remember, if we keep this podcast later, to remember I guess that I’m grateful that we’ve gotten here…
Donovan: It’s pretty exciting how far we’ve come.
Jeremiah: … and how things have kind of unfolded, right? So, ten years is not a long time, but if you are always doing the right thing, and you have a plan, and you’re keeping yours eyes on the future, with a plan in the future, it just happens. You either have a plan for the future or you don’t, and you have the plan for the future, and it’s a good one, then your future should be good. Nothing is guaranteed, but I’m pretty pleased.
Donovan: There have probably been some people that have stopped by our booth for every FABTECH.
Jeremiah: Yeah, there has been.
Donovan: The reason that we are this size and have been able to do this is because of our customers.
Jeremiah: Yeah, the reason we are able to take time right now to do a podcast in the middle of the trade show is because we’ve grown. In years past I never would have sat down in the middle of a trade show for anything, let alone a podcast.Â
Donovan: There are plenty of people here to help.
Jeremiah: There are. We have a lot of people here.
Donovan: Come by. See us.
Jeremiah: Yeah, come by and see us for sure.
Donovan: We’re excited about it.
Jeremiah: Thanks Donovan. I appreciate it.
Donovan: We appreciate you too.
Jeremiah: Good job on the podcast.
Donovan: Thanks. We’re going to keep going. See us here. See us over at our Filtration booth. Until the next time we talk to everybody, stay health and stay safe out there.
Jeremiah: Alright, sounds good. Thanks man.
Donovan: Alright, bye.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.Â
Every year, the Imperial Systems team looks forward to FABTECH. It’s a great opportunity to see all the innovations and products that our industry has to offer. We have missed showcasing our products for the past two years and are eager to be back and show the industry what we’ve been up to. With new updates, new products, and a new product line, we’ve got a lot on which to get everyone caught up.
One of our goals at Imperial Systems is to continuously improve our products so they are easier for our customers to use. This past year, we introduced a touch screen control panel interface, the Keystone Controller, and we are eager to share this improvement with attendees at FABTECH.
“We are excited to introduce The Imperial Systems, Inc. Keystone Controller HMI (Human Machine Interface). The Keystone Controller is a unique graphical user interface that enables users to easily operate and monitor their CMAXX and Shadow dust and fume collectors,” says Tomm Frungillo, Director of Sales & Marketing. “The market spoke and we listened by creating an integrated control panel that is easy to learn, easy to use, and enables complete control and monitoring for all devices tied to a dust collector system.”
We are also eager to feature our newest product at the show. We realized that there was a gap in the market for a fume hood that was well built, had a small footprint, and was easy to assemble. We created the Air-Port Fume Exhaust Hood with all of these attributes in mind.
“Four years ago, we saw the need for a new, innovative fume hood design to bring to the market,” says Justin Badger, Sales Manager. “Other welding fume hoods were difficult to install, use,  and just were not effective. The Air-Port is the most innovative weld fume hood on the market for robotic and manual welding.  It launched in 2020, but we are excited to finally release it at an in-person trade show.”
The last piece of news we’re bringing to FABTECH is so big that it needed it’s own booth. Imperial Filtration, a new sister company to Imperial Systems, will be making it’s FABTECH debut this year. We will be showcasing the quality and care that goes into creating our filters. “Imperial Filtration’s ability to provide custom designed solutions to our aftermarket team is a real game changer,” says Joe Hunt, Filter Sales & Distribution Manager.
Imperial Filtration is specializing in replacement dust collector filters. Unlike our competitors, this allows us to concentrate on one area of expertise instead of spreading ourselves thin with pool filters, oil filters, HVAC filters, and more. Our filters are hand-built with care and attention to detail.
We’re looking forward to returning to FABTECH in Atlanta this year and showing the industry our new innovations. We hope to see you there – stop by booth #C11657 to check out our equipment innovations and booth #B4818 to see our new filter line.
High-efficiency dust collectors are well recognized for keeping industrial manufacturing environments clean. However, dust infiltration from neighboring manufacturing operations or particulate contaminants in outdoor air must be safeguarded in these facilities’ offices, conference rooms, control rooms, server rooms, and other similar places. An effective approach to this problem is room pressurization combined with adequate air filtration. While high-efficiency HVAC filters are often regarded as the most popular solution, cartridge-type industrial dust collectors used in conjunction with an existing HVAC system can be a more effective alternative.
How Room Pressurization Works
The application of positive or negative air pressure in a room to prevent dust entry is known as pressurization. Positive pressure (also known as “inflating the building”) keeps particle and gaseous pollutants out of a space by forming an air barrier between the interior and outside. When you go into a positively pressured environment from the outside, you’ll notice a “whoosh” of air fleeing owing to the greater pressure within the space. Positive pressure can keep hazardous outside air out of an office, server room, or other enclosed areas.
Negative pressure, on the other hand, may be employed in a pharmaceutical facility when strong substances are used to prevent dust from contaminating other portions of the plant — often in conjunction with containment systems. Negative pressure rooms are also commonly used in hospitals and medical settings to prevent the spread of contagious illnesses from one area to another. The air is blasted out of the treatment room, creating a negatively pressurized situation where, for example, when a door from the lobby is opened, the air rushes in instead of out. The air blasted out of the contaminated space passes through three filters, culminating in a HEPA (high-efficiency particular air) filter that filters to the same level as a N95 mask.
What are applications suitable for room pressurization with dust collectors?
Cement and lime manufacturing, metal and coal mining, pharmaceutical processing, grain processing, and power generation are the most common industries with dust collector pressurization needs. However, the procedure can be applied anywhere there is a lot of dust. Control rooms, server rooms, manufacturing clean rooms, compressor rooms, offices, quality control labs, substations, and motor control center (MCC) rooms are among the most typically pressurized areas.
To Pressurize or Not to Pressurize
Now that we’ve covered what room pressurization is, how do you decide if it’s a good choice for your facility? Consider the sort of dust, the conditions within and outside the area, and what (or whoever) you want to protect first. If workers in an office area are exposed to hazardous amounts of dust or fumes, you must clear the air to protect occupants from health risks and assure compliance with OSHA exposure rules. If your facility hosts expensive equipment, it would be worth it to invest in a pressurizing system to protect it. On the flipside, pressurization may not be worthwhile if it isn’t occupied by people and the equipment isn’t valuable.
How Dust Collection Can Help
Room Pressurization with dust collectors is intended for situations with high dust loads where HVAC filters would not last long enough. High-efficiency HVAC filters can quickly become overwhelmed in particularly dusty environments, needing to be replaced every few months or even weeks in some cases. If there are already HVAC systems in place, a dust collection system can be designed to take the existing system into account.
Cartridge dust collector filters, on the other hand, are made to manage heavy dust loads in industrial settings. Dust collector filters are automatically pulse-cleaned by blowing dirt off the filter surfaces and into a collection device with very brief bursts of compressed air. High-efficiency cartridge filters can last for years in a pressurization system before needing to be replaced. Imperial Systems’ DeltaMAXX Prime cartridges have 400 sq ft of filter media for longer filter life and better filtration.
If you work in a highly regulated business like pharmaceutical or food manufacturing, there may be limitations on the sorts of filters you can use and the level of filtration you can achieve. This would certainly be a factor when deciding if dust collection is the best choice for your room pressurization needs. On the other hand, a cost analysis will allow you to compare HVAC vs. dust collection filters. The dust collection professionals at Imperial Systems can assist you in determining the best solution for your facility and application.
In this episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast, Tomm Frungillo fills in for Donovan and talks to Sergio Flores. Sergio is the President of PrimeLines. Sergio talks about what the different industries PrimeLines works with as well as the different brands they represent. PrimeLines is a new Rep for Imperial Systems in South America with a focus on Mining in Peru and Chile.
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Tomm: Welcome to the newest episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast. My name is Tomm Frungillo, director of sales and marketing for Imperial Systems. I’m going to be sitting in for Donovan on this episode, who normally does these. I’d like to welcome Sergio Flores from PrimeLines. Sergio is our rep in South America and other parts of Central America eventually, and probably the Caribbean, and maybe even Mexico at some time in the future. Right now focusing on mining and a few other industries within Peru and Chile and other areas of South America where mining is a large, important industry. What I would like to do is start out by, of course, welcoming you here to Mercer, to Mercer, Pennsylvania, to Imperial Systems.
Sergio: Thank you Tomm.
Tomm: We’ll talk a little bit about your background and the industry, and just your history professionally, where you came from, and what got you to PrimeLines.
Sergio: Hi Tomm. Good afternoon. I am pleased to be here. Like you said, my name is Sergio Flores, president of PrimeLines. We are a manufacturers rep company based in Miami. We have branches several countries like Panama, Columbia, Peru, and Chile, plus our headquarters in Miami. I personally am a mechanical engineer. I’ve been in this business for over twenty-five years mostly doing HVAC, which includes ventilation and industrial applications for HVAC.Â
Our main markets are the countries that I mentioned but mostly heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, but in some countries like Peru and Chile there’s a heavy mining industry where we have some experience. We have a very qualified engineer based in Peru, Carlos Aliaga. He is our partner for the industrial sector in Peru. Now we just opened a branch in Chile, which has a very well developed mining industry. Actually, it’s way older than Peruvian. Our plan is to branch into the Chilean mining industry using the experience and the history we have in Peru.
Tomm: Yeah, it’s really very interesting stuff, and I know that you’ve been doing this a long time. Carlos, who you mentioned, your main industrial engineer, has also been doing this a long time. I know he is very qualified in designing dust systems for mining and other industries. He’s been with you how long?
Sergio: Actually, three years.Â
Tomm: Three years.
Sergio: Actually, Carlos is a partner.Â
Tomm: He’s a partner in the business, okay.
Sergio: He is a business partner as well as Juan Carlos. The difference is Juan Carlos in Peru he takes care of the commercial side of the business. Carlos takes care of the industrial side of it. But they are both partners.
Tomm: Okay. Good to know. I know previously I did one of these podcasts a little bit more on the technical side of mining and how dust collection fits into mining and its nice that within your organization, of course, you understand this. You have a gentleman that can design for these things. I think it’s important as we move forward that basically the people that know Imperial Systems or that are learning about Imperial Systems understands that we have local representation there with knowledgeable people in the industry.
Sergio: I think it’s important to let the customers know that these are products or equipment that once they buy they’re not going to be orphaned. There’s going to be somebody local to look after them and to provide after sales support. It’s the same thing as coming to Miami or sending an email to Miami. You buy something and once it gets there nobody knows how to install it, how to service it, how o maintain it, so that’s what we’re offering to the customers in all these countries. That’s why we believe in having local presence in those markets where we want to sell.
Tomm: That’s important for us too, obviously.
Sergio: In our company we are all engineers. We are all mechanical engineers, and we know what we’re doing. We’re not just moving boxes out of Miami.
Tomm: Very critical and important point of all this. I think the other thing that PrimeLines brings being that you all are engineers is that you can bring a turnkey…
Sergio: Solution.
Tomm: …solution to the customer, to the marketplace, including design and of course equipment. We would work with you on installation, servicing the sale, aftermarket, the whole picture, cradle to grave, is something PrimeLines can offer.Â
Sergio: Actually, we try to become the consultant’s consultant. It’s very common for us. It’s our everyday job to get a call from the local consultants asking for technical support or some end customer to send us all the drawings done by their consultants for us to check everything before they buy. That creates kind of a commitment between the customer and us, a supplier. Sometimes we do the sign without charging a dollar for it in exchange for getting the purchase order.
Tomm: Yeah, I always found it interesting that theres a lot of the big engineering firms that are involved in mining. The Bechtels, and the Flores, and many different companies, and they have a lot of very good engineers of course that work for those companies, but not many of theme are good dust collection engineers. Right? It’s not something that they teach, really, in engineering school.
Sergio: You don’t learn that in college.Â
Tomm: Exactly. So, those companies, as big as they are, as qualified at they are, they have to rely on companies like you to make it really come together. That’s that void that you fill.
Sergio: We offer solutions.Â
Tomm: So, it’s exciting for us to have a presence like you down there representing Imperial Systems. I know most of your other lines have more of an HVAC presence I guess within your company, but you do have, for example, why don’t you talk a little bit about the other lines that you have.
Sergio: Yeah, our main product line – actually the one that motivated me to found this company, to create PrimeLines is Greenheck, Greenheck Fan Corporation. It’s a company that this year is celebrating their 75th anniversary. They started as a fans manufacturer but they have been diversifying now. They make dampers, fire dampers, control dampers, all kinds of fans, industrial, commercial, residential. They make architectural louvers. They make air handling units, energy recovery ventilators. It’s a really big corporation that represents maybe forty or fifty percent of our total sales.Â
That’s on the air side. It’s very common, especially in the domestic use market, it’s very common that a manufacturer rep is on the air side and a different company is on the water side. They are very specialized, very focused. We are on both sides. We are on the air side and on the water side. So on the air side we represent Greenheck and some other brands like Price Industries for air distribution, but on the water side we have very recognized brands like Taco or Bell and Gossett. They have been in the market for over 100 years and they are really premiere brands I would say. Those are, let’s say, our anchor lines. Then we have some other companies like Polaris Heat Exchangers. We have Imperial Systems. We have Eurovac. We have Mesan. Mesan USA is a cooling tower manufacturer, also part of our group. So we try to cover all the areas in our industry to provide a total packaged solution.Â
Tomm: It makes a very strong position, I think. Something I think we’re going to do quite a bit – I know we talked about somethings that I’ve been reading recently about projections in mining for Latin America and South America. Mining follows a pattern of hills and valleys. Several industries do, but mining especially. So, there’s a buildup and a lot of activity and then things kind of fade down and I think it’s like a five to seven year period between those hills and valleys.Â
Sergio: It depends on the commodities market, right?
Tomm: Right, yeah, and the demand of those products right? Depending on what’s going on in the world economy. The projections I saw were for 2023 and 2024 to be very strong years in mining after coming out of a valley and starting to build back up. So I think our timing is very good working together and understanding what we can do with Imperial equipment and the CMAXX dust collector down there on all of the mining applications – the primary crushing, the secondary, tertiary crushing, conveying, screening, all of those things we’ve talked about before that require dust collection. I think our timing is going to be very good right now.
Sergio: I think we came together at the right time. After the visit today I notice that your product has some specific features that we can use as spec lockers.
Tomm: Yes.
Sergio: If we can get into the specs with your product its going to be relatively easy to secure an order.Â
Tomm: Yeah, and we do have several of those with the CMAXX collector and they’re not just gimmicks. They’re things that make the operation or the maintaining of that collector much better.
Sergio: There’s really functional.
Tomm: Exactly. I appreciate your time here today, and I know we have a lot of things to go over and a lot of things to plan for. I know we talked about the different countries that we will focus on but I think mainly its Peru and Chile right now, and then eventually just kind of expand that out as we grow and then also mining being certainly the number one focus right now but there’s a lot of other industries down there that we can approach with the equipment line that we have, and with the knowledge that you have.
Sergio: So I’m very excited about this partnership. There’s only one way and it’s going to be up.Â
Tomm: It’s going to be up. It might take little time, but it’s definitely going to be up. I’ve done a little bit of this before, as you know, and you’ve done this before too. I think we’ve got some solid things behind us to allow us to grow.
Sergio: We have a strong foundation to build on.Â
Tomm: So, again, we appreciate your time coming in, and we’re looking forward to working together.Â
Sergio: Thank you Tomm.
Tomm: I’d like to thank Sergio. If you’d like to learn more about Imperial Systems you can visit our website. Also our YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok now. We appreciate everything that the folks that watch these podcasts and comment on them we appreciate that and look forward to the next one.Â
Sergio: Thank you for the opportunity Tomm.
Tomm: Thank you Sergio.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
Whether your dust collector is brand new or has been in service for years, you may be noticing problems with it. Troubleshooting operational issues can be difficult. It could be that the system is undersized, due either to improper initial design or subsequent modification. But how do you know? Here are seven indicators that you may have an undersized dust collector in operation.
Air-to-Cloth Ratio
It is important to size the collector with the correct air-to-cloth ratio. In general, you want to select the lowest air-to-cloth ratio possible. That’s because a low ratio provides more filter media area for the selected air volume. As a result, more media means lower dust loading on the media, lower differential pressure, and longer filter life.
High air-to-cloth forces a heavier dust loading onto the filter media. This can lead to shorter filter life and high differential pressure. A high ratio can result in a rapid buildup of dust on the filters. This embeds the dust particles in the media and clogs the filters. Consequently, the collector will work harder than it should.
Selecting the right air-to-cloth ratio is an essential step in determining the proper collector size. Sizing the ratio too low can result in a larger and more costly dust collector than the application requires. Sizing the ratio too high can result in an undersized collector with poor efficiency and high maintenance and operation costs.
Differential Pressure Gauge Readings
One of the easiest indicators of an undersized collector is to monitor the dust collector’s differential pressure. Does the differential pressure rise too rapidly? Does the differential pressure remain high during the collector’s pulse cleaning cycle?
Persistent high differential pressure readings or a differential pressure that will not drop during the filter pulse cleaning cycles is an early warning that your collector may be undersized. However, other factors unrelated to the size of the collector can cause high pressure readings. For example, it can be a faulty pressure gauge or simply a clogged vacuum line causing a false reading.
Filter Life / Filter Failure
Short filter life is a more accurate indicator of an undersized collector. Filter life will vary depending on many factors. These may include the type of collected dust particulate and the hours of dust collector operation. It may also involve how much downtime is allowed for filters to “rest,” and the effectiveness of the pulse cleaning system, to name a few.
In general, the average life expediency of a cartridge filter should be a year or longer. In some extreme applications, filters may need replacing on a 6 to 9-month cycle. Filters failing or needing monthly replacement are indicators the collector is handling more dust materials than it was sized for.
Loss of Air Flow
The dust system may experience a loss of airflow or suction at the hoods. If so, heavy dust loading on the filters can cause this. This is an indicator that the system is working too hard and is undersized for the application.
Dust Backing Up in the Collector Hopper
Emptying collector dust multiple times during a work shift could indicate an undersized system. This could be dust that backs up into the hopper or dust storage at the unit’s discharge. Both are strong signs that the system is handling more dust than it was sized for.
Dust backing up in the hopper is a serious concern. That’s because it can get high enough to cover and blind the filter elements.
Fan Performance
Poor fan performance can be an indicator of an undersized system. As the filters rapidly load with dust, the total system static pressure builds, which can affect the fan performance.
System Modifications
Through system design and installation, we assume that the collector is properly sized. That assumption is based on a competent contractor performing the work. But over time, a company may add new equipment that requires dust collection. Often they are just scabbed into the existing system. There is little thought as to how it will affect the dust collector.
To compensate for the additional air required, usually one of two things happens. They either modify the original fan or replace it with a larger one. Either way, it’s operating at a volume higher than the original system design. Modifying a system in this way can result in an undersized collector for the current needs.
Professional Troubleshooting of a (Potentially) Undersized Dust Collector
Do any of the above seven signs lead you to believe that your dust collector may be undersized? If so, then contact us. Our highly qualified service team will determine the problem, whether it’s an undersized collector or not.
  
   
One of our goals at Imperial Systems is to continuously improve our products so they are easier for our customers to use. This past year, we introduced a touch screen control panel interface, the Keystone Controller, and we are eager to share this improvement with attendees at FABTECH.
