In this episode, Donovan interviews Hank White from Mazak Optonics Corp. They discuss Mazak’s new budget-friendly laser cutting tables, including a powerful tube cutter. Hank also explains how Mazak provides comprehensive training to ensure customers can maximize the potential of their new equipment.
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. It’s going to be one of our last ones here we’re doing at Fabtech this year. Every year we get lucky enough to sit down with our partners at Mazak. We help out with their fume collection on some of their stuff.
Hank: Very much, yes.
Donovan: Yeah, this year we got Hank White. How you doing Hank?
Hank: I’m good today, how are you?
Donovan: Good, I’m doing good because we’re getting close to the end of the show.
Hank: Definitely.
Donovan: I’ve been standing all week. It’s nice to sit down for a minute.
Hank: This is probably the first time I’ve sat in three days.
Donovan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is great. It’s been a great show. We’ve had a lot of people. You guys have had a lot of people?
Hank: Oh, it’s been a great turnout. Way better than we expected. We weren’t sure because of the storm. Like everyone else I’m sure you’ve talked to, everyone was kind of hesitant, but we had a great customer turnout. Not only that, the customers we had were very strong. A lot of potential buyers, people that are very interested in purchasing.
Donovan: Yeah, that’s nice. Everyone who came is here and is ready to talk about business.
Hank: Exactly.
Donovan: It’s been nice for that. All right, so Hank, what’s your role at Mazak?
Hank: I’m the laser product manager.
Donovan: Laser product manager?
Hank: Correct.
Donovan: Okay, all right. So you’re going to have to tell me what that means.
Hank: So simply put, I help the factory design and build new laser machines, and it’ll be coming out in the future.
Donovan: Okay.
Hank: And I also work with our application staff, our engineering staff, to sell the machines from an engineering standpoint. So we look at what a customer is doing as far as production, what they’re building, what they’re making, and we try to fit them with the correct machine tool for what they’re doing.
Donovan: Sounds like you handle innovation, product placement, and integration.
Hank: Exactly.
Donovan: Kind of like helping people make sure that they get the right thing.
Hank: Even sales.
Donovan: So we help the marketing team with their brochures and PowerPoints for our sales staff so they know how to sell the machines properly.
Hank: Well, I bet they’re glad they have you over there to help out with all that.
Donovan: Sometimes. I do my best.
Hank: So, okay, so with all that knowledge and experience of what you do over there, you have to know about all the new stuff. You’re the guy to talk to about what’s new in Mazak World.
Donovan: Yes, yes.
Hank: So tell me, this year, what’s a big new product you guys have coming out? This year, our new product release was the EZ, basically a low-cost entry-level machine. That comes in low power. It’s 4 and 6 kilowatt.
Donovan: Okay, so this is a cutting table?
Hank: It is. It is.
Donovan: EZ cutting table?
Hank: Yes.
Donovan: Okay, I’m with you.
Hank: The laser has got two pallets on it. Yeah. So it’s built on the same platform as our Neo is, our higher-level machine tool. But it’s a cost-down package. So we’re trying to get the mid-level market for entry-level. As of right now, we have a lot of competition in the low-end market coming from overseas. So if you want to try to recapture some of that, give people an intermediate option to go with.
Donovan: So maybe a smaller shop, they’re out there, they’re thinking, “I can’t afford a Mazak.” That’s where the big boys play. And you’re saying, “No, we want to start helping these people out that are maybe startups, new companies.”
Hank: Exactly.
Donovan: Start getting them into the Mazak mindset early on. Say, “Hey, we can help you guys out.”
Hank: Get them going and get them successful. If they’re successful, we’re successful.
Donovan: Yeah, there you go. So that’s a smaller laser. How thick can you cut on that?
Hank: Even though it’s low in power, we can still cut up to three-quarter of an inch of mild steel, stainless, and aluminum. So it has a lot of potential in those thicknesses. Now, it’s not as fast as the higher-speed machines, but you still have the ability to take those jobs on even in a smaller shop.
Donovan: So when you get a little more economical price, you get a little bit less speed.
Hank: But you’re still getting a big bang for your buck. You can still put it on automation, grow it as you need to, and then add a bigger laser later if you decide to go up in power.
Donovan: So that unit can run lights out? It can run without an operator?
Hank: 100%.
Donovan: Oh, that’s awesome. So does it auto-load and unload like the other units?
Hank: It does. It runs a schedule. The machine has an automatic nozzle changer on it, automatic focus. So really, the key is to make it as easy for the operator as we can, as little maintenance as we can, a little setup as we can.
Donovan: That’s what everybody likes, low maintenance, easy setup. You’re hitting other things that–
Hank: Yeah. You hear from everyone, it’s very difficult to find people right now. Everyone’s hired, or everyone has a job. So finding good candidates that can run the machines, it’s getting less and less. So we need to be able to fill those gaps with machines that are more automated, more simple to use, simple to program.
Donovan: Well, let’s talk about that for a second. So let’s say I’m a guy. I just bought a Mazak unit. Do you guys offer any training on that for someone who’s a first-time laser operator?
Hank: We sure do. We offer free training within the warranty period, which will be two years. We can extend that if needed.
Donovan: Well, that’s a long time.
Hank: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And we do that either at our facility, or we can do it at the customer’s facility. We’ll do it on site, depending on their needs.
Donovan: That’s great. That’s great. So even if I’m the first time buying a laser, you guys got one that I can afford, you got some training for me, maybe for my employees who are going to be running it.
Hank: Yeah, exactly.
Donovan: That’s great.
Hank: And full application support. So once you get the machine, you’ve been running it for a while, you may run into applications or materials that you’re having a difficult time with. Maybe you’ve never ran them before. We have a dedicated application staff that will assist in that cutting process. You can send us material to our showroom in Elgin, Illinois, and we will process it for you, come up with cutting condition data, or we can actually set up an application’s visit where one of our engineers will come out on site, work with the customer to improve their production, get more efficiency, better quality out of the machine.
Donovan: Man, that is some great support. I mean, that’s what a lot of people need. It might be scared about taking a job on because it’s something you’ve never worked with before. You guys are there, you got their back.
Hank: Yeah, we’re not just a machine tool provider. We try to bring people in like they’re family. Again, like I said earlier, if we can make them successful, it only makes us more successful in the future.
Donovan: That’s great. That’s great. Now, before this, we were also talking about that you guys came out with a new beam cutter. Is that right?
Hank: A new tube cutter.
Donovan: Tube cutter. There you go. Sorry, I got it wrong.
Hank: So, the tube cutters are basically the same machine. What’s new is going to be the control interface on the machine tool.
Donovan: So what’s the name of that machine?
Hank: It’s going to be the Smooth Tube.
Donovan: The Smooth Tube. I like it.
Hank: So it’s a very simplistic user interface. It’s all touchscreen. There are no hard keys anymore. And what’s nice about it is we’ve set it up in a smooth process. That’s why we call it our smooth system.
Donovan: Makes sense.
Hank: Every step from bringing a program file in to setting up the machine to bringing up a schedule or creating a schedule, all the way through what you need to do to run that machine is step-by-step instructions. So you can take a very green operator and get them to run that machine in as little as a week and be very efficient at running it.
Donovan: So it sounds like what you guys have done is make it maybe a more of an intuitive way of running this piece of equipment.
Hank: Exactly. Yes, a good way to say it. Exactly.
Donovan: So, okay, so if I’m a new guy, I have never ran one of these machines before. How long do you think it would take to train me on it?
Hank: I would say probably a solid month. And that’s not necessarily because you can’t run the machine, but a lot of questions are going to come up and you’re going to need to get comfortable with it. Typically, we set up a several-week training course where we come out to you. We can do it in-house, but a lot of the times we don’t have that machine, particularly in our facility because of the size that they are. They’re very large machines. Right. But we’ll come out and we’ll spend several weeks with the customer and go through basic setup, maintenance, and then slowly work into building schedules and how to process tube on the machine. And then we go from there to actually addressing real issues if you crash. We set up different shocks, how to do more periodic long-term maintenance on the machine tool.
Donovan: Yeah.
Hank: And there’s always going to be things that will come up over that period. So, what we do is on the last week or so, we kind of just hang back and we watch the customer run the machine. They run production on their own, and if they have a question, they come tap us on the shoulder, “Hey, how do I get around this issue?” So, by the time we leave, they should be self-sufficient in running the machine tool.
Donovan: So, if I have a Mazak table and I’m looking at getting the Smooth Tube, now, are those controls similar or are they going to be different?
Hank: Yes. They’ll be almost identical in functionality. Some of the screens, obviously, will be different because the five axis had, the process had, the delivery system for the material. One’s going to have a flat sheet. The other is going to have a tube or pipe depending on the shape. So, very different machine tools, but a very standardized control. So, if you’re on one machine, you’ll have an easy time going to the other machine and understanding the workflow and how the machine processes.
Donovan: Oh, that’s great. That’s great. So, if you already have one, you get this other machine?
Hank: Exactly.
Donovan: You’re going to have a learning curve. You’re going to be way ahead on that learning curve.
Hank: Yeah, short learning curves, like we like to say.
Donovan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that’s great. Well, you know, we work with you guys to try to make sure that all that fume that these machines produce gets collected, and we’re just glad that you guys work with us on that because, you know, you guys have safety in mind. We have safety in mind, and both of our products not only do a quality job, but, man, I mean, I’ve been around yours, and you guys have a lot of safety protocols in place to make sure that that operator stays safe.
Hank: Yes, 100 percent. And we can trust you guys to give us that satisfaction. You’re running in the background and creating a clean environment. I don’t have to worry about my customer running into those issues because I know you’ve got our backs.
Donovan: Yeah.
Hank: You’ve been an absolutely amazing partner through all of this.
Donovan: Oh, we appreciate that. Yes. Thanks. Thanks. So, what can we be — do you got anything behind the curtain? Anything that we could be seeing from Mazak down the line here that you’d want to share with us, or are you guys just going to keep dialing in what you got?
Hank: Let’s just say next Fabtech a year from now, come see us. We’re going to have some pretty exciting things on the docket.
Donovan: Nice.
Hank: So, I can’t talk about it too much right now.
Donovan: No, that’s good stuff.
Hank: I wish I could. You know, you’ve got those things you want to work on and get out into the public.
Donovan: I know. I know. Well, the reason I brought it up is because I know you guys are always changing, innovating, and making things better for your customers.
Hank: That’s all you have to. You have to keep up with the market. And technology is moving so fast nowadays. You have to constantly be innovating. And we’re thinking, again, five, six years ahead. So, we have projects. It’s hard, too, because we don’t know exactly where the market will go. You know, we have a corridor that we’re in, and a lot of us are kind of taking a lucky guess and trying to hit a moving target. So, we do the best we can to innovate. And we look at our competition. We look at the industry. Everything that’s going on economy-wise. And we kind of use that to direct us to where we’re going.
Donovan: Yeah. And hopefully our economy keeps doing well, keeps growing, and we’d love to see more stuff being made in America.
Hank: One hundred percent. Bring it back home.
Donovan: Bring it here. Yeah. So that we can have more American jobs. So, you guys have a lot of middle-class American workers working for you guys. So do we. And it’s great to just see more of those guys getting jobs, guys and gals getting jobs.
Hank: We’re living the American dream. I can tell you right now.
Donovan: So, anyways, thanks so much for coming on.
Hank: No problem. I’m glad you had me.
Donovan: We’re glad that we get to work with you guys and just, you know, making a clean, safe environment for everybody in your shop and in ours.
Hank: Yep. And we’re glad to have you.
Donovan: Well, hey, thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more information about Mazak, you can go on their website. You can get more of their information. It’s all YouTube.
Hank: YouTube. Just check. Just Instagram. Instagram.
Donovan: Yeah, whatever you want. Yeah. And you can check us out on our social media. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. And so, but thanks for listening. And until next time, just stay healthy and stay safe.
Hank: Thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs podcast. Breathe better. Work safer.
