Today’s Machining World Archives May 2011 Volume 07 Issue 04

Today’s Machining World’s feature “Origins” tells the stories of how successful technologies, companies and people got their start. This month we look at Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketches of proto-machine tools, including lathes and screw machines, which he conceived hundreds of years before they were ever built.

These days, thanks to books, movies, a Discovery Channel reality show, and innumerable global museum exhibits, that penultimate renaissance man, Leonardo Da Vinci, is among the most popular of the tribe known as dead white males. Dan Brown made him a central figure in his novel, The Da Vinci Code, where his art (and sexual proclivities) are analyzed ceaselessly by scholars and pundits. For every gear-head, engineer, scientist and nerd, there is always the attraction of his mechanical inventions, most famously including military tanks, helicopters and multiple barrel artillery.

It turns out, though, that among Leonardo’s inventions there is a whole collection of proto-machine tools. For instance, around the year 1500, the artist-turned-engineer sketched a lathe with a three-bearing head stock as well as a screw cutting machine. The latter consisted of a flat table with a “cutter block” sliding across at right angles to the material being threaded. The crank, which rotates the stock, also “feeds” the cutting block through a series of gears, at a rate designed to produce a specific thread pitch. Da Vinci’s drawing includes illustrations of alternative gears, which would allow for different screw pitches to be cut on the same machine.

He conceived the lathe as treadle powered, and appears to have envisioned it as another way to cut screw threads. A different drawing by Leonardo shows a lathe also powered by a treadle, however, in this case the crank is supported by two bearings to enhance rigidity, and beyond the crank, a flywheel has been added to the design to produce steadier, uni-directional rotation. The tailstock on this lathe is fixed, but a threaded centerpiece permits handling of work pieces of various lengths.

Leonardo also made a very detailed drawing for a pipe-boring mill. The design was considered so complete that a scale model was crafted from it and put on display at the London Science Museum. According to A Short History of Machine Tools by L.T.C. Rolt, “The most remarkable feature of this machine is that the screw clamps which hold the workpiece in position for boring are interconnected by pinions with a ring gear, so as to be self-centering,” anticipating the design of the self-centering chuck.

As if those achievements weren’t enough, Leonardo also sketched a wide array of grinders, including one designed to grind curved mirrors and an “internal” grinder. Not bad for a contemporary of Christopher Columbus.

However, like Leonardo’s helicopters, military vehicles and host of other fascinating conceptions, there is no evidence that he or his contemporaries ever attempted to actually build the machine tools he sketched. It was, it seems, “the thought” that counted. The world went on its way for a few more centuries before others, independently, came to conclusions that were similar to the ultimate Renaissance man.

Valek Sykes, a special effects expert and mechanical designer, as well as a “star” of the Discovery Channel show Doing Da Vinci, says Da Vinci’s influence on the contemporary world is still huge. For his part, Sykes says he has visited just about every museum in Europe that has Da Vinci exhibits. And, as part of his work with the Discovery Channel, he used Autodesk Inventor software to produce renderings of several Da Vinci designs, including a large crossbow.

Sykes’ company, Tech Works FX Studios, Inc., boasts, “If you can think it, we can build it,” and the Da Vinci show helped give form to several of the inventor’s ideas. “Because it was a TV show, they wanted all the cool stuff, so we built about 10 machines, mostly war machines,” says Sykes.“One of the interesting things we found is that, probably because there was no such thing as patents back then, Da Vinci sometimes put in a few things that were deliberately wrong, so it would be hard for an uninformed person to make his designs work,” he explains.

Samuel P. Clemence, the Meredith Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Syracuse University is also hooked on Da Vinci and actually co-teaches a course about him. “I have struggled to get inside his head, but it is difficult because we have so little to go on,” says Clemence. According to Clemence, Da Vinci’s interest in things mechanical may have been sparked by a trip to Florence where he was able to view the cranes and other machines being used to construct the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (better known as the Duomo), with its dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. Unfortunately, after his lifetime of creativity, many of Da Vinci’s drawings and notes were scattered and permanently lost. “If he had had steam or electricity, there’s no telling what he could have done,” says Clemence.

Clemence says the class he co-teaches with an art history professor brings together engineering and art students. They get to consider such “what ifs” as well as the broader implications of genius and the rarely explored intersections between art, science and engineering. “We limit the class to 10 engineering students and 10 fine arts students and by the end of the course they are doing projects together,” he adds.

For more than three decades, Herb Cohen has been a practicing negotiator, intimately enmeshed in some of the world’s headline dramas, from hostile takeovers to hostage negotiations. His clients have included business executives, entrepreneurs, and sports agents plus large corporations and governmental agencies. He is the author of New York Times Bestseller You Can Negotiate Anything.

NG: How did you get into the negotiation business?
HC: People think you must have the genes for negotiation. Both my parents were immigrants to the United States. They were happy to be here and didn’t negotiate for anything. If they sustained a loss, they didn’t report it to the insurance company because they were afraid the insurance company would either raise their rates or cancel them. And as a kid, I didn’t really negotiate. But during law school I got a job as a claims adjustor. My job was negotiating with people in New York City from different socio-economic levels. One day you’re in Bedford-Stiverson and the next day Park Avenue. [Other employees] were settling three cases a month. I settled 12 cases a month in half the time while going to law school full-time. They asked, “What are you doing, and could you teach other people?” I began teaching a three-week course in negotiation for attorneys for Allstate Insurance Company.

NG: Where have you been working lately?
HC: I was in South Korea, Hong Kong and the People’s Public of China, and more recently in London and Prague. I gave lectures in Beijing and Shanghai about negotiations to try to change some of their attitudes and outlook about how conflict should be resolved.

NG: I was reading that a lot of cultures have different customs for negotiating. Is it more difficult for you to negotiate with people in other countries?
HC: No, for some reason, I do well. It surprises everybody, especially my wife. I do very well in strange places. People somehow relate to me because I always see myself as an outsider. If you’re Jewish, you’re always an outsider, no matter how accepting the culture is. You see yourself as a little different, and it is a tremendous advantage because you tend to see what more accustomed eyes miss, and that kind of sensitivity puts you a little bit ahead of everyone else. My major strategy in negotiations is to make the other side feel they’re superior to me. I work very hard to have them relate to me on human terms.

NG: What are the biggest mistakes people make when they enter a negotiation?
HC: Fall in love with the people, but don’t fall in love with any deal. Don’t fall in love with things that are material or involve money. The biggest mistake people make is they get too emotionally involved. You want to be a little bit more detached. Another mistake is coming across as having too much authority and make quick and precipitous decisions. If your reader owns a company, he or she can say “yes” or “no.” That’s a mistake. They should say, “I’m the owner of the company, but I’ve got to check this out with my board,” even if they have no board of directors. Or, “Let me check this out with my banker. In fact, let me speak to my wife.” This means you are not forced to make quick decisions, and causes you to emanate tremendous power.

NG: If I had to hire a new salesman and was trying to figure out who’d be the best negotiator, what qualities would I look for?
HC: I would look for someone who’s at ease with people; someone people would trust; who is an amicable individual, and a high achiever; who has good expectations of life. I’d also look for someone who isn’t confined to what the “norm” is and who is optimistic about the future, who looks for new ways to do things, and has a track record of achievement, even a modest one.

NG: On your tapes you mentioned how important it is for you to be the caller. Would you elaborate on that?
HC: Many negotiations are more competitive than they should be. When you’re the caller, you tend to be prepared. You’ve got the file with you. You have an outline, you know what questions to ask. You’re in a quiet place and can concentrate. The person being called didn’t know you’d call. They don’t have the file. They’re not prepared. When dealing with a competitive situation, you should say, “Hey, let me call you back.” As simple as that. If people are egomaniacs, they don’t want to do that; they will rely on their memory, but your memory won’t work – it will fail.

NG: You also talk about the art of making the deal.
HC: There are four key ingredients to making the deal. To start with, you want to use some form of legitimacy, like car dealers do. They’ll show the sticker price, which you know is legit because it’s literally stuck to the car. The sticker price is $39,346.11. The car salesman shows the actual factory invoice price of the car, a printed document which gives it a high form of legitimacy. You’ve got to invest time and energy; you must use some form of legitimacy; you must look at how concessions are made. With the car dealer, the first concession is $2,000. Then they drop the price $2,000, then drop it $1,000 more, then $400 more, then $100 more. Then they go see the dealer or sales manager in the backroom then says, “He could knock off another $33.” When you list the pattern of concessions, you say, “Gee, I’m really at the end now.” They’ve gotten you involved in the process, and people support that which they helped create, which would cause you to close the deal.

NG: How do you negotiate with a family member?
HC: Let’s say you’re dealing with children. Kids are little people in a big person’s world. They are people without formal authority and power, yet they seem to get a lot of what they want. How do they do it? Kids aim high. They know if you expect more, you get more. Sometimes they make unrealistic requests of their parents, but it raises the expectation level of parents. That’s a good thing. Kids understand that decision making process within a family, which means if they ask the mother for something, and the mother rejects them, they go to the father. The father rejects them. The parents are united against them, so what do they do? They form coalitions or alliances with the grandparents. Kids understand that the word “no” is an opening bargaining position. Most of us, when we hear “no,” we think: Oh, it’s over. Kids understand “no” means “no” at this particular moment in time with these facts. Change the facts, change the time, it’s altogether different. Kids persist; they persevere; they wear you down. They are tenacious. And they are very good negotiators.

NG: How do you negotiate with irrational people?
HC: The truth is crazy people are the most difficult people to negotiate with. But the way to negotiate with irrational people is behave the way they behave. If they say something that doesn’t make sense, you say something that don’t make sense. In other words, all behavior makes sense from the standpoint of the actor. Crazy people don’t think they’re crazy. Irrational people think they are behaving normally/correctly, but it’s based upon their whacked out experience. So you’ve got to try to understand the experience of the other side. I remember in dealing with Iran and Saddam Hussein, I tried to give advice to our government to understand why this person was behaving the way he was. His behavior made sense. He didn’t fear the United States; he feared Iran. When the government said, “He’s got weapons of mass destruction,” I said, “I don’t know whether he has weapons of mass destruction, but he wants Iranians to think he has.” He killed millions of their people during the Iran/Iraq War when they invaded them, and I couldn’t get people to really understand it.

NG: That’s what happened with this war.
HC: As Americans, we tend to ascribe our values and our beliefs to the people we’re dealing with, which is a mistake. We assumed that they would do what we would do in a situation, which doesn’t make sense. Look at the situation in Iraq: It took us awhile to realize there are Sunnis and Shia, and they hate each other. We have yet to realize Iran has tremendous leverage with Shia in Iraq. You’ve got to understand; Iranians are Persians and the Shia and Iraqis are Arabs. There’s a big gap between those two and they’re not going to be friends. Here’s how we look at things. There’s a movie Broadway show, Oklahoma by Rogers and Hammerstein, and the songs show that the farmers and the cowboys are friends. The farmers milk their cows and the cowboys herd their cattle. We see the world in those simple terms. We look at the Israeli situation and see it in very simplistic terms. Even the Israelis sometimes are more simplistic than they should be in terms of negotiations.

NG: Do you see an end in sight for the Israel/Palestinian conflict?
HC: Sure. 60-65 percent of the Israelis want to make concessions for peace, which means that they would accept the proposal put forth by Ehud Barak which would involve a division of Jerusalem. What Israel should do, in my opinion, is try to make some concessions that will work for them, and not just make concessions. You must make the other side negotiate for any concession that you give them. When you make the concession they feel they earned it, and they give something in return.

NG: Do you think the Palestinians really want peace or just all of Israel?
HC: They’ve already spent so much time talking about the whole thing and gotten nothing. Most realistic Palestinians will take something less than the whole thing, which means they will accept Israel’s 1967 borders, maybe a little bit more. They want their own state with some way of each part communicating with the other. There must be a way for Palestinians to get from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank without passing through Israeli checkpoints and a way for people to fly in and out. They won’t be happy, but probably 65 percent would take a state like that.

NG: But Hamas doesn’t see things the same.
HC: Hard-line Hamas people will fight to the bitter end. The leadership of Hamas is not sacrificing their lives, they’re sacrificing the lives of young Palestinian kids who don’t even know what the hell they’re doing. You want to try to isolate that group and have them be seen by all Palestinians as a radical group; that if they follow Hamas, it’s going to be another 50/60 years before they’re going to get anything. They’re not getting anything. The standard of living of the people in Gaza and the West Bank is pathetic compared even to the rest of the Arab world.

NG: But do they only understand power, and not the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality?
HC: You’re right. They don’t respect reciprocity. When I was a little boy my mother said to me, “Herbert, if you’ll be nice to people, they’ll be nice to you.” This is how American kids are raised. That’s reciprocity. Arabs respect power. If you show them you’re going to be tough, you’re going to be strong, and this is the way things are, you could really make progress with these people. I wouldn’t trust them one iota, but I would make concessions to them, bargain hard in return for something else. Right now, I think the Israeli government, which is strong, should be negotiating with the Abbas government on the West Bank. Not Hamas. Israelis should make the Abbas government look good.

NG: Tell me about some of your most difficult negotiations. How have you dealt with terrorists and hostages?
HC: The first thing you must recognize is what the terrorists want; what are their needs. Very often they want to publicize their grievances. That’s why terrorists’ acts occur in a place with the most media exposure. I wrote a memo to President Reagan, in maybe ’85, telling him the next attack would most likely be in New York City, London, then the Olympics. Why? Because that’s where there’s the most media coverage. If a terrorist act occurs in Lagos, Nigeria, there’s no media to cover it. It’s worthless.

NG: What if you’re in a plane hijacking situation?
HC: You try to recognize the situation. You as one individual will have very little power. In today’s world, you must try to take back the plane while it’s in the air. Flying within the U.S, you’ve usually got people on the plane who have worked for the government. They will know what to do. If that’s not the case, try to get the flight attendants to do something. If they don’t do it, it’s up to you. We live in a very dangerous world. I’m big on not allowing yourself to be batted about. I believe in taking control of your world as best you can. You have to understand, I am a product of Jews in the Second World War. We were virtually extinguished. I believe you always have options; you always have power. It is better die on your feet than on your knees. [That leads] to a point where a lot of people who know me think I’m a little crazy.

NG: Thanks Herb.

Today’s Machining World Archives January/February 2011 Volume 7 Issue 1

Steve Weiss and Jens Bogehegn, co-founders and owners of Zacuto USA

Ten minutes into my interview with Jens Bogehegn and Steve Weiss, the co-founders and owners of Zacuto USA, a filmmaking accessories manufacturer in downtown Chicago, they break off on a tangent, excitedly brainstorming and debating production decisions for the upcoming season of their Emmy Award winning Web video series, The Great Camera Shootout. On the show, Jens and Steve, veterans of the film and video production industry, scientifically review every current HDDSLR camera, pitting the quality of the video footage from those cameras against the images of traditional film cameras. Both individuals are intense, driven businessmen, who take great pride in the filmmaking accessory products they build. They like being in the manufacturing business, but they will be the first to tell you that their first love is filmmaking. “If you had talked to us seven years ago and said, ‘one day you guys will be manufacturers,’ we would have laughed at you,” Steve says.

Before the Machining Business
Jens met Steve in the mid-’80s while looking for a place to do video editing. Soon after, Jens worked as a freelance cameraman almost exclusively with Steve through two former businesses. In 2000, they started a production house together called Zacuto Films and in 2001 formed Zacuto Rentals, a camera rental division of the company. In 2005, they created Zacuto USA, the manufacturing branch of their company.

Z-cage kit with DSLR camera

The High-def Revolution
Around 2001, High-Definition video cameras struck the professional video production world when Panasonic introduced the VariCam line. The VariCam revolutionized the filmmaking world because it could shoot in 24p (“p” stands for “frames per second”), the same frame rate as film cameras, rather than being limited to 30p, the speed which video has traditionally been shot on in the U.S. The VariCam’s images, when shot on the 24p setting, produced an image similar to that of film. This was a dream come true for filmmakers everywhere because the camera still had the ease of use and economic advantages of video cameras. Shooting film has always been extremely expensive, time consuming and labor intensive. The light sensitivity of film allows less leeway for shooting in natural light compared to some of the latest HD video cameras, so shooting it requires more extensive lighting equipment and often a crew. Also, a bargain on 35 mm film stock could be $30 for a minute of footage, while videotapes cost a tiny fraction of that. After shooting, the film has to be sent to a lab for processing, which creates more time and expense. Then, converting film footage to a digital format to edit it on a computer is a much more involved process than transferring digital footage into a computer.

If you can’t picture the difference between film and video footage, think about images from a Hollywood movie or TV show shot on film and compare them to the images from a newscast or sporting event shot on video. It’s not that 30p video looks bad, but the look of film is what many people consciously or unconsciously believe a beautiful, professional image should look like.

High-def for the Masses
Soon after the VariCams came out, Jens and Steve bought two or three of them for their rental business for about $100,000 each. The cameras were always checked out, because according to them, at the time there were only about 100 VariCams in existence worldwide. But in 2004, the video production world again was turned on its head when Panasonic came out with its prosumer High-definition camera, the HVX 200. Suddenly almost anyone could buy a video camera that shot 24p HD video for $5000, and its images looked pretty good. Although the quality of the images was not quite as good as that of the $100,000 cameras, it was good enough that footage shot on both cameras could be seamlessly intercut.

Steve and Jens were blindsided by this game-changing technology. They knew that the video camera rental business would never be the same. Until then, normal people didn’t buy professional video cameras, they rented them because quality cameras were far too expensive. Now, most professional and avid amateur video/filmmakers were going to buy their own relatively high quality video cameras.

Jens Bogehegn testing a 35 mm film camera for The Great Camera Shootout

A New Opportunity
“We were quite upset, but that was the greatest thing that could have happened to us as a company,” Steve says. Steve and Jens knew that the only way they could stay in business was to find a way to serve the needs of video makers who would be using these new prosumer cameras. After trying out the new technology for themselves they realized that although the video from these cameras looked pretty good, the physical design of the cameras was poor for shooting in a professional manner. The cameras were small, and often not ergonomic, so they were awkward to hold steadily while a cameraman walked with them. The expensive old school cameras were much larger and heavier, but they had been well designed in many respects—they balanced naturally on the shoulder of the camera person and had an electronic viewfinder designed to fit conveniently against the camera person’s eye.

On walls throughout Zacuto’s headquarters, large ancient video cameras are mounted like animal trophies. During my visit, Steve pointed to one of the trophy cameras and with both conviction and sentimentality exclaimed, “That was a great design, ENG—Electronic News Gathering style.”

Inventing the Rigs
As much as Jens and Steve loved the old cameras, they knew what they had to do for their business to survive. They had to make the new prosumer cameras practical for shooting video in a professional manner. So they dove into the manufacturing business, building kits of parts primarily made from aluminum and plastic, which connect with one another to form camera rigs. Steve refers to this concept as the “tinker toy” system. The majority of parts are secured to one another with rods that fit into holes. They are held in place with clamp mechanisms, as opposed to threaded screws. This system gives the pieces flexibility to slide and turn at different angles, so the camera person can customize the rig to their preference.

How It Works
The foundation of Zacuto’s rig system is the Universal Baseplate. They call it universal because it is designed so that any camera can be secured to it. When the camera is secured to the baseplate it has the ability to slide vertically, horizontally and be raised in height. The Universal Baseplate is used to secure the camera to a shoulder mount, tripod or other Zacuto designed devices to hold up the camera. The baseplate is mounted on 15 mm aluminum rods. The rods are made to connect to other components which clamp on as arms. The arms hold features such as handles, microphones, mat boxes, monitors and mechanisms that enable a camera person to smoothly focus or zoom.

Panasonic HPX 170 Zacuto Handheld DOF Filmmaker Kit

The DSLR Revolution
Today, Zacuto’s rigs are more valuable to filmmakers than ever because of the proliferation of DSLRs (digital single lense reflex cameras) which can shoot extremely high quality 24p 1080i High-definition video. Since HD video capability was introduced to DSLRs in 2008, millions of filmmakers worldwide have fallen in love with them for they same reason they loved the VariCam and its prosumer offspring, these cameras have the ability to deliver high quality images resembling those of film for a relatively cheap price. For readers unfamiliar with the terminology, DSLR cameras are the modern digital version of the large still photography cameras traditionally used by professional photographers (SLR cameras are the original analogue version). Photographers and filmmakers like these cameras because they have interchangeable lenses and large image sensors which allow similar depths of field and picture angles to film formats.

Prices of today’s DSLRs without lenses can range from as low as $500 up to $3000, which can sound wonderful to an indy filmmaker on a tight budget. However, despite the potential of these cameras to produce beautiful images, the reality is that they have not been engineered for shooting professional video.

DSLRs are awkward to hold steady for long periods of time, their viewfinders do not work when shooting video, their built-in microphones are lousy, and it is difficult to adjust the cameras’ focus or zoom smoothly on the fly while shooting. Zacuto makes products to solve these problems, costing as low as under $100 for small accessories to several thousand dollars for rig-building kits.

The Production Process

Components for the Z-Finder

Steve and Jens decided from the start that they wanted to manufacture the parts for their Zacuto kits locally as opposed to overseas. One reason for this decision was their concern for quality control, but mainly they needed to have easy and fast communication with their engineers and contract manufacturers because almost every week they are coming up with new ideas for products. With their current workflow routine they can think up a new product and have it on the market in six weeks.

When Steve and Jens come up with a new product idea they first talk to their engineer Bob Zajeski of ZETA Engineering Company, Homer Glen, Ill. He creates an e-drawing and on the same day they analyze it, tweak it and send it back to him. A prototype is then made which gets sent back and fourth for further adjustments. When they come up with a prototype they are satisfied with they test it by using it to shoot a video. Zajeski, who has designed 280 products for Zacuto over the last five years, explained that with the introduction of the lightweight DSLRs, they have had to adapt the kits. Recently they have reduced the weight of the parts by using carbon fiber and thinning out the walls.

A huge advantage for Steve and Jens in developing new products is that they have over 50 years of filmmaking experience between them and they are constantly producing new videos. They use the video equipment they need to build accessories for, while their competitors just observe the technology from the sidelines. For example, one recent trend in video production that Zacuto has addressed is the growing popularity of shooting video with the iPhone. Jens and Steve have designed rigs specifically for the different models of iPhones, consisting of a handgrip attached to a cradle which the phone locks into. They also sell a viewfinder, their patented Z-Finder, that attaches to the iPhone’s screen to give the shooter more stability and a better view of the image.

Manufacturing the Kits
The bulk of Zacuto’s parts are machined at BEM CNC, Schaumburg, Ill., a job shop that makes parts for an array of different industries.

Peacemaker DSLR tripod kit

The parts are machined primarily on milling centers. Fast changeover is a priority rather than fast cycle times because new products are constantly introduced. Volumes range anywhere from 10 to 500 parts. BEM CNC uses several Mori Seiki horizontal machining centers and Brother pallet machines because the pallets enable quick changeover.

Bogdan Falat, one of BEM CNC’s owners, said that the tolerances for Zacuto’s parts range in tightness. The parts aren’t going into airplanes, but Falat said that some of them are relatively intricate. He also said that Zacuto puts a high priority on the aesthetics of the parts. BEM CNC constantly watches over the parts to make sure their red color is consistent when they come back after being anodized.

Zacuto’s Next Challenge
Steve and Jens have recently embarked on their first foray into electronics by engineering the very first electronic viewfinder (EVF) specifically designed for DSLR cameras (see photo below). In essence, it is a 3.2” monitor that one will put in front of the viewfinder Zacuto currently makes.

Part of the DSLR Z-Cage kit

One of the current drawbacks of shooting video with DSLRs is that although the cameras have viewfinders for taking still photos, a camera person can only see their video images on an LCD screen on the back of the camera. This is the trend for most consumer and prosumer video cameras today—to see an image the camera person has to look at a flip-out LCD screen. LCD screens can be difficult to see when you’re around a lot of sunlight, they are not as accurate for focusing on an image, and they take away an important method for holding a camera steady—pushing it firmly against the eye.
Presently, Zacuto manufactures its Z-Finder, which is a viewfinder that attaches directly onto the LCD panel on the back of the DSLR camera. It helps to steady the camera, block out light, and focus, but a camera person must have their face pushed right up against the camera at all times, which limits the ways it can be rigged and positioned.

The new electronic viewfinder will enable a camera person to look through a viewfinder that isn’t pressed up against the back of the body of the camera. The camera body connects to the viewfinder with a standard HDMI cable, the same cable one would use to connect a computer or HD camcorder to an HD TV. All the parts for the monitor will be assembled and manufactured in the United States apart from the panel for the screen. Jens and Steve say there is no other company they know of today that manufactures an electronic monitor of that type in the United States.

Their First Love
When Steve and Jens went into the manufacturing business in 2004, they made a vow to themselves that the only way they were going to do it was if they could fulfill their personal passions to make films too. Jens and Steve produce three ongoing Web series, Critics, Film Fellas, and The Great Camera Shootout.

On Critics Steve and co-host Philip Bloom review films created specifically for the Web. On The Great Camera Shootout Steve and Jens Compare the latest DSLRs with traditional film cameras. On Film Fellas they record veterans of the film industry discussing the world of filmmaking over dinner. In addition to those series, Steve and Jens are constantly making videos demonstrating and educating current and potential customers about their products. All of the videos have a great energy, and Steve and Jens glow as they have fun with their products and discuss filmmaking. The videos speak to the heart and soul of the two manufacturing filmmakers, who approach their lives’ work with a refreshing zeal.

Looking through Zacuto’s electronic viewfinder prototype.

“If you were to ask me … first and foremost, I’m a filmmaker. And that’s what I want to do. I’m a manufacturer and I love doing it, but I started as a filmmaker and I’m going to end as a filmmaker,” says Steve.

Jens follows, “It’s still weird to think that we’re manufacturing. It’s another creative outlet, just … I’d rather make films than make the products. But at the core, it all comes from probably the same part of your brain—the creative part. You’ve got to be creative with anything you do.”

For more information or to watch the videos mentioned
in the article visit Zacuto at www.zacuto.com.

Today’s Machining World Archives December 2008

Electricity generating steam turbine failure: damage to low pressure rotor was caused by excessive vibration.

What happened?

When parts break, an analytical lab can do the detective work to find out why.

Sometimes machined parts present a mystery. Why did this one fail? How was that one made? It takes a certain amount of detective work combined with laboratory analysis and knowledge about materials, processes and applications to figure out what happened. Did the end user overload the part beyond its design specs? Was there a design fl aw? Was the right material used? Was something wrong with the manufacturing process? Many analytical laboratories and consultants specialize in failure analysis, reverse engineering and technical sleuthing to find out how the bad stuff happened.

Brittle fracture. This electron micrograph of a brittle-fracture sample shows the sharp straight lines of high-hardness materials after they fail.

Failure! Preserving the evidence
When a part fails in your shop, or at a customer’s, it is of utmost importance to “preserve the evidence,” said Drew Killius, senior materials scientist at Analytical Answers, Inc., Woburn, Mass. Keep the broken pieces separate and do not do anything to them except wrap them in ordinary household aluminum foil to protect them until you can send them to a laboratory. Do not place the pieces in an envelope or plastic bag, as fibers or plastic may stick to the fracture surface.

Whatever you do, do not attempt to reassemble the part, Killius cautioned. “There is a huge temptation to see if the broken [pieces] fit together,” he said, but “we’re looking for features the size of bacteria.” Just touching the fractured surfaces to each other can destroy those clues.

Write down what happened when the failure occurred. If you have other unbroken parts of the same kind send a few to the lab, along with the broken pieces. Find related paperwork, such as drawings and the mill certification for the raw stock, and include copies.

Finding out what happened
At the lab, “the first thing we do when we receive a part is to look at everything,” said David Von Rohr, metallurgical laboratory manager at Stork MMA Testing Laboratories, Inc., Newtown, Pa. Besides the part itself and the drawings and samples you sent, any information and background about the part and the application might prove useful in analyzing why the part failed. What is the part used for, and how long had it been in service? Exactly what happened when the part broke?

The failure analysis laboratory will photograph the part, verify its chemistry, look at the fracture surface under a microscope and check for any defects originating in the raw stock or from machining operations. Is the part to print? Does the design include any features like sharp corners that could act as stress raisers?

Mechanical properties may be measured including hardness, and yield and tensile strength. Is the material in the correct state? Sometimes parts are shipped without being heat treated, or they are over-hardened. If the part is plated, is the plating correct?

A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is often used to obtain highly magnified images of the fracture surface to help determine the failure mode. An SEM image of a polished cross-section can also reveal plating thickness, and other instruments can identify the plating material.

Then, the laboratory staff sets about analyzing what happened, based on the data and background information.

Parts can fail in many ways, including fracture and wear. The most familiar fractures happen by simple overloading of the part until it breaks. You may encounter other types of fracture, some of which are described below.

Fatigue: breaking bit by bit

Corrosion. This electron micrograph shows individual crystal formations of copper oxide from a surface that was not protected against the elements properly, and corroded

Fatigue is probably the most common form of metal failure, said Salim Brahimi, consultant at IBECA Technologies Corp., Montreal, Québec, Canada. It is the result of cyclic loads on the material. Wherever there is vibration or other types of back-and-forth loading, fatigue may become a problem.

“The fatigue load is ever so slightly more than a piece can carry,” said Killius. “If it were any lower, the part could carry it. On each cycle the load deforms the part ever so slightly in a plastic (non-elastic) manner.” Fatigue failure can occur after thousands or millions of cycles. Examination of a failed part can reveal where a crack started and how it propagated through the material a tiny bit at a time. Typically, a series of lines on the fracture surfaces show how the crack deepened or widened progressively before failure.

Embrittlement: strong materials breaking at low loads
Though metal fractures are often called “brittle” or “ductile,” Killius said, “brittle” might better be described as when a material fails at a load much less than expected. A number of different mechanisms cause metals to fail in a brittle fashion. Hydrogen embrittlement is widely known as a problem with high-strength fasteners, but it can affect other applications as well.

For hydrogen embrittlement to occur, three factors need to be involved, explained Brahimi. First, the material must be susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement. High-strength materials are often susceptible, and the harder they are, the more susceptible they are. Second, hydrogen needs to be present. Processes such as acid pickling or electroplating can generate hydrogen, or hydrogen may be generated as corrosion occurs. Normally, susceptible parts are baked after plating or pickling to remove the hydrogen. Third, the part must be subjected to sufficient stress, whether internal residual stresses or external stress from an applied load.

Ductile fracture. This electron micrograph shows what a textbook ductile fracture looks like.

Within the metal, Brahimi said, hydrogen is drawn to the location of highest stress. For a bolt, this is likely to be under the head or in the threads. The hydrogen finds its way through the metal matrix to where the stress is concentrated, at the tip of a crack or notch, and congregates there, interrupting atomic bonds. This reduces the strength of the material in this area.

Stress corrosion cracking
Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) occurs, said Killius, where there is a combination of a corrosive environment and stress. The stress can be either from an external load or from unrelieved residual stresses within the part. Even relatively mild corrosives can produce stress corrosion cracking. Many types of stainless steel are particularly affected by chlorides, such as the salt in sea water. Some copper alloys are susceptible to ammonia compounds.

This type of fracture is called “decohesive rupture,” Killius said, in which “the metal grains stop sticking to each other.” The corrosion goes along the grains, leaving the texture of the material similar to sand. The particles have a characteristic polyhedral shape (see photos).

Mysteries solved
Every laboratory analysis has its own story. Here are some examples.

Stealth design error: Cam pins or cam screws are used in one type of locking assembly that fastens together panels of consumer-assembled furniture. In one application, Von Rohr said, cam screws about 3/8” in diameter and 2” long were machined from bar stock. A shop had been making these parts to the customer’s print, and they worked fine. At least they did until the customer specified a less expensive material. Cam screws made of the new material broke on installation. Stork MMA Testing Laboratories investigated. The part was made exactly to the print.

However, the print mistakenly showed a sharp corner on one of the four edges, while the other three edges had radii. This sharp edge acted as a stress raiser. Parts made with the old material could withstand the installation stresses, but parts made with the new material could not.

1000X electron micrograph, showing ductile failure due to gradual overload, in hardened steel.

Bad surface finish in disguise: Killius related the story of small gold plated stainless steel electrical contacts that go into a million-dollar medical scanner. The scanner manufacturer bought 20,000 of the parts. At incoming, the inspector noticed that two pieces had spots on them, and decided to take a closer look at the whole lot and send them to Analytical Answers. The lab discovered the parts had a bad surface finish, which had been plated over.

Bait & switch: A manufacturer of parts for surgical instruments had bid on a particular stainless steel part. He later discovered that a competitor was providing the part, apparently made offshore, at the cost of the specified material alone. Curious as to how this could be, the manufacturer asked Analytical Answers to determine what the material was. After examining the competitor’s part, the lab found it was not made from the specified stainless. It was chrome-plated carbon steel.

Punching out: In a heavy industrial equipment application, steel disks the size of hockey pucks were designed to carry loads of up to 60,000 pounds, Killius said. Over time, to save cost, the material was changed from precipitation hardening stainless steel, to 400-series stainless with nickel plating, to carbon steel with heavy galvanizing. When users discovered that occasionally smaller loads, in the 12,000-pound range, would punch right through the disks, the manufacturer asked Analytical Answers to determine what was happening. The lab discovered that disks were not galvanized, but heavily electroplated. Normally, to prevent embrittlement, plated parts such as these should be baked after plating to remove hydrogen, Killius said, but these parts were not.

Failure prevention in the shop
“What you want to do when machining parts is to alleviate conditions that may cause premature failure,” said Brahimi. When machining parts, make sure radii are well controlled. Broken or incomplete radii can be stress raisers where a fatigue crack might start, so can notches or too-sharp, small-radius edges and corners. Alert your customer if you notice a potential problem with the design of the part.

1000X electron micrograph, showing ductile failure due to gradual overload, in aluminum

Scratches, fins and internal burrs can all be stress raisers, Von Rohr said. Be careful to prevent tool chatter, too, as each chatter point is a stress raiser as well. And on threaded parts, if the thread pitch is off even slightly, this can lead to failure. “The incorrect thread will screw in OK, but the mating points will be in the wrong locations,” he said.

Your customers and their end users depend on you to produce good parts. You can help prevent problems by paying attention to potential design problems in the parts you make and maintaining constant vigilance over the machining process. But if there is a failure, the “detectives” in the failure analysis labs can figure out what happened.

Today’s Machining World Archives December 2006 Volume 2 Issue 12

Larry looking into a sand-casting mold and core package of a vintage automotive engine

LG:  We are talking with Larry Rhoades, Ex One’s CEO. Larry, when did you get the idea of doing this layered metal process to build products?
LR:  I’ve been involved since 1994. We were invited to join a consortium of companies developing the three-dimensional printing process MIT had invented with the objective of making plastic injection mold tooling. The group included United Technologies, Motorola, Hasbro, Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon Endo-Surgery group, and AMP, now part of Tyco.

Were you invited for a particular expertise?
We had experience working with United Technologies developing new manufacturing methods and were known for our skills at finishing – improving surface roughness. We were experienced in developing new manufacturing methods, then bringing them to industry. We ultimately learned enough about the process that we took on the task of implementing this technology. That meant a lot of refinement – from university level work to building a robust industrial manufacturing process.

Could you describe the technology as simply as possible?
3-D printing assembles particles with a device like an ink jet printer. We spread thin layers of particles, from 50 microns to 500 microns thick, and then send out little droplets of glue or binder from the print head. The glue droplets bind together the particles that will become the work piece. It’s a constructive process – layer-by-layer manufacturing. On each layer we assemble the particles together that represent the cross-section of the work piece at that layer, then lower the “build box” one layer thickness, spread another layer of particles and do it again. The droplets seep through the printed layer to the previous layer so the part is all stitched together. In the end you have a box full of powder, most of it loose, but buried within the loose powder is the article you want glued together firmly enough to aggressively get the loose powder separated from the glued together stuff. In some cases that becomes the work piece in itself with no further processing, which is what we do for sand molds – glued together sand particles. The ultimate metal part is made by pouring molten metal into the bonded sand mold to make a “casting.” For “direct metal” parts, we glue metal particles together, and then put them into a furnace for a thermal cycle to sinter them. Either we sinter to full density and allow the work piece to shrink about 15 percent in each dimension, or often we’ll just sinter lightly to fuse the particles without shrinking and use a second furnace step to infiltrate the tiny spaces between the fused particles with a metal having a lower melting point. Either way, we metallurgically bond them together, making a fully functional metal part.

What do you think that the short-term, mid-term and the long-term possibilities are for the technology you’re developing?
We’ve chosen three initial focus applications on the three critical dimensions of the process that we’ll continue to improve: speed, materials and accuracy. Our first initial application is sand molds for sand casting using big machines that build 30 cubic feet of product per day.  Our second focused area is plastic injection mold tooling. We can make complex internal passages, which provide thermal transfer and cooling within the mold. The challenge is to make very strong, hard materials. We’ve developed a fully sintered M4 tool steel material that can be hardened to 63 Rockwell C fully capable of doing plastic injection mold work with a 99% density. We make components that have complex internal passages that let you manage the surface temperature of the mold. This allows you to control the sequence and speed at which the injection molded parts are formed, improving precision and productivity.

The third initial application is making dental crowns, which we’ve launched after several years of development and a yearlong Beta test program with eight dental labs. This process makes gold “copings,” the foundation of a dental crown that must fit precisely on your tooth and prevents food particles from getting underneath the crown, causing decay. We can make these copings more precisely than present methods within a few hours, as opposed to three days. There are 40 million dental restorations done in the United States every year; three-quarters of those are gold copings onto which porcelain is then applied to make it appear like a natural tooth. Gold is chosen because it’s anti-bacterial and helps to prevent decay and infection. In time we hope to converge these three dimensions of resolution, material performance and speed that these three initial focus applications are pioneering.  We want to combine the ability to make all kinds of metal and ceramic products that have the net-shape resolution and precision we’ve learned to do in dental crowns with a broad menu of high performance materials, like the tool steel that we’ve demonstrated in injection molds. Finally, we’d like to have the kind of productivity we demonstrate in producing sand casting molds – producing precise, complex parts at production rates measured in cubic feet per hour.

Fabricate by 3D Printing:

Can you tell me the economics today of the sand molds versus the old methods?
The principal cost driver for sand molds is the expense and time required for the production of patterns. Normally, sand molds are made from resin coated sand packed into patterns, which is then cured and hardened with an activator. For an automotive engine, design and production of prototype patterns typically take six weeks to six months and cost $30,000 to $150,000. That cost then gets amortized over the number of parts you’re making, so the economics are volume-driven. In our process, volume and scale are relatively transparent, so times one or times 1000 doesn’t matter that much. If you’re making small volumes, our method is a much more efficient way to do it. You have them faster with much less labor involved.

We saw the sand mold model you had in the IMTS exhibit. Is the material bonded together or cured when you put it through a furnace?
With our process of producing sand molds the curing occurs in the printing, so there is no subsequent operation needed. We print the resin directly into the sand that has been pre-coated with an activator. When the resin and the activator combine, it cures. You need only to remove the surrounding loose sand in the build box to get your sand mold.

Will this take the foundry business by storm?
There are plenty of applications now that bring low volume castings into the game where previously they would have been whittled out of blocks of solid material. The process also allows the casters to get prototypes in the hands of customers sooner, so designs can be optimized quickly. Prototypes are made with the same sand, the same binder and with all the same characteristics present with pattern packed sand castings in full production, if the volumes are high enough to lead to that. We’re finding applications where our molds can be used in production casting, especially for complex production cores to make internal features.

Tell me about the intersection of art and the product you’re doing.

Artists have relatively unconstrained minds. Part of his or her mission in life is to explore boundaries and reach beyond them; maybe there’s some analogy there. Engineers are more constrained, since there is often great complexity involved in actually making things in production. The artists immediately “get it” and exploit the geometry freedom that this process allows, enabling them to make articles that couldn’t be produced otherwise. The artists help us to demonstrate the potential design freedoms to the engineers making functional parts while reducing the amount of material used and reduce part cost.

Does this mean that a one of a kind sculpture may lose its value since it’s no longer going to be a one of a kind?
Well, it’s still one of a kind as long as you don’t make another one. I think it allows people to express themselves more readily than they could if they had to chisel their concept out of a block of marble or make a mold and cast it in the old way. I think it allows the artist to spend more time being creative and exploring ideas and less time being a craftsman executing the idea.  It’s the ultimate extension of Andy Warhol’s factory.

Chris Anderson has written a book called The Long Tail. The theory is that, instead of looking for the blockbuster product all the time, the money is made with the long tail. You may have the spike on the graph for the blockbuster, but if you look at a graph, the tail goes on and on and on. When Amazon gets an inquiry looking for Danielle Steel’s latest novel, the buyer may also be interested in Steel’s seventeenth novel. When tracking what they’ve sold, they find money is really made on the long tail of products, not the blockbuster. This “customization of manufacturing” approach you have is in sync with this long tail idea.

There are some immediate applications. When you think of vintage cars, aging weapons systems or out-of-production tools, there’s a “long tail” and currently a big expense to supply spare parts. Even spare parts for your new Chevrolet – you go to the dealer and he never has the damn thing in stock, so it gets air freighted in from a warehouse somewhere. In the end, you spend more on airfreight than the cost to make the part. The cost of distribution exceeds the cost of production, and I find that out of balance and a big opportunity. We’re after FedEx’s money in the 3-D printing business. It’s not just making the part; it’s making the part so that it’s where it should be when it’s needed. There are no inventory risks, storage or transportation costs. We can customize it for the needs of a particular user, leading to what’s called “point of use production.”

We did a piece on the MASH hospital for Humvees in Iraq and Kuwait using a Mazak machining center.  Originally the plan was to have a laser powder machine in the truck, but the technology wasn’t there yet.

I can’t comment on the laser sintering machine, but I would say one of our 3DP machines for making sand casting molds could be in that truck. You wouldn’t need to carry an inventory of bar stock, just a furnace and material you can melt and pour into the casting mold, then do the finish machining with the machining center.

Is there potential for doing this on the moon or on a space station?
As long as you’ve got gravity, I think that’s a very real possibility. This process even allows you to recycle, so if you have the ability to re-melt, refine and re-atomize the metal back into powders, you can keep making things from locally recycled materials. Whether it’s a space station or a village in Wyoming or a battlefield or an oil rig, there is great value in having what’s needed when it’s needed with as little baggage as possible.

It’s somewhat akin to Starbucks in the customized drink approach.

Starbucks is pretty labor intensive in doing that. I think it reflects the customized manual method where manufacturing started. That’s why we call it “manufacturing,” because it was manual.  As we began to automate the production process, we became more dependent on scale. That dependence led to the agglomeration of production, which led to what we now have in our societal structure around cities. These new processes change that. They allow you to de-scale and return to a village and have what’s needed at the local general store that doesn’t have inventory other than raw materials. That doesn’t apply to everything, but that’s really where the decentralization of production takes us. I think within our time we will see spare parts being produced locally with one-off design licenses from the original design owner. The owner gets his toll for his design effort, and we have a protocol that allows only one article to be made that way.

You envision a royalty arrangement on the manufacture of the article?
Well sure, you have to reward the designer, but the design can be done anywhere on the planet. It can be transported virtually for nothing and virtually instantly.

Does this point towards piracy issues?
It could if we don’t develop a protocol to protect design rights. I think establishing a protocol and a global policing system that prevents pirated articles from coming back into the market they were created in is within our ability. I think for markets that don’t respect intellectual design property rights, their entire economies should be penalized with an overall tariff rate that’s related to a country’s respect for design rights, as well environmental issues and human rights issues.  All of that can be grouped into a system that provides incentives within the exporting nation for compliance. There are solutions to the inequities of the emerging global economy. Making millions of parts halfway around the world and shipping them, with the added expense and inconvenience, just doesn’t make sense long-term.

Where’s the seed money coming for this project?  Is it mostly bootstrapped by you or from government or universities?
It’s a combination of all those things. It comes from our customers who have articulated what they’ve needed. There is seed money from the government, which is a large customer for defense products. It is in the position of being the only customer for many products, so it wants to see the methods used be as efficient as possible.

When you think of what the Defense Logistics Agency has to deal with – weapon systems that were designed in the 1940s and are still in use – how do they manage?
They need to respond to military situations that they can’t predict and then need a near immediate response with parts they don’t have. They’ve made considerable investments in technologies that can accelerate the responsiveness of the industrial-base and reduce the risk of being “without” in the battlefield.

The process and many of its improvements were conceived at MIT, and we work with a number of other universities to further improve it.  At this point, most of the investment in developing and launching this process has been mine personally.

This is terrific and utterly fascinating. I’ve been blown away by what you are doing and what it suggests.

I think that manufacturing is at a critical juncture, because conventional assumptions can be questioned and reconsidered. You can look back and see the evolution of how we got to where we are, and suddenly there’s this breakpoint driven by processes like this. This process is driven by the fact that an ink jet print head and its controls can handle huge amounts of instructions every second and grow things from assembled particles. It suggests tremendous medical possibilities to me.  That is the next wave and is what excites me the most.

We have three programs now, and I’m looking to invest. We did a piece on the MASH hospital for Humvees in Iraq and Kuwait using a Mazak machining center.  Originally the plan was to have a laser powder machine in the truck, but the technology wasn’t there yet.

I can’t comment on the laser sintering machine, but I would say one of our 3DP machines for making sand casting molds could be in that truck. You wouldn’t need to carry an inventory of bar stock, just a furnace and material you can melt and pour into the casting mold, then do the finish machining with the machining center.

Is there potential for doing this on the moon or on a space station?
As long as you’ve got gravity, I think that’s a very real possibility. This process even allows you to recycle, so if you have the ability to re-melt, refine and re-atomize the metal back into powders, you can keep making things from locally recycled materials. Whether it’s a space station or a village in Wyoming or a battlefield or an oil rig, there is great value in having what’s needed when it’s needed with as little baggage as possible.

It’s somewhat akin to Starbucks in the customized drink approach.

Starbucks is pretty labor intensive in doing that. I think it reflects the customized manual method where manufacturing started. That’s why we call it “manufacturing,” because it was manual.  As we began to automate the production process, we became more dependent on scale. That dependence led to the agglomeration of production, which led to what we now have in our societal structure around cities. These new processes change that. They allow you to de-scale and return to a village and have what’s needed at the local general store that doesn’t have inventory other than raw materials. That doesn’t apply to everything, but that’s really where the decentralization of production takes us. I think within our time we will see spare parts being produced locally with one-off design licenses from the original design owner. The owner gets his toll for his design effort, and we have a protocol that allows only one article to be made that way.

You envision a royalty arrangement on the manufacture of the article?
Well sure, you have to reward the designer, but the design can be done anywhere on the planet. It can be transported virtually for nothing and virtually

Does this point towards piracy issues?
It could if we don’t develop a protocol to protect design rights. I think establishing a protocol and a global polic-3-D Thinking31 December 2006 in others, where our processes can make tissue scaffolds that become bone, tissue and, ultimately, organs. Organ assist devices are already in animal testing, and the possibility to make new organ scaffolds, which are incorporated into the human body and repopulated with the patient’s own cells, is on the horizon. Making a pancreas is high on our list, and we’re working on livers and lungs. Being able to make a tissue scaffold that is then infused with the patient’s own cells to become a functional part of his body is, I believe, achievable within ten to twenty years.

Where do you dream this technology will take us in 25 years?
I try to imagine a world in which conventional machining and 3-D printing were created at the same time. In conventional machining, there’s probably more cost attached to tool storage, changing and maintenance than to manipulating the tool and the work piece. A manufacturing facility probably has nearly as much space devoted to tool calibration and maintenance as it does to actual machining. Because of the complexity of having all those different tools, each one having its own feed and speed information, its own cutter path profiles worked out ahead of time, conventional machining takes really big upfront planning effort that’s the economic equivalent to “hard tooling.”

When you think of what’s involved in our process, assembling particles layer by layer, in many ways it’s much simpler.  Layer by layer, we do the same thing over and over again. You don’t have tool wear, and you don’t need to wait for bar stock of a certain size to whittle down. All you need is powder. You can blend powders to make alloys, or selectively print alloying agents in the binder droplets – just like printing colors. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 25 years about half the things that we make out of metal with conventional machining could be made more efficiently this way.

Whether you look at subtractive multi-tasking machining centers or Ex One three-dimensional printing systems, they are headed in the same direction – highly flexible machines that can make just about anything when it’s needed, where it’s needed, without all the waste of distribution. This new direction will make life easier, especially in places people want to live, close enough to the countryside to enjoy it, without having to tolerate getting in and out of places they’d rather not be. All the inherent technology and automation that enables this change, I think will bring us, ultimately, closer to Nature.

Copings are made by assembling gold powder particles in layers, each 50-microns thick.

Lloyd Graff:   We’re with Jack Schwietert of V-S Industries to talk about manufacturing in Mexico. Jack, when was the decision made to establish an operation in Mexico?

JS:  The decision was made in 1993. At that time, we were supplying a customer who had multiple plants in the states. They gave us an award for being their best supplier. One of the fellows I was dealing with asked me, “Have you ever considered putting a shaft manufacturing facility in the Southwest? When I said no, he said, “Our largest client is a motor manufacturer in Juarez, Mexico. We actually supply the shafts to this plant ourselves. We did a study recently and discovered we’re our own shaft suppliers. We’ve been working to resolve that but to no avail.”

The plants that they had here were very inflexible union plants, and probably did not like the idea of supplying to Mexico.  He said they found a lot of good metal turn companies in the Southwest, but they seemed oriented around defense industries making 15 perfect parts a week. When you asked for 30,000 parts a week, they just couldn’t conceive how you would even do that. They wanted to see if we were interested in starting a facility down there.

Now when I worked for 3M, I would visit an engineer friend of mine who took me to their Maquila facilities in the Tijuana area. I met people he dealt with and always kept a file on Maquilas. We decided we would go down there. I didn’t know how to conduct business in Mexico. We decided we needed a Maquila operator who would shelter us and take care of the payroll. Our customer actually became our shelter operator, and we operated for the first year and a half of our existence down there in the plant of our customer, with him supplying our workers. We told him how many people we needed, he took care of the payroll and at the end of the month, they would give us a bill for how many hours we had used. After a year and a half we hired Carlos Castel, the fellow who ran our operation in their facilities. I hired him away from our customer with their approval. We had written into our contract that we could go out and deal with other customers, but I never felt that was appropriate as long as we were under their roof.  Their business increased, and they needed the space.  We wanted to do work with other customers.  We moved into our own Juarez facility in January 1996.  We now have four other customers down there. It’s very low volume, quick turnaround, and high value-added business, exactly what you want in Mexico.  The only thing that’s really cheaper in Mexico is labor. The building in Juarez is every bit as expensive to lease or own as it is in El Paso. The power is probably more expensive. The work rules are probably more restrictive in Mexico. Juarez is part of the State of Chihuahua, which is a very conservative state. That’s where the PAN party started. We are non-union, but that’s a little unusual in Mexico. Most places in Mexico are union companies but are considered “white,” meaning friendly unions.

LG:   It seems a little bit counterintuitive when you say, “High value-added, quick turnaround goes to Mexico,” where you might think that there are less skills; and therefore, the high value added part might be difficult to pull off.

JS: That’s probably very true.  One of the problems when you talk about Mexico is that you have a high turn-over problem, which has been exaggerated. You hear horrendous numbers of 2% and 3%, 4% per month and think, “how would I ever run my business?  I would be training all the time.” We do train all the time.  We do need skilled people, and we need skilled people to stay with us. But I would also say that Mexico is not unlike the United States. That turnover is primarily with lower skilled people. Your key people stay with you here and in Mexico as well.  We still have four or five of the first twelve people we ever hired in Mexico.

LG:   How many people do you have?

JS: We have 180 people.  We’ve been as high as 240 people. Our business is somewhat seasonal. In Mexico, there are problems hiring and firing. If you hire someone and decide you’re going to let this person go because business has dropped, you’re on the hook for three months worth of wages for that person.  That’s the law.

LG:   If your Juarez operation was in El Paso, do you think it would be successful?

JS: Yes, it would be successful, but I think we’re more profitable because we’re in Mexico, and labor is such a large part of the expense in this business.

LG:   Tell me what wages are in Juarez vis-à-vis El Paso or McAllen.

JS: For a good machine operator, in Juarez you’re looking at $2.50 to $3.50 per hour gross plus benefits, and in El Paso you’re looking at $10 to $12 per hour. When you’re in Mexico, your benefit package is probably 80% to 90% of your wage vs. 35%, maybe 40% in the States.

LG:   So what you’re really saying is $3 equals $5 with benefits. In El Paso $10 would mean $13. So you’re really talking about $5 versus $13 for machine operators. You’re value-added is coming primarily on labor.

JS: Exactly. It’s coming from labor because you’re doing set-ups all the time and pushing this product through. We are on a 5-day cycle time with one customer we’re servicing there. If we get an order on Friday, we have to deliver that product next Thursday, and we have no idea what he’s going to order.  Every morning, we get a list of 35 to 40 different items, and we have to deliver that. Typically it’s a motor shaft with multiple steps on it. It usually requires features like a key way, a broach flat, always ground, sometimes heat-treated.  If it requires heat treatment they do give us extra time to do it because there’s very little support in heat treating or plating. The heat treater we use is in Las Cruces, New Mexico. We cross the border, get heat treated, and then come back across the border. It’s not difficult, but it’s a day both ways. That time is written into our contracts. We deal only in dollars.  We won’t take a job with pesos. I don’t want to be in international monetary speculation.

LG:  Does your product go to plants in Mexico?

JS: Yes. The idea for us going to Mexico never was to go down and do something because it was less expensive and then import it and sell to a customer up here.  Right now, there’s a number of people in the industry who are doing that in China, actually importing product from China because there’s an economic advantage.  We never found that to be the case with Mexico. We moved down there because our customers were looking for short cycle time.

LG:   So then the rationale is 1) proximity and 2) cost.  Proximity concomitant with faster turnaround time.

JS: Exactly. We’re an export company, really. 70% to 75% of our sales for the last 10 years actually exit the country, even out of Wheeling, IL.  We supply Brazil, Portugal, China and Korea.  But Mexico, certainly far and away is our biggest ship-to point, partly because we have developed relationships with companies in Mexico, but also because customers we had here eventually moved to Mexico and asked us to come to Mexico to support them.

LG:   That’s interesting.  So you see the big opportunity has been in developing customers in Mexico who find it difficult to find suppliers in Mexico.

JS: Exactly correct. And that’s why we started McAllen, Texas.  We ship about $14 million worth of product out of Wheeling every year to the areas of Monterrey, Saltillo, Reynosa, which are all within 2 hours of McAllen. Our decision to go on the McAllen side of the border instead of the Reynosa side was because it’s an automated product. The proportion of labor we’ve got when you look at the total cost is not that great, and there was no real advantage to being in Mexico.

LG:   Tell me about what it’s like going back and forth between El Paso and Juarez.

JS: It’s become more and more difficult because of the problems we’re having now.  In Juarez, Carlos has a pass that allows him to cross the border without stopping. But he has to be alone in the car to do it; he can’t be carrying passengers.  So typically when I go down, he will drop me on the Mexican side and I’ll walk over the bridge. I will pass customs on foot, and he will pick me up. If they search your car it can be up to 40 minutes crossing the border.

LG:   Can you fly to El Paso direct, or is it through Houston?

JS: American has 2 flights a day non-stop to El Paso from O’Hare. One of the flights is 7:30 at night, so I can spend the entire day here, hop on the airplane, and I’m there at 9:30 at night. I get up in the morning and have a full day down there.

LG:   Tell me about the financial arrangements of owning a company in Mexico.  Can an American company own a Mexican firm like yours?

JS: Yes. We’re a subchapter S corporation; when we first started the facility in Juarez, there was a rule that sub chapter S corporations couldn’t own more than 79% of the foreign entity. We would have had to change our facility to a C Corp, which I didn’t want to do. I made our manager a partner, so he has part ownership in that facility. That’s no longer the rule today. The arrangement in Mexico is a typical Maquila arrangement. From a tax standpoint, when we do our distributions, this is what we have: We have an office in El Paso. That office is called V-S Precision USA.  We have a plant in Juarez.  That plant is called V-S Precision SRL.  SRL is a legal form similar to a partnership in Mexico. V-S Precision USA has the relationship with our customers. Our customers order from V-S Precision USA, which is a two-person office in El Paso.  All the orders and payments are in dollars, made to V-S Precision USA. Virtually all of our steel comes from the United States, so we order from V-S Precision USA.  The only thing that V-S Precision SRL does for us is add value to the product.  So we have a transfer price agreement between V-S Precision USA and V-S Precision SRL to supply product at a certain price. We say, “Our transfer price is going to be the cost that we spend in Mexico, V-S Precision SRL, every month plus 6%.”  At the end of the month V-S Precision SRL adds up all of the expenses they had for that month. They add 6% to the bottom and they send the bill to V-S Precision USA.  That way you show a 6% profit in Mexico on expenses in Mexico. The Mexican IRS, which is called Hacienda, looks at transfer prices very closely, and if you show that you’re making at least 6% there, they typically will leave you alone on your transfer price agreement. You’re showing 6% of the profit on SRL expenses in Mexico, so you pay Mexican tax on that.  But all of the Mexican tax that you pay is 100%; the IRS views it as foreign tax credit to the tune of 100%.  So you’re not paying any more tax by being in Mexico.  It makes filing more difficult, but it’s not costing you Mexican tax on top of U.S. tax.  Whatever you pay in Mexico the IRS gives you credit for in the United States. And the Mexican government has tried to keep business taxes very close to what the U.S. tax is, around 35%.

LG:   Have you found the Mexican authorities easy or difficult to deal with?

JS: Probably a better question for Carlos.  From afar, what I see is that the laws in Mexico are very close to what the U.S. requires.  Frequently you’ll hear people say, “Welsomeone went to Mexico because they don’t have any laws relative to the environment.” That’s absolutely not true. We have a very sophisticated system for managing our cutting oils down there.  We actually have a separate little facility adjacent to us that handles all our swarf. I haven’t seen an OSHA fellow, because they can only cover so many facilities. They spend their time looking at the worse case. There’s so many people working for the government of Mexico they can afford to be at a company every week.  It’ not a situation where you have to pay people off. There’s plenty of corruption, certainly, but we don’t deal in payoff. But with the environmental laws down there you can bet someone is going to visit you on a very regular basis. There’s probably a lot more time spent on the enforcement aspect just because they have the people to do it.

LG:   What’s been the most rewarding part of doing business in Mexico?

JS: One of the most satisfying things is being able to do something for the community down there.  When we first started our facility, we built parking spaces for 50 cars, and there weren’t a dozen cars in it. Obviously our employment grew, but at this point there are probably a hundred people who drive to our facility.  You kind of stop and look at that and say, “We are an employer who offers a better wage than the average person putting a wire harness together.  We demand more of our employees, but we also pay a better wage.”  We are part of the developing middle class in Mexico.

LG:   Is there a real competition for workers down there?

JS: You asked me about the effect of China. The effect of China actually was most significant back in 1999, 2000, and 2001.  At that time, Juarez had an unemployment rate of about 5%, which was unheard of because you could never get enough employees in Juarez.  That has pretty much turned around now, in part because some people moved back, but I think more and more U.S. companies and foreign companies have moved to Mexico. The turn-over situation becomes more aggravated the tighter the labor market is, and the labor market is tight right now. What you see in Mexico are employees or companies competing for employees on the basis of benefits, not wages. We serve our employees 2 meals a day; we include that in the employment agreement.  There will be companies that have 3 meals that have shower facilities that have bus service taking people to and from work. Nevertheless, you always have your core group of important people who get there every day.

LG:   Do you have top-notch setup people who would be competitive in Chicago?

JS: We do.  When we started the facility down there we took five or six people from our facility here in Wheeling, who were primarily Hispanic, and moved them down there for a period of time. Two people decided to stay down there. One is a very good grinding person and another is in charge of the cam equipment. We actually run far more CNC turning down there than up here because it’s all short runs down there. Carlos has something like 45 CNC bar turning machines, mostly Star, some Citizen equipment. The fellow who runs that is from Mexico, who started with us in the first year of our production there and stayed with us. We do have people down there who are key to our operation and would be considered good people up here in Chicago as well. But I would also say that it’s easier in Chicago to find that kind of technical expertise as it is if you were in Nashville or Memphis.  You’re comparing a marketplace up here that is technically a very good marketplace compared to any place in the U.S. If we had to replace everybody down there with someone, it would be much easier to do it here in Chicago than down there.

LG:   If you had a customer that came to you and said, “I want you to do what you did for me in Mexico, and I want you to do it in Shanghai” would you consider it?

JS: Yes, we have considered it because they have asked.  But you’re going to have to operate your Chinese company with someone from China, and I don’t know any-body in China whom I trust.  I think business in China and Mexico is similar in that regard. You have to develop a personal relationship with your key people in Mexico, not just a business relationship. If I knew someone in China like that, I would consider it. It’s also 8,000 miles away as opposed to 1,200 miles away. We’re thinking about starting another facility in central Mexico, around Mexico City. We do have relationships down there where I know I can get very good management for that company. That’s key. There’s as many people who go to Mexico, have been disappointed and come back as there are people who stay. It probably has very little to do with where they were location-wise, but who was operating it and what kind of support they got. I talk to some of the guys in PMPA about Mexico, and they look at me frankly and say, “Why in the hell would you do that?” It makes no sense to them whatsoever.  And that’s fine. It’s not for the weak at heart. We’re in the business of gambling all the time in our business; that’s what we do.  You mentioned to me the satisfaction of doing the magazine and doing something on your own, and I feel that with Mexico a little bit. That’s something I did.

LG:   So now I follow your train of thought.  Long run work, capital intensive U.S.  Niche work, labor intensive Mexico.  Anything else you would like to say to our readers?

JS: Everyone has to make the determination whether it makes sense for their company or not. Mexico started for us because we had one customer who really wanted us down there. I said, “I’m not going to start a facility just for you.  I need three good customers down here, and I’m not going to make a move until I pretty well lock that up,” which we did. I would caution anyone about moving for one customer.  You hear a lot of horror stories about that. And I think that’s one of the problems with someone making a decision to do that. The key is to have the right people down there running it, but that would be no different than if we decided to start something in Denver.

Thanks, Jack.

As testimonials go, it is hardly the usual.

“I spray WD-40 on the hinges of my cooler so I can sneak a beer in the middle of the night,” claims Kevin Meany, identified as a “school district mechanic/volunteer fire chief.”

Even in these days of “Dr. Z,” the voice of the Daimler-Chrysler chief touting his cars somewhat humorously and the return of the “speecy-spicy meatball” commercials for Alka-Seltzer, the website for the WD-40 Fan Club is a bit goofy. There you find not only the above Mr. Meany, but also six other folks who comprise the alleged “WD-40 Fan Club Board of Directors.”

“It’s not like they ever meet or anything. It is just for fun. They don’t talk to the press,” said Jesse Lovejoy, a spokesman for the company. “We just like to have fun here.” What is not to be fun when you have a product with an odd name and, so the company claims, an 80% penetration rate.

“That means that 80% of homes have around or have used WD-40,” said Tim Lesmeister, the WD-40 vice president for marketing. “We have got to believe that even Coca Cola doesn’t have that kind of penetration. There are at least other colas. When you think of the kinds of things this product does, WD-40 is what you think of.”

The legend of WD-40 is somewhat similar to that of Tang, which allegedly was developed so those early astronauts like Scott Carpenter and John Glenn had something to drink while orbiting the Earth while Walter Cronkite sang their praises. It is one of those post-World War II sagas worthy of a Norman Rockwell cover and a “Saturday Evening Post” story.

The aerospace industry was centered in Southern California in the late 1940s and early 1950s for many of the same reasons the movie business nested there a generation before. There was a lot of room to build big plants for what were presumed to be huge planes and missiles and, frankly, the weather was good year-round to attract employees. It is true that there were a bunch of naval bases, Army camps and Air Force installations in California, but the real attraction was land and weather – presumably aircraft performed better in a long dry summer season. And, workers might perform better if they knew in their off-hours they could easily get to the luscious Pacific Ocean waters.

The problem was that when aerospace companies built their plants too close to the ocean, the damp air started to corrode the parts of the new planes and missiles.

Still, the new industry not only attracted pilots, factory workers and marketing folks, but also dreamers and inventors willing to solve these kinds of problems. Three of those research types at the San Diego Rocket Chemical Company came up with a formula in 1953 that they thought would inhibit such corrosion. They had tried 39 times to find a solvent that would both degrease those parts and then provide a rust inhibitor that would stand up to that damp ocean air.

On the 40th time, though, the water displacement solvent did what it was supposed to do: ergo, W D, as in “water displacement,” and 40, as in “the 40th try.” It was like Chanel’s famous No. 5. No one cares what the first 4 were, just like no one in the machine industry – or in any of those 80% of American households – gives a hoot about the first 39 formulas.

“Everyone, I think, is just happy the researchers didn’t give up at, say, 25,” said company marketing guru Lesmeister. “It is one of the world’s great products.”

The first big contractor to use the product was Convair (later a division of General Dynamics Corp.), which was making the Atlas missile, which soon became the most important missile in the United States arsenal. With its inflated steel tank style, the Atlas had, and still has, the lowest empty weight ratio of any missile without a reliability penalty.

Eventually, Convair’s employees discovered the wonders of WD-40 for personal use. They started spiriting the cans home from the plant. They found out it could do, well, most anything. They could clean and protect their tools with it; lubricate their lawnmowers and their new suburban kitchen items, too. It loosened bolts and nuts and degreased the kids’ bicycles. Heck, it sometimes even degreased the kids.

In 1958, the bosses at Rocket found out about the inhouse smuggling at Convair and decided to make lemonade out of lemons. They put WD-40 in aerosol cans and hired a few salesmen to get it into local hardware stores. According to a company history, by 1960, they were selling 45 cases of the stuff a day.

Then Hurricane Carla hit the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. In order to help rebuild, contractors from Texas to the Florida Panhandle needed all sorts of everything. They had heard of this semi-miracle product from San Diego and got a truckload sent out. The cult had finally spread east, and through the 1960s, the aerosol can with the funny name became ubiquitous in carpentry and machine shops and on construction sites. By 1969, with only one product, albeit a good one, in its line, the Rocket Chemical Company offcially became the WD-40 Company, four years later going public.

Now more than one million cans of WD-40 are sold each year, and annual revenues top $150 million.

Adding to its mystique, like with Coke and Pepsi colas, is the secret nature of WD-40’s formula. Company officials say there are only four people who really know the formula and only a couple who deal with it day to day.

“There is one guy who is part of WD-40 who gets up every morning and makes the brew,” said marketing chief Lesmeister. “We have three locations (in Sydney, London and San Diego) that make the secret sauce, but primarily it is made in the same warehouse in San Diego that has been there for many years. He does have a back-up or two, but even the CEO doesn’t have anything to do with making it. In fact, almost no one here knows whether it is something really complicated or really simple.”

Garry Ridge, who has been CEO of WD-40 since 1997, plays along with cult status. On the fi ftieth anniversary of the company, he rode into Times Square in a suit of armor, carrying the secret formula. On the other hand, he doesn’t want the company to stand too pat. He told the Wall Street Journal earlier this year that more people used WD-40 in a year than used dental floss, but worried that the future wouldn’t always look like the present.

“We decided we were going to be in the squeak, smell and dirt business,” he told The Journal. “I felt that there would always be squeaks. There will always be smells. And there would always be dirt. That was the strategy as we started looking for brands that we could acquire.”

So now the company owns products like 2000 Flushes®, the X-14® cleaner line, the Lava® line and 3-In-One® dry lube.

Still, the bulk of the business, and the fun, comes from WD-40. Even Consumers Union, that tough-minded find-faultwith-most-anything group, touts WD-40 on its Consumer Reports 4 Kids recommendation page, saying it is marvelous for removing decals and stickers.

The WD-40 Fan Club came about, according to Lesmeister, after people started emailing oddball uses for the product. Now the company website lists more than 2,000 uses for WD-40, from the mundane and predictable (“Keeps garden tools rustfree”), to the sensual (“Loosens crud around stoppers on antique perfume bottles”) to the just plain nutty (“Removes stains left from Silly String”).

The company even did a poll to ask residents of each state what the best use for WD-40 would be for their states. In Pennsylvania, for instance, it was to keep the Liberty Bell from squeaking, while in Kansas, it was “lubricates breakaway rims for easier slam-dunking by the Jayhawks.”

WD-40 No-Mess Pen, a felt-tip marker-like dispenser for tight applications

What is even more amazing is that competitors rarely speak ill of the product.

“We’re a good lubricant and at least its [WD-40’s] equal in corrosion protection,” said Gary Nieberle, the product manager for 3-36, the top-line similar product for CRC, the Warminster, PA-based company. “But I would never knock WD-40. We like our product better, but theirs is also good.”

About the only thing consumer watch groups do criticize WD-40 for is its flammability, which the company certainly acknowledges.

“But I think people are careful of that. Every product has to have some minor downside, but we have never had any problems with that,” said Lesmeister.

Lesmeister even gets a good chuckle when oddball stories, even seemingly negative ones, come out about WD-40.

Last year, for instance, police in England started to use WD-40 to thwart cocaine users. In Avon, Somerset and Bristol, cops started spraying toilet seats in pubs with WD-40 after figuring out that, first, lots of coke was being snorted there, and, second, the WD-40 made the stuff congeal. Then, when people would try to snort it, the mixture of WD-40 and cocaine would inevitably cause nosebleeds,
and the subjects would be caught, if not red-handed, at least red-nostriled.

Recently, the company has decided to branch out just a little bit in getting WD-40 in cracks and crevices that had eluded it. There is a new super-sized can, the 18-ounce Big Blast, mostly for big machine-shop or automotive bay use. On the other end, there is the WD-40 No-Mess Pen, a felt-tip marker-like dispenser for tight applications.

“We got it out this way to people who hadn’t used it before, specifically women, and into crafts and hobby shops, and places like Office Depot, another vehicle for distribution,” said Lesmeister.

“I guess the motto here is we won’t rest until everyone is using WD-40, for something, all at once,” he said with a chuckle. “It may not be so far-fetched.”

Everything wears out eventually, and the spindles in machine tools are no exception. Though many shops could theoretically rebuild or repair their own spindles, many choose to send them out—back to the manufacturer, or to a company that specializes in rebuilding and repairing them.

Lisa Bailey-Beavers, national sales manager of GTI Spindle, inspects a Heald grinder dressing spindle.

One such company is GTI Spindle Technology, Inc., in Manchester, NH (see sidebar). GTI Spindle repairs and rebuilds a wide variety of spindles from over 300 manufacturers. They rebuild tiny spindles used in machines that wind light bulb fi laments; large spindles used in enormous machining centers; spindles in machines that grind the titanium parts for artifi cial hip joints, cut and polish granite countertops, saw and rout wood for assemble-it-yourself furniture, hone razor blades and even curl the hair on dolls.

First Look
At GTI Spindle, when a spindle arrives at the plant, it is logged into the tracking system. Information about each spindle is available online for customers to track their spindles through the process.

Next, the spindle is evaluated. If it isn’t broken in any obvious way, it is run on a test stand and a vibration profile is taken. A sensor (an accelerometer) is attached to the spindle housing. As the spindle rotates at different speeds, the sensor detects how much it is vibrating. A vibration analyzer takes in the signal from the sensor and prints out a graph showing how severely the spindle vibrates at different frequencies. The vibration signature can help diagnose problems, including out-of-balance conditions and bearings that are failing.

Lead technician Barry Beavers, assesses spindle vibration in the lab

Vibration testing can also help determine there is no problem. Quite often, GTI Spindle receives perfectly good spindles that have been sent out for rebuilding. “One in twenty doesn’t need repair,” according to GTI Spindle president Thomas Hoenig. In these cases, sometimes a little detective work is needed to diagnose the trouble.

Hoenig recalled the case where every fourth part from a customer’s machine was bad. The spindle came in for repair, but there was nothing wrong with it. The customer, helped on-site by a GTI Spindle technician, eventually discovered that the problem was a hydraulic pump mounted to the bed of the machine without benefi t of an isolation pad. When the pump turned on, the vibration disturbed the machining process. In another case, vibration from a compressor in the next room actually interfered with machining.

Looking inside
After vibration analysis, the spindle is carefully measured for runout and other parameters. Then, the technician disassembles it, looking for signs of wear, fracture or other modes of failure.

“Eighty percent [of spindles] fail from contamination in the bearings,” Hoenig says. “Contaminants migrate from the coolant or from air/oil lubrication.”

As the disassembly process continues, the parts are cleaned, examined, measured and sometimes photographed. By the time disassembly is complete, the technician has a pretty good idea what is wrong with the spindle. Each spindle’s components and paperwork are stored in a plastic bin. At this point, the customer receives a diagnosis and a quote for the repair.

Richard Bourgeois, breakdown technician, performs runout measurements before disassembling a spindle.

Putting it back together
When GTI Spindle gets the go-ahead from the customer, the repair process commences. Parts are repaired or replaced, as appropriate. Parts damaged in a crash might be resurfaced, welded back together or replaced with new parts machined in GTI Spindle’s machine shop, says Hoenig. Bearings are replaced. Tapers and other surfaces might be reground or could be resurfaced through a process called grind-plate-grind, in which they are ground, sent out for replating and then ground to resize.

A well-balanced spindle
Near-perfect balance is critical in high-speed rotating parts such as spindles, to keep them from vibrating and affecting the accuracy of the machine in which they are installed. At GTI Spindle, individual rotating components are first balanced, then after the spindle is reassembled, the entire spindle assembly is balanced.

The balancing operation is similar to dynamically balancing an automobile wheel with a tire mounted on it. The part is rotated on a balancing machine that indicates where the imbalance is. On a car wheel, weights are added to offset heavy spots.

On most spindles, material is removed opposite lighter spots that could be due to voids in a casting or other causes. An occasional spindle will allow for adding material, such as the large Makino spindle (see below), to which you might add weight by installing setscrews into threaded holes in the shaft, provided for this purpose. Large spindles that are too big to fi t on a balancing machine can be balanced using a vibration sensor and a strobe lamp.

After the spindles are rebuilt, GTI Spindle operates them for at least eight hours to run in the bearings and make sure everything is working properly. Specially designed test stands hold the spindles, power or drive them, provide lubrication, compressed air for air bearings; whatever the spindle needs to run properly.

A display of spindle components made in GTI’s machine shop

Special stand
Some spindles are especially demanding in what they need to run properly. Makino spindles, such as the one shown above, which is from a vertical machining center, contain passages through the shaft and bearings for oil that lubricates and also cools. This type of spindle cannot be run at speed “on the bench” without its oil supply.

GTI Spindle spent a year and a half and footed the considerable expense to develop a special Makino spindle run-in stand that includes pumps, coolers, vacuum oil recovery and other features. Now, at GTI Spindle, these units can be properly exercised and tested before being shipped back to their owners.

Sending them home
Finally, after the reassembled spindles have been run in, measured, tested and found good, they are painted, if appropriate, and packed in wooden crates for shipping, cushioned by conforming foam. Along with the spindle, GTI Spindle sends the customer the spindle’s records, failure analysis report, if any, and all parts that were replaced. Spindle maintenance, repair and rebuilding can represent a large expense for even a moderately-sized plant. “Customers who spend $50,000 to $ 1 million a year can save 30, 40 or 50 percent, of new replacement cost” says Hoenig. Signifi cant savings can come from maximizing spindle life through proper maintenance and correcting the problems that cause failures. Preventive maintenance, including scheduled rebuilds, can also keep unexpected downtime to a minimum, keeping machine hours and revenue up.

Applying the strobe to a Makino spindle.

Even though you can depend on spindles to fail eventually, there are ways to plan for failure and minimize its effect on your business.

“We’re the new kids on the block,” says Lisa Bailey-Beavers, national sales manager for GTI Spindle Technology, Inc., a spindle repair and rebuilding company in Manchester, NH. GTI Spindle opened in 1997 with a handful of employees. It now employs more than 50 people in four locations, and since 2002, has doubled revenue and then doubled it again, according to company president Thomas Hoenig. You might not think of spindle rebuilding as a likely business for a successful startup these days. But GTI’s founders saw a need that was going unfulfi lled. And they fi lled it.

“Everybody offered to repair spindles, but nobody offered to partner with the customer to fi gure out why they were breaking in the fi rst place,” says Bailey-Beavers. GTI Spindle includes failure analysis as part of the rebuild process and even tells the customer the diagnosis—right away if it’s a problem like lack of lubrication that could cause the replacement spindle to fail. Then, GTI Spindle works with the customer to solve the problem and prevent future failures. And the customers really appreciate this level of technical support. It saves downtime, and that saves them money.

GTI technical director Raymond St. Onge checks runout on a spindle shaft.

In addition to repairing spindles, GTI Spindle also works with customers to re-engineer their spindles. For example, GTI has designed custom labyrinth rings to prevent contamination, and the company often recommends using ball bearings with lightweight, rigid, long-lived ceramic balls instead of steel. Hoenig says about 70 % of customers have made the switch.

A different spin
Besides sharing information and engineering aid, the company goes even further. “We’re training our competitors,” says Hoenig with a bit of a smile. Indeed, if a customer decides to do its own repairs, GTI Spindle would lose that business. But, if that customer wants training on how to repair spindles, GTI Spindle will happily provide training. Of course, once a customer fi nds out what is involved in rebuilding spindles, he or she may decide to continue letting GTI Spindle do the job.

On one Thursday in July, representatives of two major corporations were visiting the Manchester plant. The head of the spindle repair lab at a well known aerospace company was training on how to rebuild Makino spindles.

Two plant engineering staff from he state of the art Hyundai factory in Montgomery, AL, watched as GTI technicians rebuilt spindles from their plant. Hyundai engineer Nick Harsanyi said he and maintenance technician Ricky Speaks were “training, learning and evaluating [GTI’s] services.” Their department is responsible for over 150 spindles in the CNC cell that manufactures heads and engines for the Sonata and Santa Fe vehicles, Harsanyi said.

Besides GTI Spindle’s headquarters in New Hampshire, the company has facilities in Bloomington, IL, Romulus, MI, and a spindle and machine tool repair shop onsite at Caterpillar Fuel Systems in Pontiac,IL. For more information, visit the company’s web site, www.gtispindle.com.

By Jessica DuLong

A highway route marker: “Detroit 75 North.” Smokestacks from a power plant puffing out steam.

A blasted-out brick building, only one wall still standing. A mammoth bronze fist. Then, gliding onto the scene, a slick, black, luxury sedan. Over an ominous, orchestral groan that melts into an insistent, swelling backbeat, a gravelly voice connects the dots between the images flashing on the screen, recounting the story of Detroit’s decline and offering the city’s fall as evidence of its inevitable revival. This may be “a town that’s been to hell and back,” the voice explains, but “it’s the hottest fires that make the hardest steel. Add to that hard work and conviction, and the knowhow that runs generations deep in every last one of us. This is who we are.”

Dubbed “Imported from Detroit,” this Chrysler commercial, the longest spot in Super Bowl history, is as much a tribute to the American auto industry—and by extension U.S. manufacturing overall—as an ad for the carmaker itself. The commercial communicates the message that “Chrysler is back. The auto industry is back. The economy is back. The country is back,” marketing professor Mike Bernacchi told the Detroit News. While Detroiters took hometown pride in the two-minute ad, the message has resonated all across this recession-ravaged nation. The commercial is just one high-profile example of a growing cultural shift toward rekindled respect for making things and skilled, hands-on work.

The spot clearly hit a nerve. A YouTube video of the ad, which featured Detroit-native rap star Eminem, was viewed more 1.2 million times within the first 24 hours the Detroit News reported, and Web traffic to the Chrysler 200 site increased by more than 1,600 percent. Meanwhile, April sales of the 200 (which replaced the Sebring) are up, with 8,274 Chrysler 200s sold, compared with 4,053 Sebring purchases during the same month last year.

Some of the buzz the ad has generated no doubt reflects the appeal of a message recognizing the importance of domestic manufacturing—not only to a sustainable U.S. economy, but to the cultural fabric of the nation. “There is a booming, homegrown ‘make it here’ pride emerging among U.S. manufacturers,” explains Steven Capozzola of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), and “Madison Avenue has also begun to focus on the trend.”

Craft Night at NYC Resistor

Public opinion sways trends
Advertisers, it seems, are catching up with public opinion. In a national, bipartisan poll that AAM published last April, Americans from across the political spectrum expressed concern over the loss of American manufacturing jobs. Two-thirds of all respondents said manufacturing was central to our economic strength, and 57 percent believed manufacturing was more central than the high-tech, knowledge or financial-service sectors. Meanwhile, a total of 63 percent said they felt that “working people who make things were being forgotten.”

Of course advertisers aren’t the only ones taking notice. In February, seven years after the debut of John Ratzenberger’s Travel Channel show Made in America, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer launched a Made in America series, encouraging consumers to purchase domestically made products as a way to create new jobs. In a dramatic demonstration, the show removed all foreign-made items from the Usry family’s Dallas home (leaving behind only a vase, a candle and some pottery) and replaced them with U.S.-made goods. Throughout the series, correspondents touted a statistic intended to spur individual consumers to action: “Spending just $64 a year will create 200,000 U.S. jobs.”

But when Ratzenberger appeared for an interview on the show, he brought along a dose of realism: “Statistically we can [create jobs], but practically it’s going to be a lot more difficult because we canceled shop courses years ago.” Referring to the skills gap that he says is poised to create an “industrial tsunami,” Ratzenberger argues that encouraging young people in the art of tinkering, invention and innovation is the first step toward training the next generation of “essential workers” who can create and repair the country’s infrastructure, and produce the goods we need.

Front page news, finally
Manufacturers have long been aware of the fact that as Baby Boomers retire, there are too few young people with sufficient skill and interest to fill their shoes. For years industry leaders have been sounding the alarm, but only recently has word begun reaching a more mainstream audience. Last July, the fact that U.S. manufacturers continue to struggle to fill job openings because they can’t find qualified applicants made front-page news in The New York Times. But the article failed to address one root cause of the skills gap: the fact that recent generations of Americans have lost respect for making things and hands-on work as viable careers. Just last month a Wall Street Journal story, Help Wanted on the Factory Floor, offered a glimpse into the skills gap’s cultural aspects. The piece cited manufacturers’ concern that “parents and guidance counselors discourage bright kids from even considering careers in manufacturing” despite the fact that jobs operating and repairing “sophisticated computer-controlled factory equipment … often pay $50,000 to $80,000 a year, plus benefits.”

To bridge this distance, manufacturers have been devising new ways to heighten awareness of manufacturing’s “coolness” factor. Just one regional example of this approach is BotsIQ, a program spearheaded by the Pittsburgh Chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association in which high school students learn to build fighting robots that compete in gladiator-style matches. Similar robot-building projects as well as camps, competitions and other programs are offered across the country. Given the explosive growth of the do-it-yourself (DIY) and maker movements, manufacturers are wise to align themselves with a trend that is changing the cultural landscape. Leading the DIY charge is Make magazine, which features how-to instructions for building projects that range from the wacky to the practical. Published quarterly since February 2005, the print magazine has grown to more than 100,000 subscribers, while the webzine generates more than seven million page-views each month. Since 2006, makers and their appreciators have gathered in person to share DIY projects at Maker Faire events held in the Bay Area, Detroit and New York City, drawing as many as 85,000 people at a single event.

Bob Stack from A2 Mech Shop

New developments in DIY
But these days maker-minded folks don’t have to wait for a fair to revel in the DIY spirit. Across the nation growing numbers of workshops now offer access to machine, woodworking, textile and computer modeling tools for use by hobbyists and independent entrepreneurs with maker dreams. NYC Resistor in Brooklyn, A2 Mech Shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and TechShop in San Francisco are among the more than 130 “hackerspaces” in the country, according to hackerspaces.org, where people share equipment and camaraderie in an effort to realize their inventions and designs. At A2 Mech Shop, explained member Bob Stack, “We have a synergy here where people and their ideas come together. It’s a sum of the parts that make the whole much greater than it would be.” This spirit of collaborative fabrication has rallied a growing fan base, suggesting a wave of new energy toward the ideals of innovation and the techniques of production. At its core, the maker movement is rooted in a belief that, as poet Frank Bidart wrote, “We are creatures who need to make things.” What better inspiration could there be for pursuing manufacturing?

Financial reality
In addition to the growing recognition of the “coolness” factor that’s been spurred by the maker movement, further motivation for some young people to enter manufacturing may come from a changing economic climate that’s debunking the myth of a liberal-arts education granting an automatic path to success. To fully grasp the decay of this longstanding notion, consider first the recent Time magazine headline that read, “Survey: 85 percent of New College Grads Move Back in with Mom and Dad.” Next note the unemployment rate among 20- to 24-year-olds: nearly 15 percent in April. Then call to mind the recent New York Times article: “Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software” about how computers are “claiming work once done by people in high-paying professions.” Now imagine what message such stories send to young people.

Education’s role reconsidered
For the first time in generations, a four-year degree is no longer expected to guarantee financial success, nor is white-collar work considered recession-proof. As the more traditional paths lose luster, manufacturers hope that more young people with a penchant for math, machinery, and manipulating materials will branch out toward jobs in their industries. And some youth advocates and teachers, recognizing the implications of new economic realities, are more than happy to sprinkle a breadcrumb trail to lead the way.

For three decades Carol Christen, author of What Color Is Your Parachute? For Teens, has been helping young people transition from school into work. Her goal is to help young people answer two basic questions—“What are you good at?” and “Is there any demand for that?” Given the recession, she’s even more careful to encourage young people not to exclude hands-on jobs, which these days are in such great demand. Christen has seen first-hand the perception some guidance counselors, parents, and young people have that “tech training is just for academic underperformers.”

Meanwhile, she complains, “Parents are bragging about how much they’re in debt because of their students.” According to a recent Project On Student Debt report, 2009 college graduates carried an average of $24,000 in student-loan debt. Meanwhile, in 2009, unemployment among recent college graduates reached the highest annual rate on record. Christen says the blind push for all students to pursue a liberal-arts education leads many students to enter college with no specific career goals in mind, and to graduate with too few marketable skills. She’s determined to help young people avoid this funneling phenomenon by opening their eyes to the diversity of options in the world of work.

Metal Spinning at the TechShop

High-school English teacher Ilana Garon is another proponent of helping students set realistic education and career goals. She says the conversations she’s heard in the teachers’ lounge have changed since she started teaching in the Bronx, New York, in 2003. In light of new economic realities, Garon finds that she and her fellow teachers now question whether “the market will support as many liberal-arts graduates as we seem to be intent on producing.” She’d prefer a system that would “make different types of trade tracks viable options” for young people, increasing awareness of the “wide variety of trade options for people to pursue.” But in her experience, total ignorance about careers in industries like machining and manufacturing is the norm among both her colleagues and her students, and tracking down trades-training information and resources is no easy task. In addition to her school-day efforts with students, Garon is working to create change by publishing essays about the need for more widespread support of technical and trades training. With her forthcoming book, Why Do Only White People Get Abducted By Aliens? Teaching Lessons from the Bronx, she hopes to share what she’s learned from her classroom experiences.

As educators and activists like Christen and Garon open more young eyes to the viability of technical careers, as the DIY movement spreads the idea that making stuff is cool, and as advertisers and mainstream media outlets paint a new picture of manufacturing’s role in the nation, these combined forces will doubtless soften the stigma that has long stymied recent generations’ transitions from school into work, while simultaneously offering new opportunities for employers in critical growth areas. It’s early yet, but the tide is shifting toward a changed American consciousness.

By Barbara Donohue

Aircraft parts before destruction.

Keeping bad, worn or obsolete parts out of the supply chain.

Out-of-spec or obsolete parts may look just like their current and in-spec brethren. In many applications, using nonconforming parts wouldn’t really be a problem. However, in other applications—aircraft, automobiles, medical devices, for example—installing a bad part could create a safety hazard, potentially causing injury or even death.

Where life and limb are at stake, regulators and manufacturers require any such parts to be rendered unusable. Otherwise, those parts could find their way into the supply chain and end up harming someone.

In other cases, perfectly good items may need to be made unusable, such as military equipment or a company’s excess inventory.

Destruction by design
Some recycling companies, such as SOS Metals, Inc., headquartered in Gardena, Cal., offer formal procedures for making parts, assemblies, and equipment permanently unusable. Termed in the industry as certified destruction, this process takes care of the scrap, obsolete parts, etc. that need to be kept out of the supply chain. A similar process handles military equipment that needs to be made unusable. SOS Metals has contracts with many airlines and aircraft original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to perform the certified destruction of parts and assemblies, as well as the necessary approvals for handling destruction of military items, said Andrew Ballow, the company’s vice president of business development.

Because a certified destruction company has been qualified by its customers (airlines and OEM manufacturers, for example), procedures are in place to make parts traceable and, Ballow said, “if anything should happen, the liability would be on us.”

Demilitarization
Items relating to national defense must be prevented from being useful in the wrong hands. “Accountability and control of significant military equipment (SME) is essential to maintaining the United States military’s superiority,” said Lt. Col. Melinda F. Morgan, spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington, D.C., in an email interview. These are national security resources and the process for processing and disposal of SME is vital to the U.S. military.

Alligator shear

“Most items in the Department of Defense supply system are assigned a demilitarization (Demil) code, A through Q. In many situations, items with a Demil code other than A will require some type of destruction action, usually through mutilation or demilitarization. “Demilitarization can best be described as the act of destroying the military offensive or defensive advantages inherent in certain types of equipment or material,” Morgan said. The purpose is to prevent the future use of the equipment, material and components for their original intended military purpose.

Items such as battle-loss armored vehicles, tank tracks, crashed aircraft, communication equipment, and weapon system components may require demilitarization in the field.

Aviation safety
“Certified destruction is not a term the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) uses,” said Les Dorr, spokesperson for the FAA, Washington, D.C., in an email interview. “Instead, we use scrap and salvageable, as they apply to non-conforming aircraft products and articles produced by manufacturers under their approved quality systems.” These parts approval holders must have procedures to provide for identification, documentation, evaluation, segregation and disposition of any nonconforming products they manufacture.

Further, they must have procedures in place to ensure scrap items are rendered unusable.

In general, specific methods of making scrap unusable are not specified in regulations, but contracts require manufacturers to have procedures in place for carrying out the necessary handling and processing of scrap. Documents do offer guidance in identifying, segregating and controlling rejected products and articles to preclude their use in a finished product.

Also, a manufacturer must have procedures for identifying, storing, protecting, retrieving and retaining quality records, Dorr said, and must retain these records for at least five years for products and articles manufactured under their approval, and at least 10 years for critical components.

Chain of Custody
The process of certified destruction requires secure handling of the material to be processed. “A customer has the material—parts and assemblies—stored in a secure area at their facility, usually under lock and key in a caged area marked ‘Scrap material do not enter,’” Ballow said. “Only a few people have access.”

A hammer mill.

Sometimes there can be a lot of stored material—companies, like people, tend to hold on to things. When they can’t use it, they store it. After two airlines merged some years ago, SOS Metals’ Ballow said, a whole warehouse full of obsolete parts was discovered. “We took out nine truckloads from there,” he said.

Documentation all along the way is part of the secure handling process. “When we back a truck in—our truck or a common carrier—we’ll load the material into the truck and get a manifest—12 pallets, or 15 boxes, or whatever it might be. The truck will be locked and sealed with a truck seal. The truck seal number will be written on the paperwork that goes back to our customer.

“There’s a possibility along the way that the highway patrol or a weigh station wants to see [the contents of the truck]. They’re obligated to write something that says they opened it. Crossing a border, customs may open it, but they’ll reseal with a customs seal, so you know it wasn’t opened by any-one else.

“When the truck arrives at one of our facilities, when it backs in, we take a picture of the truck, the license plate and the intact truck seal, to show it arrives intact.

“We take the material immediately to a locked, caged area—triple security because we have fencing around the whole facility, then the building and the locked cage. It’s monitored 24/7 by cameras and motion detectors. “When we’re ready to process the material, we bring it out and sort it before destruction.”

Means of destruction
“Our processes depend on the parts,” Ballow said. “We would use a plasma cutter on some of the bigger parts. We’d use a chop saw—it’s kind of like a radial arm saw, you just pull it down and chop the part in half. We also use alligator shears—shears that have a mouth like an alligator. Instead of teeth, it’s got blades. You put a part on there, you press the switch with your foot and cut the part in half.”

“For smaller parts—if someone ships us a bunch of aircraft hardware, or we dismantle an engine—we have nuts, bolts, screws, rivets that have to be destroyed,” Ballow said. “If you did it piece by piece, it would take forever, so we have something called a hammer mill.

“A hammer mill has a conveyor that picks up the material and drops it into the top of the mill. Inside there is grinding media, like steel teeth, that does damage to anything you put in there. It will crack it or mutilate it. It will crack the head off a bolt. A thread? You can’t use that thread anymore.

“We dump [the parts] into the hammer mill. It grinds, and chunks, and bends, and breaks, and destroys the threads and heads, so the parts cannot be used or sold as new.”

Identifying recycled materials.

For all items, when SOS Metals cuts, breaks, or otherwise damages them, “that’s the primary destruction,” Ballow said. “But the ultimate destruction is that we sell only to people who melt metal. So, after we have it all chopped up, sorted, cleaned, packaged and ready to go, we sell it to a melting house that melts it into a new ingot. The secondary destruction is actually melting the metal.”

Viewing the process
Customers have the option of coming to the facility and watching the destruction, Ballow said, but very few do. SOS Metals takes pictures or video during the process. Also, a customer can watch real-time video of the process over the Internet. “We say, OK, we’ll be doing your parts at 10:00 on Friday. Here’s the Web site. Simply go to your computer and bring it up. We have two or three cameras, and we can hold up a sign to show the customer name and lot number. They can record it if they want.”

Documenting the destruction is an important part of the process of destroying bad, worn or obsolete parts, Ballow said, “because of the importance of making sure that they never get back into the supply chain.”

In the shop
Most of the material SOS Metals handles from machine shops is made up of turnings and chips that come out of the machines, Ballow said. “But sometimes maybe 10 percent of what we pick up would be parts that have been rejected or superseded, obsolete inventory, excess inventory, bad machining, bad heat treat—there are a million reasons” for those parts to be recycled.

Shops generally put these scrap parts in a separate box. Safety- or defense-related parts, such as aircraft components, are not only separated, but also stored securely.

In your shop, you’re accustomed to making parts, bringing them to life. But there’s an end to their story, and for critical safety or defense components, they must finish their useful lives by being made unusable.