Trade School with Mercer County Career Center – Dusty Jobs Podcast – S2 E4

by Erin Long | Aug 31, 2021 | Uncategorized

For this episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast we had three visitors come from the Mercer County Career Center. They all gave us their thoughts on the Trades and how important they are to the growth of our country. We also talked about how it makes sense to come out of the Career Center with a trade and into a huge job market and start making money right out of high school.

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Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.

Donovan: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Today joining us is Lori Stainbrook, and she’s joining us from the Mercer County Career and Technical Center. Hi Lori, how are you doing today?

Lori: Great, great. How are you?

Donovan: Great. We were talking before this and your career title, your job title is so long, I just figured I’d let you introduce yourself. What do you do in there again?

Lori: I’m the Cooperative Education Coordinator at the Mercer County Career Center.

Donovan: Okay, and that means what? What are doing?

Lori: So essentially what I do is the students that are in their shops, they’re learning their skills and usually by their senior year, they’re prime and they’re ready to go out and find work. So we get them in and we address the soft skills. We get their resume together, their cover letter and we put it out there and find them a job.  Sometimes they find their own job. So what I do is I just transition them into the work force, essentially.

Donovan: You’re taking them from- they’ve been learning these skills the whole time while they are at the Career Center, and you help them actually get out there into the real world?

Lori: Correct. 

Donovan: So it’s that step, That first step possibly into somebody’s first adult careers, huh?

Lori: Correct, right.

Donovan: You’re helping them with that. That’s great. Now how long have you been doing that?

Lori: One year.

Donovan: One year?

Lori: I did it part time the year prior too, and of course we had COVID last year, so it was kind of an interesting year. But we got about forty students out in spite of of it being COVID.

Donovan: But you’ve been with the school for longer than that haven’t you?

Lori: I have, yes.

Donovan: How long have you been with the school?

Lori: Probably… it’s been twenty-four years.

Donovan: Oh, my goodness.

Lori: Twenty-four years.

Donovan: So, you have a ton of experience with helping out with kids learning trades, and, and things like that.

Lori: Well, mainly health care. So, I’m an uh, RN by trade, so I started teaching with the LPN Program which is the adult, nursing program License Practical Nursing. That was part time and I started with the high school students in ’97, and so that’s the health careers program, and it prepares for really any career in the healthcare field. They get their nurse aid, they get a bunch of healthcare certs, so they can hit the ground running and get in healthcare.

Donovan: Right, so that’s great stuff too- I mean, we need more nurses every day.

Lori: Indeed

Donovan: So, over the last twenty years-so, I don’t know, I feel like there’s been a little bit of a shift in the mentality of how people look at trades. So, if you would go back twenty years when you started this what do you think the mentality was back then or how people looked at trades. Do you think it’s different than today? I’ll let you speak to that.

Lori: I think it’s definitely changed. I did a lot of PR work for my program, so I would go into the high schools and I would talk about healthcare and there are varying levels of healthcare. So, you can get out iamb essentially have no education and be working in healthcare. You can get a two-year degree. You can get a four-year degree. So, the Career Center was kind of a hard sell because most of the counselors at that time were under the impression that most students need to go to four years of college to be able to come out and be successful in really any field, and you know, the healthcare field for sure. So, nowadays I’m seeing that counselors are a little bit more open to students maybe coming to the Career Center-and even higher-level academic students.

My daughter, in fact, started at Penn State Behrend in engineering, and decided to come to the precision metal program, her senior year to get some hands-on experience. So, she did that and you know was very successful and then was able to do an internship. The last two months of her senior year which really kind of opened up, you know, employment and she was able to get some hands-on experience as well. 

Donovan: Yeah, yeah. And that’s, that’s something you typically won’t find in a standard education setting, you know, is that this hands-on experience. You can get internships, you can get placements, and we have some students here that have come from Mercer County Career Center. Now they’re working with us and they came through that same process where they started in, and now they’re actually working for us. But we can get to that in a minute. So, I also felt that way like, back in the nineties-maybe there was a, maybe a little bit of people looking down their nose at some trades.

Lori: A stigma, sure.

Donovan: There was a stigma about it. And I don’t know, I think our culture has seen a shift in which, trade jobs…I don’t think they are a low paying job anymore.

Lori: No.

Donovan: I think you can make a good living at it these days. I think it has become a little bit more of a, I don’t know, a field of people who are able to accomplish things with their skill and with their hands as…looked upon in a little bit of a higher light than it used to be.

Lori: Most definitely, and then you get out there and you are an entrepreneur and you start your own business. I mean, those are the people that are successful for this day in age.

Donovan: And you can do it when you go to a school like yours. You can do it with little to no debt because of the ability to start right out of high school with an education that’s provided by the county. Okay, so that’s where we were. Am I summing this up pretty good? You can speak more to it if I’m missing anything.

Lori: Well definitely, I think, and the counselors are the gate keepers for our, you know population at the career center. I  think they’re a little more open to the fact that there is a success level with the students that come to the Career Center. I mean we’re placing them in jobs. They are making a good living, you know. The hours are good and like I said they are able to go on and possibly form their own business and become very successful.

Donovan: So that’s kinda this-where we are at right now with the trades. Where do you, you know as someone who’s seeing and you guys probably have a lot of knowledge on this. Where do you see the trades are gonna go in the future?  Do you see them slipping backwards? What do you think the future of trades is gonna be?

Lori: Well, college is expensive. It really is and there is a definite need for people to be working in the trades. So, the jobs are there. We need to fill them, so I think it’s really important that we train and, you know, that’s where the jobs are – that’s where the money is.

Donovan: Are you guys still seeing a real uptick in job openings for thing? I mean like we have welders here in that.

Lori: Yeah. We, we couldn’t fill the job openings. I have a hiring board at the school and, you know, we don’t have enough students that were career ready to fill those positions.

Donovan: Let me get this right, you have more jobs right now than students that are able to fill them. 

Lori: Correct.

Donovan: So, I mean that’s great. So, a student could come, come to the school, learn how to do a skill, come straight out of high school and you guys would move them directly into a job.

Lori: Most definitely. Now there are a lot of jobs that have pre-apprenticeship programs whereby those employers would, you know, continue their training on but, yeah, a lot of them are career ready.

Donovan: That’s great. I mean, that’s great in this day in age that you could move right out of high school and right into a good paying job too.

Lori: A good paying job, right.

Donovan: I know, uh, a lot of welders get into a shop where they have not only, you know, good pay, possibly full benefits, 401K. There’s a lot of those opportunities out there. And I think it’s great that you guys are able to help and get people on that path very early in life.

Lori: It’s rewarding. It really is. I enjoy it.

Donovan: Are you guys seeing anything with robotics or automation? Do you think that’s going to effect anything in the future?

Lori: Possibly, you know, we have people getting injured on the job, you know, you have back injuries, repetitive motion injuries, and technologies come a long way so I’m sure, we may have robots to fill some of those repetitive nature type of positions.

Donovan: That’s true yeah.

Lori: But, uh you know, we have to have maybe somebody to run that, so we do have two computer programing, and the one’s new, at the Career Center, so.  

Donovan: So you guys are even on board for getting people ready for that?

Lori:  Correct.

Donovan: That’s great. I know if you go back to one of our previous episodes we talked to a gentleman named Paul and he actually does robotic welding. So he handles that. So you could go back and listen to that episode at some point if you haven’t heard it out there, and he talked about how even though you have someone whose running that welding robot, you still need a welder who knows what that weld is supposed to look like. They might be there supervising a robot, or checking on a robot, but that person still needs to know what a welding is supposed to look like, what it’s supposed to do, so I think we are going to see some of these welders transition into supervising possibly two welding robots where they know what that weld is supposed to be like because they’ve done it themselves, and they have that knowledge and can speak from experience.

Lori: Sure, sure, you have to have that background and then you can move into the higher tech positions.

Donovan: Right, exactly, exactly. So, we’ve worked with you guys on a couple people who have come work for us. So, what’s that like? Tell me what that’s been like working with Imperial on getting some students in the Career Center.

Lori: Well I have to say, you guys are great as far as getting the students, you know, in here. I had a student. She was a female welder. So I called up and I said, “Hey,” you know, “she’s ready to go out,” and you guys were really gracious, you know. You made the transition really easy. You made my job easy. That was the good part. She was a little intimidated to come out into the work force, and she was actually thinking about, continuing her welding education after the Career Center. So, the counselor and I sat down and even the welding instructor said, “You’re ready, you, need to go out.” So she started here, and I guess she’s doing great things.

Donovan: Yeah, yeah, I think she’s fit in real well in the shop and I see a lot of people who are older, older guys in the shop who have been welding for a long time and they’ve really, not only her, but the other people from the Career Center that have come in, they take these young people and they…I think they have an appreciation for people their age coming in. They pull them under their wing and they want to make sure that they are doing a good job because it’s something that they’ve been doing their whole life, and I think they want the next generation to appreciate it as much as they do.

Lori: And that’s what it takes, and that’s so important. You’ve got to train them because those people will be retiring and we need a whole new crew. 

Donovan: And that’s what you guys are doing, helping to get that next generation ready, to keep America moving and make it so we can still build things in America, so we can produce stuff here and we need the people to be able to do that with the knowledge and skills.

Lori: Definitely.

Donovan: That’s what you guys are doing out there at the Career Center. Is there anything else you want to share? Is there anything else you want to talk about at the Career Center. 

Lori: Well, there are fourteen other programs. Any student that’s thinking their on the fence as far as a career, come visit us. Like I said, we have a range of different programs. We have the soft skills and we have what’s called the heavy shop with automotive, diesel, welding, etc, entrepreneurial. So, it’s a great way to explore different careers and just kind of get your feet wet and maybe it will branch out into something permanent. 

Donovan: Yeah, that’s our hope. Lori, thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciate you sharing your time and information with us about the Career Center and how students can get involved. How you guys are working to shape the future of a lot of working class Americans to get them on the right track, to making a good living and helping build our country. 

Lori: Thank you for supporting us as well. We really appreciate having you in the community. 

Donovan: Now we have joining us Avery Lockwood. How are you doing today Avery?

Avery: Pretty good. How about you?

Donovan: Good. Thanks for asking. So you actually are now working at Imperial, but you started at the Career Center, correct? 

Avery: Yeah. I went there for two years, and I loved it there. I didn’t know if I wanted to go on to more schooling. I’ve been at Imperial for two months. I started doing co-op. My welding instructor knew I had it in me just to go straight into work instead of going on to more school. 

Donovan: Now, co-op…that’s where you are still in school but they let you come to work for a little bit. Is that right?

Avery: Yeah, that’s where I go to my home school for the beginning of the day or even in the afternoon, however the school does it. Then I would go to work for the other half of the day.

Donovan: Do you feel that really helped you gain some confidence to be able to move into the working world?

Avery: It definitely helped me, because I got comfortable here before I started here full time. I mean, I could have kind of gone anywhere with it and then come here, but I’m glad I stayed here. I was comfortable with the people. I knew who the people were and that kind of stuff.

Donovan: So what’s your experience been like so far here at Imperial? How do you like it?

Avery: It’s pretty good. I’m definitely getting used to some of the stuff that I’ve never done before like driving the forklift or even the cranes. It’s simple stuff that I was never taught. I enjoy that. 

Donovan: So, who is teaching you that here? 

Avery: Kind of pretty much everybody. I mean, all the guys are extremely helpful. I can go up to any of them and they’re extremely supportive. I know how many times the guys have asked, “What got you into welding? You’re a girl. What got you into it?” I’m just like, “I don’t know. It wasn’t really anything. I just love getting my hands dirty and having fun with it.”

Donovan: I mean, was that it? Did you know somebody else that was a welder, or did you just decide this all on your own? Like, “This is something I want to do.”

Avery: I actually had a buddy of mine…me and my family have a pulling truck. So there’s this family friend, and he’s just like, “Hey, I’ve got to fix some stuff. Do you want to come try it out?” At that time, like three years ago, I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do. My older sister was going to nursing school. My family kind of wanted to push me to go to more school, but I still had absolutely no clue. So I’m like, “Give it a try.” So I went and welded some stuff up for him on his pulling truck and he’s just like, “You actually have a pretty good knack for that,” and I’m like, “Okay, guess that’s my skill.” So that’s just what I started to pursue. 

Donovan: And so far you’ve been enjoying it?

Avery: I’ve been enjoying it, yeah. Very much so.

Donovan: So what all do they have you doing here at Imperial? What are the welding tasks you’ve been given?

Avery: A lot of different positions, and how to weld. Normally at VoTech it’s just the same stuff. At VoTech you just did a little plate of whatever and then here it’s just absolutely everything. Like, I’ve done stock work. I’ve done stuff that is actually going to be shipped out. I’ve been enjoying it.

Donovan: How do you like actually seeing something turn into something?

Avery: That’s something I’ve actually seen myself be proud of because I’ve never really had to build anything and it goes somewhere else. It’s always just like you cut a piece and then you throw it away. So seeing something actually be put into something else and then it working out.

Donovan: Yeah, and I mean I think it’s neat. I’m not in your guy’s department. I don’t do the welding and fabricating. For me, I think it’s great that we’re building something that not only helps keep people safer, but keeps people healthier. I think it’s cool to see those go out the door, to see our equipment go out the door and know that it’s going to go to another place where it’s going to improve people’s lives. It’s not just the next cool thing that someone’s going to have or it’s going to wear out but it’s actually a safety thing that helps people feel that it’s going to be better and help other people who are welders and who are in the trades that it’s going to make their lives better and be healthy when they go home to their families at night. I really appreciate what you guys do out there and I think everybody out in the shop, including yourself just puts out a really great quality product. So, we’re super glad to have you on our team. Do you have anything else you want to say to anybody who is listening out there who is thinking about getting into welding, who is thinking about going to the Mercer County Career Center? 

Avery: Just do it.

Donovan: Just do it?

Avery: If it’s something that you want to do, and even if you don’t even have any slight interest or anything before that experience, just try it out. I mean at the Career Center you don’t have to pay for anything. It’s not like schooling that you would have to go for two more years. Just do it. 

Donovan: Just do it. 

Avery: Just do it.

Donovan: Well, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

Donovan: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Today we have Grant Gilhousen from the Mercer County Career Center with us today. How are you doing Grant?

Grant: Good.

Donovan: Good. So, what’s your role over there at the Career Center?

Grant: I’m the lead welding instructor at the Career Center.

Donovan: So how long have you been over there doing that?

Grant: I just finished my eighth year and this upcoming year will be my ninth started. 

Donovan: Wow. So you’ve got a little bit of experience…

Grant: Little bit, yeah.

Donovan:…bringing these young kids up in the trades.

Grant: I try to do my best.

Donovan: There you go. Well, we know you’re doing a good job because we’ve got a couple of them in the shop here and they’re doing a great job. You haven’t always been over at the school, right? Did you go to the school prior to teaching there?

Grant: No, I actually graduated from Franklin High School in Venango County. So, I went to Venango County VoTech for welding there. 

Donovan: I got you. Then you moved into actually welding for bit?

Grant: Right. The day after graduation I started in the trades.

Donovan: Right into it?

Grant: Right into it.

Donovan: So you didn’t have to do any job searching or nothing. They got you right into it.

Grant: Yep.

Donovan: That’s interesting how that happens when you go to the trades. Sometimes you can start right out of high school making money in a good job. So how long were you there?

Grant: I started at Witherup Erection & Fabrication and I was there for probably six months or so and go laid off, went to another tank company, was there for another six months or so, got laid off. So, I knew I had to get something a little more stable. I went to work at Joy Mining Machinery in Franklin and I was there for five and half years until I started teaching.

Donovan: I have to imagine that time actually being out in the field, being at a couple locations, actually welding has to come into a huge part of being able to teach these young kids what it’s actually like out there in the real world.

Grant: It is. It’s nice to be able to tell them that if they’re doing something I’ll say, “You know, this isn’t going to fly in the real world, in a real shop. Those guys are going to eat you up if you act like you are.” That’s one thing you can actually tell them. That’s not going to work in the real world. You really have to have your head screwed on straight. Safety, horseplay – none of that will ever fly. As well as learning the little tricks and secrets from the older guys that have been there for years on years. 

Donovan: That’s interesting. That’s a good point. You’re not just teaching these young people about the skills that they’e going to need but it’s about how to be safe in an environment, how to interact with others in an environment because in a shop it’s not just you. You’re usually working with a team or other people, right? That’s almost as much of a skill as actually welding.

Grant: You have to be able to communicate and work well with others. I tell them all the time. Those old boys in the shop, or women, they’re going to take you under their wing if they like you and they’re going to show you everything they know. If you don’t do that, those guys can make you look real bad real quick.

Donovan: So that’s great to know that if you go to the Mercer County Career Center you’re not just going to learn about welding, you’re going to learn about social interaction in the shop.

Grant: Right, soft skills.

Donovan: Soft skills.

Grant: A lot of soft skills in there too.

Donovan: That’s a new term for me. I’m going to keep it. I’m going to tell my kids at home that they have to learn some soft skills. That’s great. So, coming from working in the trades to where it is now. You started in probably 2007, working in the trades?

Grant: Yes, yeah.

Donovan: Now it’s 2021. How have you seen the transition from maybe the mentality of how people looked at the trades or how that interaction with what it meant to be a welder then and what it means to be one now. What’s been your journey been through that process.

Grant: Even whenever I was in school, if you went to VoTech you weren’t one of the smart kids and the people that stayed at the home school, they were the ones that were going to college to make all the money. It’s still the same mentality these days, but what’s funny is in the long run those people that don’t go to VoTech, that stay for their core classes and that, they’re usually the ones looking for a job and they’re however many thousands of dollars in debt. If you go to the VoTech or a trade school like that you can go right into work and start making your money. So, I mean there’s always that mentality that the people that are staying at the home school are going to be better in the long run but time and time again it shows that it’s not true.

Donovan: We’re around the same age and I can remember people saying, “Go to college. Go to college.” I think that mentality is actually driven a lot of people out of the trades and now we have this huge gap. We have this space where we need a lot of people to do this work and not a lot of people that know how to do it and not a lot of people with a lot of experience in it. So, its almost a deficit and it’s not helping our society. We need people who are going to come back and work in America and make American made products. 

Grant: Right.

Donovan: I think that’s what you guys are doing over there. Not only have you helped teach the next generation to do it, you’ve been out doing it. So, there’s that gap. We were talking a little bit before we got on the camera here about how I think there has been a little bit of a shift in how people view what people used to work as factory work or welding work or that kind of stuff. I think it’s become a lot more of a respectable profession within our culture and community. It probably should have always been but we’re starting to see a little bit more people come around. Is that something you’re seeing with the young kids coming in, that they’re viewing it that way?

Grant: Yeah, I think that people are finally seeing that the trades are not a bad thing. It’s not the old dusty, gloomy look of the fifties and sixties. Things are a lot healthier nowadays. The pay is great in most situations. Everybody is trying to make things come back to America, you know, American made. The only way to do that is for people to go out and work in those industries. 

Donovan: Do you think that’s going to be the future of where we see things going? You think we’re still going to see a need demand for skilled trade laborers?

Grant: I definitely think so, especially when every year more and more baby boomers are retiring and leaving the area. They might go down to Florida or something. We definitely need people to fill those spots. I mean I started whenever I got out of high school and started working. You could see the older generations guys go in flocks of ten or fifteen every year retiring. I’m sure it’s still like that, you know. You might have guys that are sixty and seventy years old retiring. 

Donovan: It’s that crew of guys that’s been working together almost their whole career and when one of them goes they’re all about ready to go. Man, I can only imagine that it’s not only a big gap in the actual work force, but a gap in the knowledge that those guys have built over the years. These younger people being able to get in while those people are still there and gain as much as they can. You know, that’s another thing that’s really interesting about the trades. You can learn a lot of basic skills when you’re in school but once you’re on the job site like you’re saying that’s a continual education that you’re getting paid for. Your employer is like, “I want you to learn more and be better at your trade.” They’re willing to help basically take another person who has been there for a long time and say, “Mentor this young person,” because they know it’s good for them. Instead of you paying for that education, your employer is paying for it by continuing to help you along. I know that’s encouraged in our shop for the older guys to help the new people coming in to get them along because that’s just better for everybody in the long run. So, one of the things we always talk about is the health and shop environment. You know, we build dust collectors here, but I mean, I’m sure you’re probably seeing that hopefully there is less of a concern from young people coming in to the trades that there is a better, healthier environment to go work in. Is that a concern people are still having or do you see that that is something that is maybe going away?

Grant: Especially with welding, I think there is still the concerns, and, “Oh, you’re breathing in this and that.” Those are the people that have never stepped into a shop before, especially a newer age shop. It’s not like it was back in the fifties or sixties where you walk into a building and you can’t see the other end of it. Theres so much technology and smoke suckers and respirators and that now. Everything has been upgraded so much. Really, if you wear all your PPE there’s very minimal health concerns. 

Donovan: So, if there’s a young person out there listening to this or if there are parents listening to this and they’re a little bit hesitant about their kid getting into the trades because of health hazards, I think, like you said, we’re getting better at that every day. 

Grant: Everything has advanced so much, even since I’ve been in the shop working. I mean things have just been crazy how they’re advancing. 

Donovan: Well, just as a closing thought here, do you have anything else if someone is out there listening to this and they’re thinking about getting into the trades or getting into welding, what would be some words of encouragement or anything you’d want to say to them as they’re trying to weigh what they should do with their future.

Grant: I think to anybody that is on the fence of going to a VoTech or a trade school or staying in their home school, think about the long run. Don’t think about…I mean, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices, obviously. You might not be able to do choir, or you might not be able to do band, or something like that, but think of it in the long run about what you can better do for yourself. I mean, you have the opportunity of a free education for a two or three year program through a VoTech that if you graduated and took the same type of program, a year and a half program at a satellite trade school somewhere, you’re looking at $20,000 at least. So, I mean $20,000 compared to maybe changing a couple classes or doing something different in high school to a better look into your future, to me that’s a definite benefit.

Donovan: To be able to come out of your high school career debt free with a skill under your belt ready to make some money and walk right into it, that is a big leg up these days.

Grant: Yes.

Donovan: Well, hey, thanks for coming on. We appreciate you taking a minute. We appreciate all the students you’ve taught over the last couple years and all the great work they do here. So, if you are out here listening, we just want to say stay healthy, stay safe. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube , and Twitter and we’ll talk to you next time. Thanks.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.

Weld School Chooses CMAXX Over Snorkels to Breathe Easier

by Erin Long | Aug 31, 2021 | Uncategorized

A career center in West Virginia needed efficient ventilation to create a weld school in their existing facility. While many companies had suggested installing snorkel arms, this would rely on students to move and properly use the arms. The school needed a better solution. They wanted to effectively remove weld fume without extra effort from the students or administration.

The Situation with Fumes in a Weld School

A school district in West Virginia was preparing to convert a childcare training area into a weld school. This was happening at their Career and Technical Center to fill the local demand for trained fabricators and welders.  Imperial Systems’ territory manager Mitch Augustine was tapped by a sales partner in the weld gas supply industry to meet with the school’s team looking for ventilation systems.

The Evaluation

During initial discussions, Mitch quickly identified the team’s desire to capture the smoke and fume effectively at the source. They intended on relying on the snorkel arms that Lincoln Electric, Miller Electric, and others had proposed. However, there’s an issue with using extraction arms. Because the effective capture area is limited, students must keep the arms in the capture zone. This creates a reliance on the students to consistently maneuver the flexible arms as they focus on their tasks.  It was important for the administration to keep the space clean and clear of smoke and haze. But they didn’t want to rely on their instructor to “police” the students’ proper use of the extraction arms.

Mitch took this into consideration and suggested that the school consider weld fume hoods instead of fume arms. These hoods allow the students to focus on their tasks without the worry and burden of adjusting fume arms. Weld fume hoods are oftentimes the solution for a more immediate capture than an ambient collection system provides.

The Solution

Imperial was awarded the project and fabricated custom hoods with LED lighting and offset overhead fume extraction. This keeps the smoke and fume out of the operator’s breathing zone. Most importantly, It requires no adjustments or action from either the student or instructor at the weld school.  Ultimately, 24 hoods, a Spark Trap, and a 16-filter cartridge CMAXX Dust & Fume Collector were supplied. Professional installation was done by Imperial’s own OSHA-trained field crew. The Spark Trap ensures that any sparks collected by the hoods are eliminated before reaching the dust collector and filter media.

Weld School Success in Extracting Manual Weld Fume

After several months of active training in the weld school, the space remains clean and smoke-free.  The instructor reported that the installed system is both effective and easy to use. “Simply turn the thing on when we get started and the room stays clear and smoke-free. This system is so much easier to use than any of the other portable-type units with the flex arms that I have always used in the past.  I guess it is best to leave the fume extraction to the real experts and let the welding guys supply the welders!”

CMAXX Rids Stumble Hazards from Tumble Blasters

by Erin Long | May 6, 2021 | Uncategorized

A customer in the Oil and Gas industry needed a new dust collector to replace their old one. The old collector was inefficient and creating workplace hazards. The customer needed a more efficient solution that would properly gather the dust created by their tumble blasters while reclaiming the shot for later use.

The Situation

This major supplier to the Oil and Gas industry needed to replace an aging dust collector installed on three tumble blasters, their surface preparation machines.  A new dust collector was needed because the system was not sized properly. Further, it was pulling too much air in certain places and not enough in others.  Their dust collector and ductwork were also just completely worn out.  The customer had shot media falling on the floor due to holes in the duct.  This was causing slip and fall hazards.

Tumble blasters use a process of tumbling parts within a housing that spins to expose all sides of a part.  On the side of the housing, there are typically multiple wheels.  They rotate at high speeds and sling abrasive shot media into the housing. This is how they clean or prep the outside edge of a part.  The shot creates dust from the part and the blast media breaking down.

A dust collector is needed in the process to ensure the dust is removed and allows the reusable shot to flow through and back to the wheel.  When done properly, this process saves the end-user a significant amount of money on replacement shot media. They also get a more desirable surface on their part.

The Evaluations

The company contacted Tri-State Industrial Contractors, a local contractor, to specify the best dust collection system for the project.  They in turn brought in Scott Davis of Air Solutions, Inc., an independent manufacturers’ rep firm. They specialize in industrial ventilation solutions and represent Imperial Systems.  When he arrived on site, he learned that they already had been quoted a 9,000 CFM Donaldson Torit replacement system.

Instead of taking that Donaldson Torit quote and offering a similar size dust collector, Scott reviewed the system to ensure that Air Solutions was providing the right equipment for the job.  While reviewing the system requirements, it was determined that Donaldson’s quote did not include enough air for all the drops. This system required 11,000 CFM.  When selecting and sizing a new dust collector, it is very important to give the system adjustability.  There must be enough air to clean the dust from the shot, but not too much suction that reusable shot is pulled through the system to the dust collector.

The Solution

Air Solutions did the most thorough evaluation of the customer’s needs including replacement ductwork and a new dust collector.  Education was provided for the customer regarding the blast machine dust collectors and included a review of several requirements for a successful blast filtration project:

• All drops should be balanced with air bleed-in fittings. This allows the end-user to reduce the air at the blast machine by bleeding air into the duct.  This process maintains the duct velocity in the trunk line to ensure settling of dust does not occur.
• The conveying velocity in the duct needs to be high enough that the dust and spent shot do not settle in the duct. This is a significant safety concern.  If conveying velocity is not maintained and materials do settle in the ducting, the ductwork could collapse or fall due to excessive weight endangering personnel and processes below.
• Energy savings are realized by using a VFD airflow controller. The VFD allows the dust collector to run at a consistent designed static pressure in the ductwork to maintain the same airflow when the filters load and the pressure drop increases through those filters.  When the filters are new, the customer saves energy because the fan does not have to consume as much electricity to draw the required air volume.

Dust Collection Masters for Those Tumble Blasters

Ultimately, the customer selected Air Solutions and Imperial Systems to provide a CMAXX Dust & Fume Collector.  The CMAXX is a perfect fit for multiple reasons.  The absence of external hardware and the domed roof offers a leak-free design.  These features combined with the lifetime warranty gave the customer the peace of mind to install the dust collector outside.  Robust, heavy-duty construction also ensures a long life for the machine in an abrasive blast application.

The CM012 model was selected for this project. The CMAXX was sized for 11,000 CFM with an air-to-media ratio (AMR) of 2.62:1.  An integral 40 HP, top-mounted fan was used to provide the design air volume at 12” w.g. static pressure.  This dust collector was installed during the summer of 2018 and at publication has only required one filter change.

Plasma Cutting with Chris Phillip from AKS – Dusty Jobs Podcast – S2 E3

by Erin Long | Apr 27, 2021 | Uncategorized

The big Plasma Cutting debate, Water Tables vs Downdraft Tables. Which works best for your application. Chris Phillip from AKS Cutting Systems breaks down the pros and cons of each. He also talks about how plasma tables work, as well as how AKS became one of the first Cutting table manufactures in the USA.

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Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.

Donovan: Good afternoon, and welcome to Imperial Systems Podcast. We’re here again. We’re glad to have Chris Phillip with us from AKS. How are you doing today Chris?

Chris: Good. Good. I’m doing well. We drove in this morning from just north of here and had a nice little factory tour. It’s just a good day. It’s finally somewhat spring-y out. That’s an advantage.

Donovan: Yeah, nice weather day today. We’ve been working with you guys on different products for how many years now, with AKS?

Chris: Probably since really your inception into dust collection and plasma, I believe. So four or five years now, at least.

Donovan: We’ve had a good long relationship, you could say. For everybody out there listening who doesn’t know who you are, or who AKS, how about you give us a little bit of background on yourself. Let’s start out with you. Tell us about yourself first and then tell us about AKS.

Chris: Sure. So, I’m Chris Phillip. I’m one of the regional sales managers AKS Cutting Systems and my territory is eastern PA, so starting at State College and going east, Maryland up to Maine and New York State. In that territory I manage somewhere around, on a good day seven to eight dealers, on a bad day three or four dealers, depending on who’s doing their job that day. That’s what I do. I drive around. I live in Cleveland, Ohio, right about twelve minutes from our factory. I drive around and fly around and go meet new people who want to get into the world of plasma cutting or want to get into the world of laser cutting and really need a plasma table or people who want to get a waterjet as well. That’s also a world I dabble in as well. 

AKS has been around now for, boy, 120 years. My great-grandfather purchased the business in the late forties I think is the most accurate story I’ve heard so far, and my grandfather, Dale Phillip, ran the business for fifty years. Maybe a little longer than that, somewhere around there. My dad, three or four years ago, took over the presidency. My grandfather is still CEO of the company, and I got out of that office as fast as possible and got on the road. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I love being on the road.

Donovan: You could say plasmas in your blood almost.

Chris: Yeah.

Donovan: Not technically. Not actually. 

Chris: Actually, technically, it can.

Donovan: Oh, that’s true! 

Chris: Theres plasma in your blood. You need it there. That’s actually a really great little story. When my grandfather first got into the plasma industry, a guy called him out of Luxembourg or something. Somewhere – Switzerland or something. He said, “Hey, have you ever worked with plasma before?” We made automotive assembly lines. We made gauges to measure distribution caps for airbag deployment, any kind of gauges for nuclear rod insertion systems, making high speed battery assembly lines…we were all over the place. Imploding torpedos with liquid helium, all sorts of random stuff. We were the essence of a job shop. The guy called him and said, “Hey have you ever done anything with plasma?” This is like in the early 80s. 

So my grandfather says, “No, we don’t do anything in the medical business.” He didn’t even know that plasma was a thing that you could cut with. Obviously now everybody knows that plasma is one of the three main technologies that you use to cut steel, and stainless steel, and aluminum plate. When we started in this twenty-five, well, boy, thirty-five years ago now, we had no idea what we were doing. 

Donovan: Thirty-five years ago you guys were probably one of the first ones in the states to be using this technology.

Chris: Definitely. We were actually exporting them to Europe because for some reason the European market place started using CNC cutting technology. It seems at least to me a little bit quicker than the United States steel processing centers. Now it’s everywhere. Now we have over 1,500 installations and we make 100 or 120 machines a year. 

Donovan: Now, when you say 120 – because you guys carry a variety of different types of machines, correct?

Chris: Yeah.

Donovan: So you’re talking total machines, or are we talking about just plasma tables? What are we talking about?

Chris: Yeah, total machines. For every five plasma tables we sell, we sell about one waterjet, which is in line with the market distribution as well. When you look at how many waterjets are sold nationally and how many plasma tables are sold nationally that’s about the ratio as well. 

Donovan: So, kind of like your grandfather, when I see a plasma table working I am like, “How does this thing even do what it’s doing?” It’s interesting to watch it cut, and you’re like, “What is going on here?” Now, can you tell us, for people that are a little bit ignorant like me what is the actual technology? What is it doing there?

Chris: No, I can’t, because even after doing this and living in it I’m still pretty amazed by it every day that I see it. I can give you a rough metaphor of what it’s doing. You’re taking a tremendous amount of energy. Usually it’s 480V 3 phase, 67 amps. So, a lot of power, maybe 70 kW of power into this system. So, you think your lasers in the world – if you get a 10 kW laser, wow. That’s big time. That’s big time. You’re cutting half inch plate. We’re taking seven times that and we’re putting it into an area about this big, maybe an eighth of an inch big. 

How it gets there is kind of interesting though. So you get this three wave form electricity, AC electricity coming into your shop. It’s going like this through the air, and there’s this device called a chopper. It’s actually a really old piece of technology, but because of the power levels that you’re dealing with you’ve got to use them. It’s the only thing that’s robust enough to deal with this. What the chopper does is kind of like what the power supply on your laptop does. It takes that AC power and turns it into DC. So it actually chops up those waveforms – that’s why it’s called a chopper – and it makes it into a nice positive line. Hopefully. That’s the idea, unless you’ve got dirty power. That’s a separate conversation. We then take that and somehow it gets from the power supply, the big black box that Hypertherm makes. That box is 80% chopper. That’s the big thing that you’re buying in there, and then a lot of oscilloscopes and other pieces of technology to make sure that line is as straight as it can be.

Donovan: So 80% percent chopper, 20% magic?

Chris: Yup. Yeah. Somewhere…20, 25, maybe it’s over 100%. I’m not sure but its a lot. Then that goes into the torch body, and I’m definitely cutting out a lot of parts here but there’s high frequency stuff that’s going on. It gets to the torch body. It gets to the nozzle, to the electrode, and that electrode. That’s basically, I believe it’s the cathode in this relationship. It’s going to start arcing back and forth, and then you run a gas through it, and the gas turns into plasma. So plasmas the fourth state of matter, right? So that gas…you know, you’ve got solid, liquid, gas, plasma. When you super excite a gas with electricity, 60,000 watts of electricity in area this big, that’s a way to get that going. You do that and then run a gas through it at a high pressure and that gas actually becomes magnetic as it turns into a plasma. That wants to then grab something, right? It’s magnetic. So it grabs the steel plate that’s right below it. When it hits that steel plate, that 70,000 watts of power is also the temperature of the surface of the sun.

Donovan: Wow.

Chris: So, it doesn’t just melt it. It actually ionizes the material. It changes state again and turns it basically into electricity, at least a small portion of that material. Most of it gets melted, and then you have 150 psi assist gas that comes out that then actually blows the material out of the way. That’s basically the gist of how plasma works. We’re taking super high voltage electricity, arcing it, running a gas through it, and letting it do it’s thing.

Donovan: In a controlled pattern.

Chris: In as controlled as we can get, yeah. That’s the part that people always want to know. They say, “What’s the accuracy of your plasma table?” They’ve got three machining centers. “What’s the accuracy of your plasma table? Can it hold five tenths? Can it hold ten tenths?” The answer is imagine trying to hold a candle, and you want to know where that flame is. It’s really, really hard. Theres ways to do it. You can measure it, but it’s tricky. Obviously just like a candle one of the byproducts of having that flame is a lot of dust. 

Donovan: Well, yeah.

Chris: Which takes us to the reason why we’re here on the Imperial podcast.

Donovan: That’s where we step in and start helping out with that. Now, from my base knowledge on plasma tables and boy I have a lot more know from just that conversation. 

Chris: It’s all wrong. It’s all wrong. Any service technicians that are listening right now just close your ears to that last five minutes. It’s going to hurt.

Donovan: As that chemical process is happening that’s allowing that to cut that metal there’s obviously some byproducts and that’s what we’re talking about. There’s smoke, and from what I understand there’s two ways that basically the industry uses to capture that. That’s a bed of water underneath it or actual sucking that smoke down through the table. Is that…am I getting anything wrong here?

Chris: That’s the two methods that I know of. The third method is you just don’t care enough and you let it fill up your shop.

Donovan: I’m sure you’ve been in some shop…

Chris: It gets interesting. You don’t want to be in those for too long.

Donovan: I know we had one time out here where for some reason when someone changed the filters in our own collector they forgot to engage them so they were actually up tight and we had some blow through on our plasma  smoke and very quickly we knew in our shop as everything started to turn orange that we had done something wrong.

Chris: You guys cut a lot of mild steel so that definitely makes sense. It’s interesting. You can actually tell what product you’re cutting or what material you’re cutting based on the color of the smoke. Your aluminums its going to be a whiter smoke and on your mild steels, your carbon-based steels it’s orange. What is burning metal? We all know what burning metal really is. It’s oxidation. It is extremely accelerated oxidation. So what you’ve got there, the byproduct of cutting this material, along with the slag that falls off and the part that’s made, that stuff that isn’t there had to go somewhere. I know there’s a lot of magic in the box. But there’s not much magic on the table. That’s pretty simple. The answer to that is that it oxidizes and it becomes that smoke. The reason it looks all orange is because or rust. It’s rust. It’s rust flakes that are flying everywhere through the air. They’re just a lot smaller than what you consider rust.

Donovan: Well, that makes a lot of sense. So, when we’re talking about the water based tables and we’re talking about the air based tables, can you kind of tell us a little bit…I mean I’m sure each one has some advantages, some disadvantages. Can you tell us a little bit more and unpack if someone’s listening to this and trying to decide if they should get a water based table or “Should I get an air based table?” What would be some things that they should think about?

Chris: Well, I’ll prep that question by saying that I am, and this is no accolade to Imperial, I’m 100% downdraft.

Donovan: Gotcha.

Chris: 100% downdraft, and the reason being is because of that idea that we started with this conversation. Controlling the candle. We’ve figured out that you can just have a candle waving in the air. You can have a plasma torch that’s just doing it’s thing like we did back in the early 80s when we didn’t really know what we were doing. Since then there has been all sorts of developments. There is the different PSI assist gas. You can take that candle flame and if you run a high speed current of air up the side of that candle, guess what? You stabilize that candle flame, right? It’s called a shield gas. Same thing that we do. We run a cut gas that gets electrified and turned into the plasma arc. Then there is also a gas on the outside of that, just like a welder does, that isolates that gas, the plasma arc, from ambient air. We don’t really know what’s in the ambient. Theres a lot of nitrogen. Theres other stuff. Who knows? By doing that, by isolating that flame from atmosphere, you really include the quality of your cut.

Donovan: Right, it gives it more of a controlled environment to live in. You’re saying on a downdraft table then that helps assist with that, right?

Chris: We’re getting there. We’re getting closer. So after they did those types of shield gas type things, they were still cutting, plus or minus, twenty, twenty five thousandths of an inch. Maybe more than that. Fifty thousandths of an inch. You think it’s minuscule but a human hair is about five thousandths of an inch. So we’re cutting hairs here, literally. That’s what they were living at when they started doing that. They started looking at other variables. What else can we change? At that point, basically everybody was using a water table. They just said, “It captures it and it works.” Somebody eventually had the idea of, “Well, we know that by cutting this we are obviously causing a lot of thermal changes in the material, and maybe if that was more consistent we would cut better.” Meaning, “Why are we quenching the bottom of the plate with water?” This is a thermal process. We’re melting stuff. What if we just let air be underneath the plate? That improved the quality of cutting. You don’t get as much dross. When you cut the material, obviously some of it is liquid and it’s going to build on the bottom of the plate. If you cool it right away, more of it’s going to build on the bottom of the plate. Makes sense, right?

Donovan: Yup.

Chris: Also, it causes more thermal things to occur with the material. So, in my experience across the board, if I want to show somebody a really good part…you know, the system we have in our facility, when we cut samples for customers all day long, it’s a downdraft system, 110%. It would never be a water table.

Donovan: I got you, because you just get a little more of an accurate cut. You get a better cut.

Chris: I’ve had this conversation, obviously, literally a couple hundred times with people trying to decide between a water table and a downdraft table. I should say this. There are two huge factors in determining where a customer is actually going to end up between plasma and water jet. The first one is their space. Huge. In the plasma world the dust collector is honestly kind of seen as a pain, you know? I’ve got this big thing that I’ve got to deal with. It takes filters. I’ve got to do stuff to it. For some reason a lot of these guys look at the water table and they say, “Oh, I just fill it up with a hose and you’re good to go.” Then they’re surprised when somebody knocks on their door and says, “Hey, have you bought your 5,000 gallons of plasma table additive to add to your water every month to keep it from becoming a cesspool in the middle of your shop? “Whoa, what’s this?” So that’s definitely a big thing, that people think that it’s easier to have a water table.

Donovan: I think a lot of people don’t – once the water is in there, it’s hard to know what to do to get rid of it, too. I know we’ve had some calls like that in our own facility. We don’t deal with that so we’re not really experts. 

Chris: What do you say to that?

Donovan: We say that they have to contact someone else that’s a hazardous waste manufacturer or disposal. “We’re not able to help you with that. Sorry.” If you want to get a downdraft table we know what to do with those filters when they’re done. That’s another question we usually get, what to do with this water. The best answer I’ve come up with, I don’t know if you know a better one, is to contact your local hazardous waste disposal people.

Chris: Yeah, you can actually contact a sewer cleaning company.

Donovan: Oh, okay.

Chris: They’ll bring in a pump truck and they’ll take an eight inch hose set up on some diaphragm pump, and they’ll take that eight inch hose and suck out your whole table dry in about forty five seconds, as long as they can access the table. They have to be able to back a truck up through your shop, and that’s usually the catching point because if somebody buys a water table, one of the bigger reasons why they want to do that is space. Two big factors: space, and the other one I actually haven’t gotten to yet, but it’s what they’ve already owned in the past. Usually if they’re buying it, it’s because they have piles of steel everywhere. Theres two rolling machines in the way. Theres a brake and there’s no way they can get a truck to the table. So they say, “That’s great. What else?” The answer to that is buy yourself a little sump pump, put it in there, get a 55 gallon bucket, and start pumping that thing out and dumping it down the drain until you have a wet sludge of empty table and then you have to go in there. Maybe if you have a guy who might be on his way out the door or something you can tell him to go clean out the water table because I wouldn’t want to do it. You’re just left with the gunk that builds up in the table that’s sat there for maybe a year with the water stagnant and all the drop outs and stuff. It gets gross. You can do it. People do it all the time. A lot of people still do it. The reason a lot of people do it is that second reason. It’s what they know. A lot of people if they had a water table they’re just going to get another water table. They don’t see the up front cost of a dust collector as advantageous because they’re blind to the dross they’re dealing with, the extra rust that they’re dealing with, all the extra stuff that the downdraft system helps alleviate the cost of down the line.

Donovan: Yeah, if you don’t know, you don’t know. So, do you feel like we’ve covered everything with the downdraft table setup? You know more than I do. If theres anything else out there that might be good for someone to know.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, I guess the only other thing that people definitely worry about with downdraft systems is the possibilities of explosions. That’s obviously a big thing, especially when you’re cutting aluminum. Powdered aluminum is literally what’s used to make military grade explosives. So, one of the byproducts of cutting aluminum on a table is powdered aluminum, basically. It’s the dust that’s created from the cutting, that white dust. With your spark arrestor properly maintained and the systems that you guys have offered, we cannot say with the couple hundred installations that we have that we have had an issue with the system being maintained and used they way it should be. The spark arrestor in particular is…I was just poking around and if you haven’t seen one on the inside look it up. They have some good cross sections on Imperial’s website. You can’t drop big drops into it. You’ve got to clean it out once in a while. That can be hard to get people to accept once in a while. If you maintain it, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Donovan: That’s why we build the clean out door on it, so you can do that, so you can inspect it. Everyone’s inspection level is different and how often you need to do it. Some of that comes down to the operation. Sometimes that comes down to the operator on that piece of equipment. You’re right. It’s good to poke your head into that every once in a while and make sure it’s good whether it’s every six months…we always, and I’m sure you guys do too, we always encourage preventative maintenance on everything. That’s with every piece of equipment you have in the shop. Anybody who’s running a shop knows that you’ve got to look at stuff every once in a while, right? 

Okay, so, wet versus dry, I think we’ve got a really good feel for that, where we’re at, what the industry is like. So, I’m going to ask you a question and I know you’re not a doctor. I’m not a doctor, but one of the big questions we get people looking up is plasma smoke. What is the health implications for that, if I’m breathing that in? People get worried about that. I’m sure you’ve gotten asked that question too, being what you do for years and years and years. I’d love to hear what your answer is on that. 

Chris: Cutting stainless steel in particular is a known carcinogen. That’s something that is factually know. You don’t want to breathe in the dust that’s creating from cutting stainless steel. Hexochromium variant gas, that’s the byproduct. Apparently that means its bad for you.

Donovan: *laughing* The name is just scary itself. 

Chris: Aluminum, one of the byproducts of aluminum is hydrogen gas, which, something I didn’t touch on with a water table is with aluminum, you get hydrogen gas build up under the plate. That will eventually blow up. You’re worried about your dust collector blowing up once every fifteen years. If you don’t have a properly maintained bubbler system inside your water table you could have an explosion once a week on that. I actually saw one where a quarter inch plate of aluminum, they hit a pocket of hydrogen gas underneath it, and it looked like a thanker when through it. It hit the beam. The beam lifted up. It was a lot of, “Whoa, that was neat.”

Donovan: We’ll just pause here for a second on the dangers of smoke and I want to talk about one thing. If you have a wet table, are you saying that still doesn’t collect everything that the byproducts are? Are you saying you still might need a ventilation system on that? You’ve seen a lot more of these in the field. You’re talking about it could possibly blow up. Is that something that even on a wet table you might still want to consider? I’m going to let you speak to that.

Chris: Sure, definitely. In an ideal setting, if you’re using your water table properly, meaning you’re running your water about half way up the side of your plate. It has an internal bladder system so when you take your one inch plate of steel and you put it on it, it is up to the bottom of the plate. That’s really important. You can’t have a gap. You can’t have an air gap there. If you have an air gap, the smoke just goes out from underneath the plate and you might as well not have anything. So you’ve got to keep that water up. Well, by having that water up then you deal with all the issues that the guys down the line don’t want. That after the pain of a capital expense up front goes away, your production guys say, “Well every part I get off this machine has dross on it, and there’s flash rust on the bottom. Lower the water.” So they lower the water just a little bit. Now their dust collection went down from 95% or so to like 10%, but their parts turn out great. They say, “Well, I have a water table, so let’s just not worry about it. Theres a lot less dross because you’re not quenching the slag as it comes off the part. You’re running a current through steel in water. You get rust, right?

Donovan: Right.

Chris: You can flash rust a part in a couple seconds, especially when it’s submerged in water. You can literally watch the rust grow on a piece of steel. It’s kind of wild.

Donovan: So you’re saying when people do that, when they drop that water level then…

Chris: Yeah, then they’re not even using the water table. They have the water table. They’re maintaining it. They’re cleaning it. They’re doing everything they need to do. They paid more for the water table on the base system than a downdraft system, at least the ones I sell. Our downdraft tables are cheaper than our water tables. But you still have smoke that gets out. So now you’re dealing with all the negatives of the capital costs of a water table and very few of the positives. That’s after six months. You got back into a shop and sure enough, you see that they’re running it below where they should. 

Donovan: We’ll just throw this out there. If that happens, and you guys need some other type of collection system, Chris, you can definitely help them out with that. You can help them figure out a solution for that. Whether it’s a hood, whether it’s whatever…

Chris: I liked your ambient system out there in your factory. That’s a nice system. 

Donovan: It’s working really well for us.

Chris: I could see that in a lot of shops.

Donovan: It’s a good solution. We’ve talked about that on a previous episode with Jeremiah, so if anybody is listening and they want to go back and look at industrial setups that’s one of the things. You can go back to that podcast episode and listen to that and Jeremiah can walk you through what an ambient system is. Alright, so that dangers of plasma – we’re coming back around to the health implications. So, a lot of it comes down to what you’re cutting.

Chris: Yeah, at the end of the day I don’t know if mild steel smoke is actually poisonous. You know, like you said, we’re not doctors, but I’ve watched guys have to breathe it in and it looks a lot like welding fumes and it doesn’t look nice. You can be around a plasma table and watch it cut one inch plate for five minutes and literally watch smoke billow off the table in rolling fumes. This stuff, you’ll watch it settle, and everything around you, the whole shop is covered in orange. It can’t be good for your lungs. I can’t believe it would be. You know, if you walk away from something coughing…

Donovan: That’s probably a good indicator.

Chris: Yeah:

Donovan: Well, Chris, I think we’ve talked a lot about how different tables work and everything. Is there anything else that you think people should know about out there or can you think of anything else we haven’t touched on that might be beneficial?

Chris: Yeah, sure. So, the last thing that I leave you with is understanding that when you’re making this decision between a water table or a downdraft system we’re in between technologies. Laser cutting or plasma cutting, all that type of stuff…get samples. Get samples from your supplier, honestly. I can get you some samples cut on a water table or cut on a downdraft system and there’s notable differences. When you hand those to an operations guy and he looks at those two parts and he says, “Well this one is going to take me five minutes of grinding to prep. This ones going to take me thirty seconds to prep.” That’s the game. That’s it. Those five minutes add up very quickly. All of a sudden you’re employing two more people just to grind the parts because the water table is set too low and you’re not even collecting the dust anyways and you’re dealing with bad parts. I think the water table back in the day made sense, but now we’ve gotten all these other variable solved to the point that we’re looking for other things. The next variable is sticking with downdraft.

Donovan: And efficiency and just trying to…if they’re trained to weld, you want them to be welding. You know what I mean? You don’t want them to be messing with parts more than they have to. You want them to do the job you’re paying them to do. I get it. Uptime, productive time, is helping people make money. That’s what you guys want to do, that’s what we want to do. We want people to be productive, and we want them to be in the healthiest and safest environment that they can. That’s what we’re trying to do on this podcast is help people understand what’s a good decision for them to be healthy. That’s what you guys are doing over at AKS, trying to create a good, healthy shop environment.

Chris: Definitely. 

Donovan: Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Everyone who is listening, you can check us out on social media. You can like, subscribe, check us out there. AKS, do you guys have a lot of social media?

Chris: Yeah, we have all that stuff too. 

Donovan: So find us all on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, all of that. Chris is glad to talk to you. I’m glad to talk to you if you have any questions. You can check us out there. Until next time, stay healthy, stay safe and we’ll be looking forward to talking to you again.

Chris: You go it. Thank you for having me on. 

Donovan: Yup, thanks for coming.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.