In this very informative episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast, Donovan is joined by two guests, Russ Ryland and Jeremiah Wann. They talk about what to do in case of a fire. Russ also gives tips about preventative maintenance that you can do to give your filters more life. Also they speak briefly on the ServiceMAXX team and how they will help you with any issue on any brand of dust collector.
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Thanks again for joining us and welcome to another Dusty Jobs podcast. We’re excited. We have a couple guests today. We’ve got Russ Ryland, our head service tech, and Jeremiah Wann, the owner of our company. How are you doing Jeremiah?
Jeremiah: I’m doing well. Thanks.
Donovan: Do you have anything you want to say about this podcast?
Jeremiah: We were just talking earlier that this is our first multi-person podcast. Hopefully it will be a little bit more enjoyable and relaxing. When I do it I’m usually uptight and super nervous. I’m going for fun today. We’ll see what happens.
Donovan: More than just me talking too. Russ how are you feeling today?
Russ: Doing good.
Donovan: You doing good? I know Russ would prefer climbing in a machine and fixing it, probably, than being in the office. That’s his M.O. He’s always out in the field, always traveling and helping people out. We really appreciate that here. The wealth of knowledge, the wealth of…well, I’ll stop talking about it. Why don’t you tell me about yourself Russ. How long have you been doing this type of work?
Russ: Well, I’ve been working for Imperial Systems for seventeen and half years now. I’ve kind of held many positions throughout the company and just worked up to running our service department and taking care of our customers.
Donovan: Now, you’ve got to tell this story, because I think it’s great. Tell us how you got started with Imperial Systems.
Russ: Well, I was going to school at night for mechanical engineering and technology and working at CCX at the time. They made some changes that was going to interfere with my school schedule. So I called Jeremiah up on my lunch break and told him that he’s going to hire me and I’m going to start in two weeks.
Jeremiah: That’s his version of it.
Donovan: Let’s hear your version of how this came on.
Jeremiah: I don’t remember the phone call. I don’t remember that. I just remember sitting around a campfire…
Donovan: Did he just show up one day?
Jeremiah: Kind of. No, I just remember that that was in 2002 maybe…
Russ: 2003
Jeremiah: You have to put it in context. I had a third bedroom office in my house. No customers. I couldn’t pay my own mortgage basically. We had, I think, about two guys in the shop, including myself. So I’d go into the midnight shift and work after I’d get done selling all day. Russ and I were just hanging out all the time. We just did everything together. So we were at my cousin’s bonfire one night, which is a western Pennsylvania thing if you’re not familiar with that. It’s pretty common around here. At our age it was common. I don’t do it too much anymore. One night we were just kind of sitting around the bonfire and he said, “I quit my job. When am I starting?”
And I’m like, “What?”
So I said, “Of course you’re starting but I don’t know how I’m going to pay you.” Real quick on that though, he came to work for me a few months later, and we laid him off and pretty much everyone else because we just didn’t have any work at the moment. So I was over at his house and his mom comes out and says something about, “Oh, Russ made more money on unemployment than he did working for you.” Thanks Ms. Ryland. That’s my version of it.
Donovan: Well, I know this from being able to interact with Russ and having him close by and being able to pick up the phone. I am glad he came back after unemployment and stuck it out because man he’s just such a valuable resource we have here with his knowledge. Russ you’ve been not only working on our collectors but you’ve been in – how many different types of collectors do you think you’ve worked on over the years?
Russ: Just about every brand you can imagine. I mean, I’ve been in some from the 50s. So, yeah, about every brand you can imagine, every style of collector out there at some point in time I’ve dealt with. Whether we’re just trying to help a customer repair what they have existing or just evaluate and see whether it’s even practical to fix on some of them.
Donovan: I think some people don’t know that. When they think of Imperial Systems or they think of what we do here they think we just build dust collectors. We’re more than that, man. We do full system work, full system design. Even if you get that machine out there and you need someone to come and help you turn it on and start it up. Russ is the guy that would be there, or Connor. We have a team of people who can go out and help do that. That’s why we have him on today to just help bring more knowledge to that that we’re not just building collectors and putting them out there. We’re full service and full everything here. The other thing is we’re going to give a little free advice today too. We’re going to give a little free knowledge. We’re going to let Russ handle maybe a few of those phone calls we get 100 times and just put it out here now so people can listen. So, we’re going to dive into a couple issues. Issue number one, Russ: fire. A lot of people have dust collector fires. What do you see? When you normally show up at a dust collector fire, what is the main cause of that that you see a lot of the time?
Russ: Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint. Usually it’s some type of spark that got in the system or something hot depending on the source and the process that the plant is under. In wood applications it can be sanders. If the belt on a sander breaks and is on fire, I’ve seen that. In the metal cutting industries its usually sparks from plasma cutting or grinding. Those are usually the biggest culprits on those. Heck I saw one blast machine where they fed wood into it from a pallet.
Jeremiah: I was at that one numerous times.
Donovan: They just put the whole thing in there?
Russ: The whole pallet with the parts and it vaporized the pallet basically.
Donovan: I can imagine. I can imagine. So, once you arrive on the scene and there’s been a fire, what’s the first thing you’re looking at? What do you evaluate? Obviously by the time you arrive there the fire is out, the collector has cooled down. When you show up what are you looking at? What are the things you’re trying to assess on that machine to see where the damage is? Where do you see most of the damage in those situations?
Russ: The first thing you see is the paint job on the collector. Did it get hot enough to melt all the paint off? If it melted all the paint off, that’s telling you that the seals between all the joints could have possibly melted away. So that’s first. The overall condition when you first see the collector. If the paint is fairly intact then a lot of the gasketing probably survived. Then you just go from there to where you start looking at the tube sheet to see if the filters can seal against it still.
Donovan: You’re saying in a high heat situation you get warping? Is that what you see?
Russ: You can. You can have some warping in the tube sheet from immense heat. It all depends on how intense the fire was.
Donovan: A mild fire might just need new filters but at some point you might need a whole new system.
Jeremiah: Yeah, the lift mechanisms, whatever holds the filter in might warp. They might be shot. The door might be warped. The CMAXX has a very heavy door but its big so if it warps its either going to need to be adjusted or replaced depending on how hot the fire is, for sure.
Donovan: And I know this: The number one way to save your collector is just not to have a fire in it, right?
Russ: Yup.
Donovan: So, Russ has been here for a lot of it, and the other thing we didn’t talk about is how Russ helps with our R&D too. He really helps develop products. I think you and Jeremiah both were the ones who came up with our Spark Trap. You guys kind of worked on that together.
Jeremiah: I think so.
Russ: Yeah.
Jeremiah: Before we get into that though I want to go back to the fires. One of the important things that people don’t realize when they have a fire is that nobody is ever prepared for it. Somebody from the office looks out and there’s smoke pouring out of the dust collector or there’s smoke coming back in the plant or from the return air because a filters on fire. So what do you do? We’ve seen cases where people have gone up there and literally opened up the door and tried to put it out. These can be metal fires that you can’t put water on. You might have to put some type of an agent on there or CO2 or something like that to get it knocked out. So you should not try to handle that fire on your own. The best and the safest thing you can do is call the fire department. Have the fire department come out and deal with it. Quite frankly, you should have a site assessment done before. So if you’re putting in a dust collector, call your fire department and let them know you’re putting one in. Go over the plans with them. Explain to them what you’re doing, what the dust type is, what the sprinkler system looks like in the collector. Then come up with a protocol because you’ll never be prepared for it.
I’ll share a funny story with you. This is going back eight, nine years. I walked out into the plant and we had a couple guys up on a man lift, a scissor lift welding on there. The sparks had gotten down, and when they did there were some rags laying on the bottom of the man lift. So all I saw was a fire on the bottom of the man lift and I saw two guys up on the man lift. I was like, “Hey!” So, they saw the fire and they pointed to the fire extinguisher and I grabbed it. You would think – I consider myself fairly intelligent. I can kind of take care of myself.
Donovan: You’ve had a good amount of life experience.
Jeremiah: I’ve had a decent life experience. I couldn’t figure out how to get that fire extinguisher to work for the life of me. I just was in a panic mode. I wasn’t prepared for it. So it’s like a dust collector is the same way only a lot more severe.
Donovan: And complicated.
Jeremiah: And complicated. You open the door and now you’re introducing oxygen. Now you’re standing there. These people have families they have to go home to at night. So you want to make sure that they’re taken care of.
Donovan: Normally the door is up high. You might be on a ladder.
Jeremiah: They’re trapped on a catwalk. You don’t want to do that. You get with your AHJ, or authority having jurisdiction, and your fire department. Just run through everything with them. It’s better for us too because it’s less likely that the thing is going to burn so bad to where it warps or damages things. When we get there Russ can literally put new gaskets on and put some filters in and its fixed and everybody is safe.
Donovan: Save everybody money. Save everybody downtime. Save everybody’s life is what we’re looking for.
Jeremiah: Or you can take it a step further and before you put the dust collector in make sure you partner with a good company, whether its us or somebody else, that knows about combustible dust and fire hazards because you can put a lot of devices in. You can put CO2 systems in. You can put wet systems in. You can put dry systems in. Theres a lot of things you can do. So just make sure, I’d just tell the listeners or the viewers, to make sure you’re paired with the right company when you’re putting a dust collector in. I got off track. I just wanted to circle back to that.
Donovan: No, there’s no off track here. One of the ways you guys have developed to prevent fires was our Spark Trap. We’ve seen that effective in a lot – not just our collector, but a lot of collectors. It’s really great. It’s a good piece of equipment. If you’re listening now and you’ve had a fire or on your plasma table or on your laser table that’s a real simple, low cost, easy to install piece that can help prevent that.
Jeremiah: Grinding, blasting, torch, plasma, laser, anything with metal…
Russ: Yeah, basically any of these processes that can create a fine dust that could have a spark in the process.
Jeremiah: It has to have some mass to it too, and that’s the key. We get a lot of calls. We got a call from Disney World. They wanted to put one on their outdoor smoker. It was a big smoker. It was like an eight inch diameter…we said that if it doesn’t have some mass to it like metal dust, it’s an impingement type tortuous device is essentially what it is. That ember has a shield of fire around it. It has to actually hit something and knock itself out. Think about if you ever get grinding dust or if you’re welding and you get a bary, you know, and it gets on you. That’s a pretty heavy, molten piece of steel. It has enough mass to knock itself out. If you’re doing buffing for firearms, let’s say, and you have cotton and a rouge, burning embers of cotton. It won’t put that out. We’ve seen that before. People have misapplied them.
Donovan: Just call us. We’ll figure it out.
Jeremiah: We can do it.
Donovan: And if that’s not the solution we have other ones. I feel like we did a pretty good job on fire there.
Jeremiah: I think we did.
Donovan: Let’s move on. Let’s think here. Do you ever show up to a collector and it is just packed full of material? Do you ever have that experience Russ?
Jeremiah: Not our collectors. No.
Russ: I have seen a few out there. People don’t inspect their hopper that they’re filling, the drum underneath, or a screw conveyor plugs up or something like that. It just completely fills them to the top of the filters.
Donovan: You get that call. “Hey Russ. The collectors not…” and you open the door and its like someone stacked their locker, huh? Everything comes piling out.
Jeremiah: I have a funny story about that. I know Russ probably has a couple. When you’re either the salesman or the service guy and you pull up to a customer that you haven’t seen in a while or you’re just coming to say ‘hi’ the last thing you want to see is the customer at that dust collector trying to shovel it out, right? Because you know what that means? You’re getting dirty. You’re getting dirty. You’re going to spend the rest of the day helping them clean out that collector. Sometimes its not necessarily the design or the application. It’s just maybe an upset condition. There are things that can happen. I pulled up to one. It was a grain project. I pulled up to the collector. We had like eight or nine collectors on this job. I go up and there’s a guy going up with a skid steer to the dust collector, to the bottom of a baghouse, a BRF. So I’m kind of getting my hard hat out, kind of doing some stuff. All of a sudden I look back up and there’s no skid steer there anymore. Theres no guy. Theres no skid steer. He had opened the hatch on the grain bin and it completely just covered him. I know that’s kind of not funny in the industry because I know there’s been in grain silos some deaths and accidents. This one was on the ground and it could have been bad but it was just semi-funny because the guy was kind of completely covered with grain. I thought, “Oh, this is going to be a long day helping him get out.” It happens in our business, doesn’t it?
Russ: I remember when that one happened too.
Donovan: Russ, what about you? Do you have any experiences like that? Have you ever shown up to a collector and you’re like, “This is just…”
Russ: I had a plastic application where I showed up and they were having some issues with bridging over the airlock and it just completely filled the collector. Usually its lack of inspections and lack of checking the discharge device.
Donovan: Okay, so if we have somebody out there listening and they’re like, “Man, that happens to us all the time.” What are the things you could start to look for or notice. You’re saying an airlock. An airlock can bridge over. What would cause that? What would cause an airlock to bridge over?
Russ: One of the scenarios could be overfilling the discharge hopper underneath it and it allows it to back up through there. The simplest thing is just to check the discharge hopper more frequently. Other things could be a large object bridged across and settled on it. Run the collector without the airlocks running for an extended period of time and then turn them on. Did the dust form a cake above it? Those are some of the more common scenarios that we’ve run across.
Donovan: I can remember a couple pictures of this I’ve seen where you have the three sides of the hopper and they look all real nice and shiny and the other one looks like a steel drum from someone banging on it because it’s been bridging and that’s the only way.
Jeremiah: Yeah, you don’t want to see that.
Donovan: That’s not the correct service plan.
Jeremiah: They need some help. You don’t want to see that when that’s your collector and you installed that. You don’t mind seeing that when you’re going on a sales call and they need to get a new collector. One thing to talk about with that is that there are people that have plug ups. One of the things that we see a lot and Russ and I have dealt with this numerous times is that you get it all cleaned out. You put the cover back on. You turn the airlock on. You get the fan running. They think they’re fine. Three hours later they call back and they’re plugged up again. “I just don’t understand it. What was it? I even found, in this case, I found a two by four that was covering the airlock or something. It doesn’t make sense”
Well what it is, is if you get a really bad plug and you’re up in between the filters. You’re just jammed up. It’s really, really important to go in there and either take the cartridges out or to take the bags out and literally take a stick and inspect down in there and make sure that all that’s cleared out. It’s a big job because the easier thing to do would be to just turn it back on and go, but you can cause yourself a lot of grief by not cleaning that out because if you get a football sized plug come down now you’re plugged again.
Russ: It starts the chain reaction over again.
Jeremiah: I don’t know how many times we’ve gotten that call and they say, “We even found the board that plugged it. What caused it the second time?”
“Well, did you clean it out good?”
“Yeah, we cleaned it out pretty good.”
“No, I mean did you clean it out really good?” That little ball of dust can be hanging up in there and cause a lot of problems.
Donovan: I know we’ve talked about this a lot here how our style of collector is a vertical style collector and we have a large door that makes it easy to access and to check all that. There are other collectors out there that could be having that problem because they have a horizontal style collector. That just allows more bridging in between those filters.
Jeremiah: That’s interesting. I talked to one of our reps. He’s been with us several years now. He came from a leading competitor that makes a horizontal style cartridge. When we went and looked at our unit we opened the door up and you could see right down in the hopper. You know, you’ve got this big opening, about the size of this table, and you can look right down into the hopper. He said, “That is just amazing.”
I said, “What do you mean? I’m used to seeing this. What are you talking about?”
He said, “You can actually access the hopper if you need to.”
I still didn’t get it. “What do you mean?”
He said, “Well, the other ones were all these little holes that were all about this size. Theres no way to get down into that hopper to clean that out if it ever does bridge. I never dealt with that before so I never really noticed it. You’re absolutely right. Having that access is huge.
Donovan: At this table I am for sure the rookie, so this is a lot of stuff I’ve learned. I’ve learned a lot from you and from Russ.
Jeremiah: You’re not a rookie anymore. You’re getting there. We’ve got to get him cleaning out a couple dust collectors. Or maybe you have?
Donovan: I’ve been on a couple with Russ.
Russ: We did take him on a filter change project on a collector right after it caught on fire.
Jeremiah: I’m still hearing about that. I still hear grumbling about that. I forgot.
Russ: That was a long day. That was a rough day.
Donovan: It was a learning experience. We’ll leave it at that.
Russ: It was not our style of collector. The filers were ovals, bags.
Donovan: And that was a fire.
Russ: It was from the aftermath of a fire.
Donovan: That makes it tough.
Jeremiah: Good learning experience.
Donovan: It burned the bags off. They fell down into the collector. It was a complicated process, but we were there to support the customer and help them get it done. Like you said, I’m not normally doing that. When we need service done we’re all on board here at Imperial.
Jeremiah: You’re so good at what you do now with your podcast that we would never do that to you again.
Donovan: I’d be glad. I’d be glad to go with Russ and do the service. So, Russ, we talked about some of the issues that could happen, what happens with this bridging…material style, does that often lend to bridging? Different material styles?
Russ: Some materials are more prone to bridging. When you get into the longer, stringier type materials that cling together the material just naturally wants to cling to itself. Any kind of moisture presence can enhance that. Those types of materials you will see are more apt to bridge than some of the fine, loose dust. Anything that wants to clump is going to have the tendency to want to bridge.
Donovan: Maybe that’s another area people aren’t thinking to look for. If you’re getting moisture into your system somehow that’s causing you to bridge too, huh?
Russ: Yes, it can.
Donovan: That’s just a simple issue. Now, I don’t know if I’m describing this right but you were so tired of having to deal with this issue over and over again that you were kind of the spearhead of coming up with this Dust Level Sensor we have now, right?
Russ: Yeah with our drum kits, we kept coming across pretty frequently that people would fail to check the drums and empty the in a timely manner it can create backups into the collector. So we sat back and looked at some options and I kind of spearheaded it. We decided to do a drum dust level sensor. It’s a sensor that ultrasonically measures dust in the barrel. It can be used in any collector and any container where you can shoot down from the top.
Donovan: Yeah, you just drill a hole in and it sends a sound wave down. Am I describing this well?
Russ: Yes, it sounds a sound wave. Whenever it bounces off the material within the specified range of the sensor it triggers the fault and sends an alert. We have outputs where we can just turn on a static light, turn on a horn or something, or shut the collector down depending on what level you want to go with that.
Donovan: Now I know there’s other styles of monitoring devices out there. One’s got a wire that kind of goes down in and can hang off the lid. One is a paddle. I know I’ve talked to customers that they have the wire one and they’re not being real careful when they’re removing that and they’re snapping it right off.
Russ: You have that, and the paddle wheel is very hard to get the lid off the drum whenever its attached with pretty rigid flex hose. All those other types of sensors seem to be pretty cumbersome and hard to work with. We wanted to go with something that was very small. It doesn’t create another hassle.
Donovan: That sensor is only sticking like a quarter inch out the other side of the barrel.
Russ: On the inside of the drum, yeah.
Jeremiah: It’s like the size of a magic marker, or half of that. It’s about the weight of a magic marker too.
Donovan: And most of it’s at the top, not down into the barrel. It’s pretty sturdy too.
Russ: Yeah, it’s a heavy duty sensor.
Donovan: So, like I said, Russ is one of our R&D guys. He is out there seeing what the problems are and going, “There has to be a way we can make this better. There has to be a way we can try to solve this problem so I don’t have to get on an airplane from Pennsylvania to California to let somebody know that they have a two by four stuck in their hopper.” Right? Or just that they’re letting their barrel fill up too much. We’re glad to do that, if that’s what needed.
Jeremiah: Yeah.
Donovan: Now, I’m going to circle back around to this. I’ve listened to both of you and the one thing I hear over and over and over again is the number one thing you can do to service your collector is take care of it before you need the service. Preventative maintenance seems to be one of the big things that can probably help solve a lot of issues. Right?
Russ: Yes, it can.
Donovan: So I want to hear Russ’s top three things that people can do for preventative maintenance on their collector. These are the three things, if you’re not going to do anything else, do these three things to help make sure you’re collector is running good, regularly. What could be the three biggest things?
Russ: Well, monitor your differential pressure regularly. Knowing the history of your differential pressure tells you the condition of filters it gives you a trend to follow. So if you have a sudden change, say you’ve been running at one inch of water column and then the next day you’re running at ten. Okay, there is something, some kind of upset condition that happened, and that can help up pin point that kind of thing.
Donovan: Before we get too deep into this, in case anybody doesn’t know, what is differential pressure?
Russ: Differential pressure is a measurement of resistance of airflow across the filters. So we take the pressure before the filters and after the filters and that difference in pressure is the amount of resistance the filters are applying to the airstream.
Donovan: So how much is in the dirty side of the collector and how much is in the clean side of the collector? The pressure difference, right? Am I explaining that well?
Russ: Yeah. The difference between those two pressures is differential pressure. It’s a resistance across the filters, whatever those filters are imposing as a resistance. So that’s monitoring that and being aware is one big thing. Maintaining your pulse valves; I have literally opened up a pulse valve, a diaphragm valve and seen springs broken inside the valve. So the manufacturers do have maintenance intervals recommended. Typically on our collectors we recommend every two years rebuilding.
Donovan: So you’re saying if the springs broken, it’s probably not cleaning your filters, right?
Russ: Yeah, it’s not as effectively cleaning them.
Jeremiah: Well it’s a ten cent spring, and hundreds of dollars for the filters. Change them.
Donovan: Not only that, but your filters get clogged. Your differential pressure goes up. A ten cent spring could cause your whole system to go down. You could have guys you’re paying $20 an hour to sitting around over a ten cent spring. So, sorry keep going. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.
Russ: Compressed air pressure. Have the correct pressure for your collector. Usually I’ve seen that if you run too light of a compressed air pressure you can not effectively clean the filters. If you go too high on your compressed air pressure, you can damage a filter. Put a hole in it. So it’s very important to get clean, dry compressed air.
Donovan: I know for our machine we have a recommended one. Is that pretty universal across all machines or can that vary from machine to machine.
Russ: Some manufacturers have some slight variances from what we recommend. They’re all pretty close.
Donovan: So what would be that optimal number for your pressure? If you had to say that you want to be within this range…
Russ: Between eighty and ninety PSI.
Donovan: Eighty and ninety PSI. That’s heading to your tank and that’s where it should be. Well, and I know I’ve heard you say this a bunch of times too, because I’ve sat in on calls. You have to make sure that air is dry, right?
Russ: Yes.
Donovan: That can cause some issues too.
Russ: If you have moisture in your compressed air, that air is being blown directly on the filters, so water, or any kind of moisture – oil – in that compressed air will go directly on the filters and that can cause all kinds of filter problems.
Donovan: Which will make your differential pressure go up.
Russ: Yeah.
Donovan: Your point number one is really a key indicator. If you’re going to do anything on your machine it sounds like you should really be checking that everyday.
Jeremiah: Log your data. They make data loggers too that you can buy. How much are they? They’re pretty inexpensive.
Russ: Some of the real basic ones are probably about eighty dollars. Then you’ve got more advanced systems you can get. You can get up pretty crazy on some of them.
Jeremiah: Honestly sometimes OSHA requires it. DEP might require it. In your particular cause you have to check and see if you have to do it.
Donovan: I’ve seen the two dollar version of a pad and a #2 pencil.
Jeremiah: That works too. You can do it that way.
Russ: Put a clipboard right on the control panel and just write it down.
Jeremiah: The other thing that wasn’t mentioned, because you covered so much but the one thing I was thinking of is its important to keep your hopper clean from dust. So we were talking about the level indicator before. That’s important because if that dust starts to fill up in that hopper and you’re constantly running a full hopper you’re going to re-entrain that dust back on your filters and drastically shorten your filer life. You want to make sure that that’s empty. A lot of people, their indicator for knowing when it’s time to change the drum is when the dust collector starts to spike and their ∆P or their pressure drop. So that’s not a good thing. It’s a lot easier if you just clean it out, depending on what size. Some people have a twenty gallon drum. Some people have fifty-five, or their might be semi-trucks we’ve done where you’re loading out.
Russ: Self-dumping hoppers or something.
Jeremiah: Yeah, just make sure that there’s a regular PM on it and that it’s cleaned out regularly.
Donovan: I was just talking to someone the other day about their plasma machine. They’re running two ten hour shifts on it. So, that’s what’s happening to them. They keep getting back up. I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with plasma dust but if it gets on the floor its just a mess.
Jeremiah: It’s like liquid.
Donovan: It is. So, it is not a fun one to clean up if you have to do that anytime.
Jeremiah: It stains your hands. It kind of gets in your skin.
Russ: It’s a mess.
Jeremiah: We’ve both been around that a lot.
Donovan: No one wants to be pulling that drum out and and just watch it go all over the floor. That’s not ideal. Well, Russ thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. You have a wealth of knowledge. Jeremiah, thanks for being on too and being our first multi-person podcast.
Jeremiah: Our podcast is growing numerically.
Donovan: It’s growing. We really appreciate that. Russ, are there any other tips out there that you would like to leave anybody with, other than monitor your differential pressure? I’ve learned that one.
Russ: When you’re setting up a collector it’s important for filter life to get the airflow right because that wills set the stage for the lifespan of your filters.
Donovan: Great point. These aren’t just machines that you turn on and they’re ready to go. You’ve got to tune them in a little bit.
Jeremiah: I want to plug something though.
Donovan: Go for it.
Jeremiah: I mean, we have a service that does this, right? So what is this service? Tell us about this service.
Donovan: Russ is the head of our ServiceMAXX team. Just like everything else here it’s the “MAXX”. They can do startups. They can do service calls, troubleshoot. Russ is normally really good about being available on the phone. Any more these days a lot of people need a full report on what they have in their facility for either their insurance companies or their jurisdictions that they need to have that. We make very nice reports for that. We have a wealth of knowledge and ability. If you’re interested in that or have an issue and need something, call in. Theres a lot of people here. We’ll get you in touch. We’ll get you on the schedule. That’s us here. It’s not just for Imperial collectors. We can help.
Russ: We’ll service any collector out there.
Donovan: We just want to help you out. We just want to make sure you have a clean, safe environment for your workers. We want everybody to go home healthy at the end of the day.
Jeremiah: Absolutely.
Donovan: That’s what we’re trying to do here. If you’ve learned something today or you’ve enjoyed this podcast. I hope you like us and subscribe. We’re on all the podcast channels. You can find us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. We’re on everything, all social media. I just want to say one more time thanks Jeremiah for coming on. Thanks Russ for coming on. Everybody who’s out there listening stay healthy, stay safe, and we’ll see you next time.
Jeremiah: Thank you Donovan.
Russ: Thanks.
Jeremiah: Thanks Russ.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
It is a new year and a new season, and we also got a new studio. Donovan got a minute to talk with Chalmer Ritzert our VP here at Imperial Systems. Chalmer talks about his tier 1 auto manufacturing background and how that helped build the future for a more efficient and better company. He also touches on all of the new things going on in the shop, and how we are always continuing to get better.
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems, industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast. We’re in our new studio today filming our second season, episode one of the Dusty Jobs Podcast. We’re glad that you guys could all make it back. If you like how this looks and you think we’re doing a good job here we’d be glad to show you our entire facility. We do virtual tours and virtual demos now. If you like that, you can log on to our website and let us know. We’d be glad to give you a full tour. Today as a guest we have our Vice President, Chalmer Ritzert. How are you doing today Chalmer?
Chalmer: I’m good Donovan. How are you?
Donovan: I’m doing great. I’m doing great. Thanks for taking a moment out of your busy schedule to come and tell us a little about yourself and your history. We’re going to talk a little bit about how Imperial is growing and changing and some things we have going on here.
Chalmer: Absolutely.
Donovan: Yeah, so that’s exciting stuff. Now, if I remember this correctly, you haven’t always been in dust collection your entire career, right? Your career started somewhere else, right?
Chalmer: No, I have not been in dust collection my entire life. I’ve been in manufacturing over twenty five years now. I actually started in the automotive industry.
Donovan: Now, that was straight out of college?
Chalmer: That was straight out of college. I did my internship, and then I worked for a company in the automotive industry, a tier one automotive manufacturer. We made parts for General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, numerous companies. Our main customers was General Motors. We were actually an injection molding company. We made interior and exterior doors, dashboards, those kinds of things, and then exterior bumpers and side fascias and boilers. You know, all the things you’d see on the outside of cars and we shipped them directly to the automotive manufacturers to put on the cars.
Donovan: Got you. So you guys were in a parts facility and had machines that shot injection into a mold and then it popped out a part? Is that right?
Chalmer: We had enormous injection molding machines. We would make hundreds of thousands of parts a week. If they were exterior we would paint them and assemble them, send them, really, all over the world, but send them to assembly plants where they would put the parts in, sequence them in place, and put the parts on the cars. We would do the same thing with door panels, with dashboards, with center bezels, and those kinds of things.
Donovan: Now, you weren’t working the paint line there or –
Chalmer: No.
Donovan: What was your role?
Chalmer: So when I first started out of college – my degree is actually in environmental health and safety. So, I was first hired as environmental health and safety and there was about seven hundred employees in one facility and we had another seven hundred in another facility and I was responsible to do environmental health and safety. In a painting operation, environmental is a huge piece. Safety is another huge piece. So I kind of cut my teeth as a twenty-two year old kid doing that kind of stuff. I did all the permitting. I did all the reporting. I did all the inspections. I did everything for that. That was kind of what I went to college for. Somewhere along the line I got the opportunity to fill in for the manufacturing manager of the company. He had left and they said, “Hey, will you fill in for this guy?” I was into everything.
“Will you fill in for this guy while we try to fill the position?”
I said, “Sure, I would love to fill in for him. The only thing I ask is that you give me an opportunity at the position as well. Thats kind of where everything started. I slowly started to move out of the environmental health and safety. I still maintained all those responsibilities, but I moved into manufacturing manager where I had about four hundred employees at that time and I was responsible for all the injection molding in the company. Three shifts, seven days a week. Just a very high stress, high volume, high quality – you know, I got all my experience in terms of lean manufacturing, in terms of high pressure, in terms of making sure that parts were on time and parts were perfect and those kinds of things early on in my career. I used to have this full head of hair, and then I got into automotive.
Donovan: Didn’t we all?
Chalmer: Now look at me. That is a direct result of being in the automotive industry. Anybody who’s in the automotive industry will tell you that it is one of the most high stress, high volume. It can just be crazy at times.
Donovan: That’s so interesting that from that environmental position into that management position, and I’m sure when you were in that environmental position it just gave you an opportunity to see how everything was working. That just lent itself to probably having a better understanding.
Chalmer: So, for me, first of all I had some people in my life in the company that were great mentors. Second of all, being the environmental health and safety person you’re kind of involved in everything. You’re involved in the day-to-day, doing this and moving people around. You have to be, from a job rotation and ergonomic standpoint, making sure people are fitted for the job and work stations are right. You get into engineering. You get into machine design. You get into all those kinds of things. So I’m involved in the day to day operations and I’m kind of around it all the time. I’m kind of involved. I’m kind of having conversations. I’m doing those kinds of things and the guy that was the manufacturing manager, he literally just left one day. They were kind of high and dry. So they’ve got a three shift operation, four hundred people with no manager, but what was really interesting was the very next day they put me in charge and the very next day they were going to the people in the department saying that I was the safety manager yesterday. Today I’m in charge. Oh, and I’m twenty three.
Donovan: How long were you in that role? Did you stay with that company for a while? Did you move on to another company?
Chalmer: I did. I stayed with that company for eleven years doing that same thing, and that company, unfortunately, closed, which was a sad day. It closed in the mid 2000s. I went from there to a different type of automotive company where they made shipping containers for automotive parts for the tier one suppliers. So when you would make the parts at the tier one supplier they would buy a reusable metal rack and those racks had to be specially designed for all those parts to go back and forth.
Donovan: So that’s a little more heavy fab?
Chalmer: It’s very heavy fab. So I went from injection molding to metal work. To welding, to that kind of thing, and I was with that company for a while. It was, unfortunately – I laugh, but it also closed. None of this is my fault, but I like to say that I learned a lot of lessons along the way because of the failures of the companies that I was with. You know what I mean? Manufacturing is manufacturing, but you start to learn different processes. From a manufacturing standpoint I was really good at the automotive kind of thing. I could play the game and I could make things happen. I was solid in the environmental portion of things. Who would have guessed that I would ever end up in dust collection?
Donovan: Well, yeah. How in the world did you go from…
Chalmer: Well, it gets even better, because I leave the automotive industry and I actually got involved in the largest company in the world that made promotional products. We made and decorated promotional products. It’s the largest company in the world that does it.
Donovan: When you say promotional product, I’m not even sure I know what that means.
Chalmer: Water bottles, pens, MP3 players…anything that has a logo on it from a company we made.
Donovan: So you’re saying that if I go to a trade show and I’m filling my bag up with stuff, all the stuff is what you guys made?
Chalmer: It’s got to come from somewhere. There was a boom in manufacturing and in the economy in 2006 and 2007, around there, and this company had grown and then they had bought a new facility, and it was just an empty building. They hired me as the plant manager to take over and build that facility up, and I did that. We got up to about three hundred employees in about a 400,000 square foot manufacturing facility. It was pretty neat. It was a real good opportunity for me. In 2009, the economy dropped and the place closed.
Donovan: We all know what happened in 2008.
Chalmer: So, the company that Chalmer was at closed down. As they were starting to announce that the place was going to close there was an ad in the local newspaper that said “Operations Manager Needed.” I called the number. It was just a little short note. I called the number and the rest is history. Here I am.
Donovan: You got Jeremiah on the other line.
Chalmer: I actually didn’t get Jeremiah. I got the lady who was the accountant at the time. She said, “He’d like to meet with you. Come in and bring your resume.” That kind of stuff. We met a couple of times. It was weird for me because I had been a high volume automotive, you know, doing those kind of things. Lots of employees, hundreds of employees. Managing all the workings and that kind of stuff. I show up for my interview and its a small place. They’ve got, like, eighteen employees at the most. It was just a different vibe altogether. I pulled into the parking lot for that first interview and I’m thinking, “Maybe this isn’t my fit.” Something pulled me inside and I went in and I met with Jeremiah and he and I hit it off. We have a good relationship and we’ve had a good relationship since day one. I was like, “You know what, I’m going to give it a shot.” I’ll be honest with you, it was the best decision I ever made in my life.
Donovan: As a person who works here, we’re glad to have you. We’re glad you chose to come here. You’re a great go-to person for a lot of things.
Chalmer: I appreciate that.
Donovan: And if anybody is out there listening, this is not the announcement of the shut down of Imperial Systems. We are still going strong.
Chalmer: So I would like to reiterate all of the good lessons that I learned by being involved in those. Because I know now not to do those kinds of things, and I know the kinds of things that will make us successful.
Donovan: I’ll speak to this. The success we’ve had in the last year and the way we’ve been able to pull through it as a company, the year 2020. Where that could have went and where we are actually at is incredible. I think that is largely due to you and Jeremiah and everybody here pulling through and using a lot of wisdom in what we have, and knowledge, and experience. In my opinion, I think we came through 2020 stronger than we went into it.
Chalmer: Absolutely. You can say about the pandemic and you can say about the issues that it caused but I believe that issues like those will only make you stronger. I believe we make good decisions. We made some poor ones. I wouldn’t say that we’re perfect, but we made some good decisions. We managed things well. To be honest with you its easy to make good decisions when you have a backing of really good people. I would say that’s the blessing of Imperial Systems for me. It’s the people that work here.
Donovan: Thanks. I know we all appreciate hearing you say that. I think the other thing that really helped lean towards our success during this year is that our whole model, our whole idea, our whole process here is being a lean manufacturer and not having a lot of waste, and not having a lot of overhead because we’ve taken this lean model. I know that’s something you champion a lot and that’s a lot coming from you and your history in automotive. Can you speak to that and our philosophy on that here?
Chalmer: So, automotive is very high on the lean manufacturing principles. It could be Six Sigma. It could be 5S.
Donovan: Let me pause you for one second, because maybe we’ve got somebody out there listening who doesn’t understand what lean manufacturing is. So we might have to define that for them. Could you give us a quick definition on what lean is?
Chalmer: For me, the best way to describe lean is “how you can do your job easier”. For me that is the most simple, broke down way to explain how we can make the job easier for people. If you’re looking at lean, at the ultimate end of the day, how can you make it easier for that person and eliminate waste, time, or whatever.
Donovan: Taking less steps. Using less material.
Chalmer: Sure. To be honest with you, it’s a lot of common sense is what it is.
Donovan: I think the other thing you say that we talk about – we have a Wednesday morning meeting and one of the things I’ve heard Jeremiah say and you say is, “If there’s something that annoys you, let us know because we will try to fix it.”
Chalmer: Absolutely. Fix what bugs you.
Donovan: Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you there. Keep going. How has that impacted our company, our culture, our community here?
Chalmer: So, when I was involved in those lean manufacturing projects – huge manufacturing projects – and I saw success. Where I saw success was where it was broken down individually and kept as simple as possible. Then I would see that grow. I would say about five to six years ago we were made aware of a local presentation on a process called 2 second lean. I had been skeptical. To a certain extent I can be skeptical about a lot of things. I had been traditionally trained in the Six Sigma, 5S, and those types of processes. I went to this conference and they were talking about this 2 second lean. It is such a simple process. It is so simple. It literally is ‘fix what bugs you’. Jeremiah and I both fell in love with it right from the get go. Its really hard to institute a huge, sweeping thing, but 2 Second Lean is so simple that people just kind of buy into it and go with it. For us, we identify waste. We empower people to identify waste, to look for waste, but the key to it for us is that I don’t want you to come to me and say, “I’ve got a solution. What do you think about doing this?” I want you to come to me and say, “Look what I did, and I made my day better, and I fixed this,” or, “I did this,” or, “I moved this, and I made my day better.” We’re trying to empower people to have the authority to change their own day, to fix things on their own. It’s been hugely successful. They don’t need that kind of permission to move…
Donovan: That garbage can two feet closer.
Chalmer: Yeah, sure. I mean it’s that little stuff that makes such a huge difference in people’s day. When you add that all up at the end of the year the process is so much better. The product is so much better. People are so much happier.
Donovan: It’s great. If you do a virtual demo with us, and you do a virtual tour with us you can go through and you can see all our carts and how everything is labeled and there are shadow spots where all the tools go. It just helps the guys in the shop to stay organized and allow them to not be wondering where things went and not having to pull all your tools from here to there. Everything’s on a cart on wheels. It’s really neat to see all that.
Chalmer: You just put a little effort behind that stuff. A lot of that stuff is not very expensive to put into place. A lot of that is Harold in assembly doesn’t want to walk twenty feet every five minutes to pick up a different tool. Well put all Harold’s tools right there where he’s working.
Donovan: Let him load the cart up with all the bolts he needs and wheels the whole thing over.
Chalmer: It’s common sense, but if you don’t do it, if you don’t put some effort behind it, you’re going to waste all that time.
Donovan: And I think the other thing that I’ve noticed since I’ve been here is that not only are we willing to do the little things to make our process more lean and efficient and possibly one of the most up to date fab shops in our area, I couldn’t tell you how far, but I know we’ve been making some moves to…I mean, you could talk more about that. You’ve been pretty essential in making all that happen.
Chalmer: Sure. Again, we learn by failing. When you first start out in a business and you’re growing a business, you use what’s available to you to get the job done, and you use what you can afford. As you grow you start to look at different options. We make investments in equipment and processes that make people’s lives easier and that make our product better. What we find is that inevitably every one of those things pay for themselves very quickly. For example, in the olden days, in the first iterations of the CMAXX, those were all wet painted. It was a brutal process to wet paint these things. It wasn’t environmentally friendly. It just wasn’t. So we invested in one of the largest batch powder coating operations around.
Donovan: When you’re saying large, you could fit…
Chalmer: I could park two of my trucks in our bake oven easily. We make big stuff. We make big stuff. You make big stuff, you’ve got to paint big stuff. We invested, and we did a lot of research on how these various powder coating operations worked and what kind of material handling system we wanted to use and what kind of guns and what kind of powder. There was a lot of research that went into it. We came down to this operation now where we can paint a fourteen or fifteen foot diameter baghouse and put it in our oven and bake it. There are no batch ovens around that could even come close to doing something like that.
Donovan: Not only did that make our product stronger, it lasts longer. It’s healthier. It’s more environmental, but it also made it faster.
Chalmer: We went from in an eight hour shift maybe painting two rounds with wet paint to painting twelve to sixteen rounds with powder coat, made the quality better, made the product better. In addition, we have zero environmental footprint here. There’s no exhaust from the paint. The wash that we use is environmentally safe. It doesn’t go anywhere. It’s evaporated off.
Donovan: It’s great for all those guys working on the paint line. It’s healthier for them.
Chalmer: And for the community. Theres nothing going into the water here. Theres nothing going into the air here. We’re very conscious of our environmental footprint.
Donovan: And it cuts our lead times down for our customers. It lets us get our products out to our customers a lot faster. So we’ve done that. That’s our one thing. That’s one of many. You got anything else you want to touch on that we’ve done recently?
Chalmer: So, we invested in a new brake press to try and speed the process up. The newer brake presses are fast and they’re considerably more accurate. What happens is we are able to break parts quicker. We’re able to brake more parts, eliminating welding in a lot of cases, or shortening up the amount of welding that’s necessary. Our parts fit better together. We’re able to brake the parts that we do brake faster. What once was a huge bottleneck in our process is now one of our best manufacturing efficiencies out there. We have just recently gone down the road and started to invest in a laser. For years we’ve used plasma cutting. With plasma cutting you have high accuracy. It does a great job. I’m a huge fan of it. You can do big stuff on it. We needed to pick up some speed and a laser is faster. It has its limitations in terms of size and those kinds of things, but it certainly gives us the speed and the clean up afterwards. Theres no slag or anything on the steel. The cleanup afterwards is considerably better. So we’ve invested in one of the newest and greatest lasers for our facility. It will be installed here before too long.
Donovan: So if you have a cleaner cut and a better bend, that just takes less time for the guys to weld it. It’s less grinding.
Chalmer: Absolutely. You think about in a normal manufacturing process for sheet metal there’s a lot of grinding and buffing and cleaning up corners and knocking off slag and that kind of stuff. If you can eliminate those kinds prior to paint and stuffs coming out nice and clean we’re making a better product and we’re making it faster.
Donovan: And that’s healthier for the guys too.
Chalmer: It’s absolutely healthier for the guys.
Donovan: Now who was it? One of our welders, his name is slipping my mind. He does all our tubes.
Chalmer: Terry.
Donovan: Terry. Terry was telling me that he got to try a new welder out. Something happened with that. He had to go back to the old one. He felt like he was welding in sand or something. He was telling me it was so slow. What’s this new welder that Terry got?
Chalmer: Terry makes the header tanks for the CMAXXs. He’s the main guy for making the header tanks on the CMAXXs. It can be a tedious process. We had reached out to the welding supplier and they had brought us a demo unit of what’s called a pulse welder. Its just a different way to weld. Terry fell in love with it. It was faster. There was no BBs or slag coming off of the weld, the cleanup or anything like that. It was great. It was a demo. It was a very expensive demo. Terry kept stopping me. “Are we going to keep this? What are we going to do?” Finally we had to give the demo back. So Terry had to go back to his old welder. I remember the day I got to walk out there and tell him, “Hey Terry, your new welder will be here in a week or so,” and he got a new welder. In fact, the new welder worked so well that we’ve actually bought more of those welders for the facility. We’re using them in other areas. Less cleanup, faster, those types of things. There a little more expensive type welder, but they pay for themselves very quickly. So when you’re thinking about things that bug you, and thinking about things that go quicker, and do those kinds of things these are investments that Imperial makes to, even in the downtimes, to try to make our product better, and faster.
Donovan: It benefits our employees. It benefits our environment. It benefits our end users in the end. That’s why we can offer a lifetime warranty on our products because we are so assured of the quality of what’s going out that we feel confident in doing that.
Chalmer: This facility right now is operating at the highest its ever operated from a quality standpoint, from a speed standpoint, from an efficiency standpoint. It’s never operated like this.
Donovan: We’re excited for 2021 and continuing to be a lean company, continuing to make those improvements. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have to have you on again in two years and see where we’re at then.
Chalmer: We’re going to continue to invest. We’re going to continue to grow, and we’re going to continue to push forward and be the best. That’s the intention. If we are the best here, then we’re putting out the best product that you can buy.
Donovan: Well, Chalmer I just want to say thanks for coming on. I know you’re busy. You have a lot on your schedule. Thanks for taking a minute to catch everybody up on what’s going on in our company and how we’re continuing to improve and move forward. I just want to say that if you guys enjoyed this and there’s anyone out there listening we have some more backlog that you can listen to too. If you want to subscribe we’re putting these out every month. Like us on Facebook. We put this on every social media aspect out there. Like, subscribe, do that, and until we get a chance to talk to you again stay healthy, stay safe, and have a good day.
Chalmer: And again, thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
When you need to replace filters for your industrial dust collector, what kind of filters do you need? There are certainly many filter manufacturers offering lots of choices. However, most dust collector filter types come in a few common materials. So, the type of filter you need depends on your system and type of dust.
Overall, the industrial dust collector filter types listed below are some of the most common. But if you have a special challenge, or questions about your filter needs, our filter experts can help you. We’ve figured out filter problems for other customers so we can help you.
Choosing from Many Dust Collector Filter Types
Dust collector filters require replacement on a regular basis. Some people may get a year out of their filters, while some may get a few months. Because of the expense, people might look for the least expensive filters.
We’ll talk about what makes those cheap dust collector filters so cheap, and what other choices you have. The right type of filter will maximize dust collector performance.
Highest MERV rating for standard cartridge filters
Improved filter life
Captures more particles on the surface
FR filters treated with fire retardant
SPUNBOND
Different basic filter material
More resistant to damage
MERV rating lower than nanofiber
The choice for challenging dust or fumes
Can be tried if nanofiber doesn’t work
SPUNBOND HYDROPHOBIC/OLEOPHOBIC
Specialized material for certain applications
Resists damage from water or oil
For filters exposed to moisture or oily material
Specialized or challenging applications
Higher cost but sometimes necessary
SPUNBOND PTFE
PTFE repels most materials
Nonstick coating for sticky materials
For very challenging applications
Increased cost for special coating
Suitable for very tough applications
How to Choose the Right Type of Filter
Our filter experts know which filters have worked on applications like yours before. We can offer some advice on choosing the kind of cartridge filter you need. Still, every application has different challenges. Below you’ll find some suggestions for choosing the type of filter for your dust collection.
Your challenge: small dust or fume particles (down to 0.3 microns)
Possible solution: standard nanofiber filter
Your challenge: collecting flammable or explosive dust
Possible solution: nanofiber FR to resist fire
Your challenge: filtering dust that could damage filters
Possible solution: spunbond
Your challenge: oil, humidity, or water entering collector
Possible solution: spunbond hydrophobic/oleophobic
Your challenge: sticky problem materials most filters can’t handle
Possible solution: spunbond PTFE
These are possible solutions, not guarantees. All dust collection systems have their own challenges with their own materials. Some special applications require unusual filters not listed here. These types of cartridge filters will cover most dust collection needs.
The field of dust collection often presents you with difficulties that can cause problems for your business. The type of filter you use may contribute to the problem.
Contact us at Imperial Systems for help finding the right filter for your system. If you know what type of cartridge filter works for you, ask us about competitive pricing on replacements for all types of dust collectors, including Donaldson Torit, Camfil Farr, Robovent, Micro Air, and many others.
How do you prevent falls from your dust collector? Often, people need to access doors and panels above ground level. So ladders or stairs are a requirement. But how do we make sure our dust collectors meet all OSHA ladder or stair safety rules?
OSHA recognizes several types of fall protection. For dust collection systems, expect to see ladders, especially on tall baghouses, or stairs with platforms on a cartridge dust collector.
OSHA Ladder Safety for Dust Collectors
OSHA has increased its focus on injuries caused by falls. Fall protection affects almost all industries. Specifically for a dust collector, this rule will affect the ladders or stairs used to access the doors and panels. Because of this, employers must make dust collector ladders and stairs safe for worker access.
OSHA recently updated and made changes to its personal fall protection standard. However, not all fall safety standards will affect your dust collector. For instance, some dust collectors have a set of stairs leading to a platform. From the platform, workers can access the doors to the dust collector filters.
Further, if you have a tall dust collection system like a baghouse, you may use a ladder to access it. Many ladders for baghouse dust collectors have safety cages. OSHA has changed some of the rules about safety cages. They have also changed some of the rules about platforms and stairs. So both OSHA fall safety changes can affect your dust collector in the future.
Why Do We Need New Fall Safety Rules for a Dust Collector?
OSHA estimates that almost 350 workers die each year in fall accidents. OSHA’s fall protection standard affects dust and fume collection systems. These usually have hoppers under them. This makes them tall enough to require fall safety.
The standard says that workers need protection if they could fall four feet or more. In construction, this limit is six feet. Construction has traditionally had different standards than the general industry. This includes dust collection and other products that need access.
Citations plaque the construction industry for falls and related injuries. The new regulation offers employers more, not fewer, choices in how they use fall protection.
Ladders and stairs for dust collector access need to meet these regulations. Most dust collectors stand on legs above a hopper, or you need a ladder to reach the access doors.
What are the Options for OSHA Fall Safety?
The new fall and ladder safety regulation brings the construction industry in line with other industries, making all the different regulations easier to follow. It also cuts off a few options that allowed certain exemptions from fall protection.
First of all, each work surface above 42 inches must have a guard rail. Stairways need to be uniform and safe from slips. The CMAXX dust collector meets these standards with heavy-duty stairs, safety railings that exceed the requirements, and a safe working platform.
Your BRF or other baghouse needs fall safety that meets the new standards. Since one can usually access these taller dust collectors with a fixed ladder, new ladder safety standards apply. Above 24 feet, all fixed ladders require an approved safety system or personal fall arrest system.
Cages will not be considered certified ladder safety, or ladder safety of any kind. OSHA set the date as 2036 for the point at which all ladders, including those for dust collectors, must have proper personal fall arrest or other approved safety system.
Why is OSHA phasing out ladder cages as a safety device? Based on research, cages don’t actually make falls safer and can cause worse injuries. If your dust collector installation includes a new ladder, it requires an approved fall protection system even if you have a cage. This also applies if your dust collector ladder has damage and requires repair.
Your Dust Collector Needs OSHA Approved Fall Saftey
Many companies sell approved fall safety devices. This can include a PFPS (personal fall protection system), which usually attaches the worker to a fall arrestor. This allows them to attach their safety harness to the dust collector ladder.
One danger to watch out for is that ropes or cables that support a worker can catch on the edge of a surface. This can keep the cable from sliding like it’s supposed to, or it could damage it. While accessing your dust collector, make sure safety devices don’t rub or catch on other surfaces.
If you use a cartridge dust collector, you may access it with a ladder or stairs. A baghouse probably requires a ladder. Both ladders and stairs must meet safety standards. If your dust collector stairs have sturdy safety rails, they should be fine. If your ladder is more than 24 feet tall and protected by any type of cage, you’ll eventually need to install a personal fall protection device. Cages will no longer be approved safety devices.
To keep up with OSHA standards, we include new recommended safety processes before they’re required. If you have any questions about how to make sure your existing dust collection equipment is in line, give us a call or email today.
If you have other equipment accessed with stairs or ladders, and you’re not sure if you will be okay with OSHA’s ladder and fall safety standards, we can help you find an occupational health and safety professional. Process hazard analysis specialists also make a career of figuring out situations like this.
Today is Veterans Day and our guest John Poehler is one our Reps from the West Coast. He also flew helicopters in the Marine Corps, including Marine One for the President. Listen to this podcast to hear about John’s career in the Marines and also about his transition to dust collection.
Dusty Jobs Podcast Episode 11 – Veterans Day with John Poehler
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Today we’re doing a special Veterans Day episode. Joining us today is one of our representatives, John Poehler. How are you doing today John?
John: I’m doing great. How are you?
Donovan: Great.
John: Thanks for having me.
Donovan: Thanks for coming on. John’s company is Semper Fi Industrial Solutions out in California, right?
John: That is correct.
Donovan: How’s it going out there? How’s everything out in California?
John: So far, with the present conditions we’re living in we’re actually doing pretty well. I think overall industry is beginning to improve as we fight our way through what we’re presently going through.
Donovan: These are some challenging times but it’s good to know you’re doing well and healthy out there and things are going good. That’s great to hear. Now the reason we have you on today is because you have some past military experience.
John: That’s true.
Donovan: So you were in the Marines, right?
John: I was. I joined the Marine Corps, I guess, officially with commission in 1990 and then retired in 2012.
Donovan: So during your time in the Marines I see you’ve got a picture there beside you in the background. Is the a helicopter?
John: Yes, correct. It’s my office, and the wife lets me put up pictures in the office. They’re all helicopters for the most part.
Donovan: There you go. Is that what your role was most of the time in the Marines? Was that your job? Can you tell us a little bit about how you started in the 90’s and then kind of walk us through your time in there if you don’t mind.
John: I mean originally I’m a Wisconsin kid. I went to the university of Wisconsin and was commissioned in the Marine Corps in December ’90. I then went off to a couple different things but ended up in flight school down in Pensacola, Florida and Corpus Christi, Texas. I ended up going to a fleet squadron out at Camp Pendleton in California, and I was there ’93 to ’99, roughly. It was all helicopters and several deployments out of those different units all to Asia and southwest Asia. Then in ’99 I went back to Quantico in Virginia. I joined another squadron there, HMX-1. I spend about five years in Quantico itself.
Then I came back out, deployed again out here on the west coast out of Camp Pendleton. Great group of guys. Not only great boss, a couple great bosses, but just great young Marines and sailors that I was fortunate to be with. We went up to west Al Anbar in Iraq. I came home from that in ’07. I ended up going to a Marine Corps air station in Yuma, Arizona, and, again, another great boss, another great two and half or three years with a great group of young Marines and sailors out there, primarily doing search and rescue out in the desert area of Yuma and surrounding areas. Then I retired out of Yuma, Arizona and moved back to San Diego California.
Donovan: Nice. So, during that time frame what would you say was the most exciting thing you got to do? Did you get to do anything interesting or different, something that just really sticks out you?
John: I’m very fortunate. I was able to fly the vast majority of my time because I was in different squadrons for the most part. I was very fortunate. I had great commanding officers for the most part. I worked with phenomenal young Americans, both Marines and sailors. Absolutely phenomenal, the best this country has to offer. In terms of the missions that we flew, a great variety. Again, I was very fortunate. From fleet squadrons, and deploying with the unit to a squadron in Quantico, Virginia that did presidential service to Yuma, Arizona doing search and rescue and working for the local community, both the local community and state and federal agencies. It was all a wonderful experience across the board. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So I probably can’t pick out any one thing. Every duty station brought something special.
Donovan: That sounds like a really interesting time. Never a dull moment. Now, I’m going to ask you this: Did you get a chance to fly the president?
John: *laughs* Yeah, a couple times.
Donovan: Oh, well that’s got to be pretty exciting.
John: Oh, extremely. Again, if I haven’t said it, that was a phenomenal group also of friends to this day, and we still meet up and have dinner or breakfast, coffee, whatever the case may be. Maybe grab a beer. Whatever. Phenomenal group. We’re all aging a bit now. It’s hard to believe that it’s been fifteen, twenty years ago that I was there. It was a wonderful experience. Wonderful travel.
Donovan: That sounds great, and like I said, thanks for all you’ve done for serving. It seems an interesting jump from flying the president in a helicopter to now working with Imperial Systems in dust collection. How in the world did that come about?
John: It is funny. It is humorous, but for me it has been an absolutely wonderful journey. When I retired from the Marine Corps, again, you’ve been doing this for so long, twenty plus years, you don’t know what your supposed to do. I got out, very typical, I became a contractor, a DOD contractor for a year. I worked at Camp Pendleton. Low and behold, an older gentleman – you know, I’ve been very fortunate with mentors and friendships. An older gentleman from church, he was an usher, he is an usher. He reached out to me one day and told me about this industrial rep business. He was a rep here in southern California. I’ve known him for several years.
Anyways, one thing led to another and before you knew it I was working for a manufacturer and lasted for about four years. I met wonderful people, including Tomm Frungillo. He was my boss for a while. Anyways, I ended up going on my own, and, again, great mentorship from a lot of other reps and friends and they kind of guided me on how I could do this on my own. I’ve got to say that Jeremiah helped me tremendously through that process. Low and behold, literally through the support of my wife who said, “Yeah, you can do this.” We just started in. It was a slow process at first but the team that Imperial has put together – I’ve got to give you kudos. Again, I’m very fortunate to be surrounded by a great group of people and support people. Here I am, coming on three years later if not three years later.
Donovan: I know we really appreciate having you out there. You always do a great job. You handle everything that gets thrown at you, for sure, without a question. It’s nice to know that we can still call you at eight in the morning here even though it’s five in the morning there. You’re always up and ready to go.
John: Heck yeah.
Donovan: That’s great, so John you mentioned Tomm Frungillo on here. Tomm was actually on one of our previous podcasts talking about innovation. He’s working with us now. You knew him before he was working with us, didn’t you?
John: That’s correct. He was my boss during my time that I was with Camfil. In fact, I want to say in 2013 Lee Morgan was running Camfil and he interviewed me up in LA. I think he was heading overseas. I had a wonderful two hour interview with Lee. Again, I ran into another wonderful man. He been a good mentor for me in this industry. That’s what led me to Tomm, and Tomm, again, had been a great mentor for me during that time period.
Anyways, I ended up coming to Imperial slightly before Tomm did. When I heard he was coming on board it ended up being a wonderful, again, experience to have Tomm and be able to work with Tomm and your whole team. I deal with Tomm on a daily basis now almost and it’s truly pleasurable.
Donovan: Tomm is our larger equipment rep for that area out there in the California area. You’re our local equipment rep for that area. When we’re talking about the California Arizona area, what’s the industries that you’re really seeing out there? Tell us a little bit about that part of our country.
John: In the end, California is an interesting place. I’ll throw Arizona and parts of Nevada into that also. California, we’re coming on forty million people. With that many people you’re going to have industry. Due to a lot of issues, I’m going to say that there’s not a lot of large companies out here, but there are a lot of mom-and-pop up to medium sized manufacturing companies here. It’s really a broad brush of different industries. From agriculture, to food. Theres a lot of bio. Theres a lot of metalwork, a lot of woodwork. It really depends on where you’re located in the state. Imperial Valley and Central Valley, California is primarily ag, and you name it, in terms of ag. Everything is produced here. If you get into the more built up areas like Los Angeles, San Diego, the Bay Area, then you’re going to get more into aviation and a lot of tech. Theres always school projects going on and a lot of military projects that are happening. Theres mining as you get more into the desert areas. Then Arizona, Phoenix to Tucson, there’s a lot of metal work going on there with a lot of automotive and aerospace. So it’s really a mix of anything. In areospace and auto there are a lot of different types of metal products too. So there’s a broad breadth and depth of industry throughout those markets.
Donovan: That’s keeping you on your toes and giving you a little bit of everything I’m sure. You get to learn a little big about grain this day, and a little bit about weld smoke the next day, right?
John: That is absolutely true. One day you’ll be in a silo with sugar and the next day you’ll be talking about weld fume at an automotive facility.
Donovan: That’s great, being able to figure all that out and continue on with building that out there for us and helping us with our footprint out there and letting people know they can keep their environment cleaner and safer with a CMAXX. We’re glad you’re helping us do that out there.
John: I thoroughly enjoy it.
Donovan: So I asked you what your interesting thing was during your military time. What has been the most interesting thing that has happened to you during your dust collection time?
John: Without a doubt, it’s – what’s that TV show? “Dirty Old Jobs” or “Dirty Jobs”? It’s absolutely fascinating for me walking into different facilities every week and seeing how things are made, how things are manufactured, how things are produced. Whatever the case may be, it is just absolutely amazing, especially in southern California and California as a whole, in Arizona too, there’s a lot of aviation, a lot of mom-and-pop level to mid level aviation companies out here. It’s fascinating to walk in and go, “Oh, you make that widget. Great. I remember testing aircraft, and you needed that widget, and you guys are the ones who make that widget.”
So, that’s been fascinating, but also, whether you’re dealing in agriculture or metal products or some type of woodworking projects, local schools, military places – it doesn’t matter. It’s always fascinating to walk into those facilities and meet people and see what we can do to help them. It really has been a pleasurable three years.
Donovan: I’ll say it again, we enjoy having you on our team. We think it’s great. So, let me ask you this: how much do you feel that your time in the military helped you prepare for overcoming situations that you experience everyday in the dust collection world. If you said what that looks like, just for the other veterans out there who maybe are in your situation who are getting ready to retire and look on to the next thing. What you would say to those guys? “Hey, this is how this translated for me.”
John: That’s a great question. It’s a million dollar question, and I didn’t know the answer when I got out, and I put thought to that over the years. You have this skill set. No matter what that may be, you have this skill set that you developed while you were in the military. For me, a lot of it was flying helicopters, but there’s another level and it’s based around that big word ‘leadership’. Underneath ‘leadership’ are several traits, and the military, specifically the Marine Corps does a great job in developing their leaders, and they do it because they understand how to train people to problem solve.
In order to problem solve you have to go through decision making. In order to do decision making you have to do some kind of course of action development. You need multiple courses of action and that leads to problem solving, that leads to final decision making, and someone calls it ‘leadership’. Nonetheless, on a daily basis you figure out worse case scenario, and if you can solve that everything else is easy. That’s kind of how I handle issues day in and day out here. It really makes it very smooth, but that leadership capability that people don’t – when they’re getting out of the military they’ve been doing it for a while, and they don’t realize that it is a skillset that is needed in the civilian world. So many people go right into defense contracting and there’s a plethora of opportunities in industry and probably elsewhere in the US for young folks or older folks like me to jump into and make a difference.
Donovan: Yeah, that’s great. Hopefully if someone out there hears this and can hear your story – your success in the military and then being able to come out and transition to other stuff. Hopefully that gives the some hope and some direction on what they can do too.
John: I hope so, and again, I don’t know where this is all going, but if any veteran ever wants to talk, by all means I hope they can have my number, whatever the case may be or email. However that works. I’m always available to discuss.
Donovan: I’m sure if anyone is interested in getting a dust collector you’d be interested in talking about that too.
John: In a heartbeat.
Donovan: There you go. So, John, you have your own website, right?
John: I do.
Donovan: What’s your company’s website?
John:semperindustrialsolutions.com. The name of the company is Semper Fi Industrial Solutions. I took the ‘Fi’ out to shorten it. It’s been kind of comical that it’s still a pretty long email and website address.
Donovan: There you go. If you’re looking to get a hold of John, or you just want to thank him for his service, there’s a good way to do it. You can reach out to him that way. Also, if you need anything in that California area, feel free to reach out to us at Imperial Systems. We’ll get you in touch with him. John, do you have any last words of encouragement for any veterans that are out there or anybody who is serving right now?
John: No, just that I’m incredible humbled and proud to be with them and to know them and I truly appreciate their service and that’s what the 11th is about. So, by all means, I just want to say thank you.
Donovan: All of us here, our team at Imperial Systems want to thank you personally for what you’ve done in serving our country, and thank everyone else out there who has served our country and put the time in. We just want to say thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Tune in next time, and who knows what we’ll have up.
John: I look forward to it. Thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Job’s Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
This episode of the Dusty Jobs Podcast features our very own Charlie Miller. With almost 50 years of experience Charlie details the history of coming up in the business and how he got to Imperial Systems. He also goes over a brief history of Dust collection and the invention of the baghouse. Charlie also gives us his insight on what the current state of dust collection is as well as what we might see in the future.
Dusty Jobs Podcast Episode 10 – History of Dust Collection with Charlie Miller
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Welcome to another Imperial Systems podcast. Thanks for joining us today. With us today is Charlie Miller. How are you doing today Charlie?
Charlie: I’m doing just fine. How about yourself?
Donovan: I’m doing great. Charlie is one of our sales engineers here at Imperial Systems and he has been doing this for – man, how long have you been doing this now Charlie?
Charlie: I started in 1971, so this is my 49th year.
Donovan: 49th year. Now Charlie is, I would say, our most senior and veteran sales person here. He has a lot of knowledge and experience with the industry. We’re here today just to learn a little bit more about dust history, where it’s come from, and little bit about the dust collection industry, a little bit of dust history on that. Let’s hear a little bit about Charlie’s history. Charlie, tell us a little big about yourself. Tell us how you go started in dust collection. What’s your story? Where did this whole journey begin for you?
Charlie: Well, I’m a Pittsburgh boy. I grew up here, and right after I graduated from high school I moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and I started working for a company. It’s actually was a company headquartered here in Pittsburgh that had a very small division in Cincinnati that was their air systems division. They designed and made building products, ventilation products, roof ventilations, powered ventilators, powered louvers, things like that.
Donovan: What were you doing there? What were you doing for those guys? What did you start out doing?
Charlie: I started out in the shop. I was in the sheet metal union. I started on the shop floor. I operated a press brake and a shear. I spent a lot of time cutting louver blades and forming louver blades.
Donovan: Still have all your fingers?
Charlie: Yeah, I was pretty careful about that. I worked form them for, oh, I don’t know, maybe a year or year and a half. I’d always liked drafting and I expressed a desire to join their drafting department. They asked me, “How much drafting experience do you have?”
I said, “I took a couple classes in high school, things like that.”
So, they said, “We do have an opening in drafting and we can put you in there but we want you to go to the community college and take a few more drafting classes.” I agreed to do that. So I started in their drafting department. That’s actually when I started going to college by the way because I was right out of high school when I moved to Cincinnati. So, I went to the university of Cincinnati, and took a few drafting classes and decided I wanted to go on. So I got into their engineering program while I was there. I actually spent ten years at night college getting my engineering degree.
Donovan: Oh, wow. So this was while you were working as a draftsman, and then you were doing your education at night?
Charlie: That was when I started, yes. Anyway, I worked for that company for, oh, about nine years. The economy took a downturn, and I was laid off. So, I was laid off for a little while I got picked up by another company in Cincinnati, Kirk & Blum, which at the time was one of the biggest sheet metal contractors in the nation. There were only a few that were bigger than them, and I think Kirk & Blum were in the top three. I started in their engineering department on the board making drawings, making systems drawings. Up until that time I didn’t know much about system work. I didn’t know anything. So I was fortunate to work with a couple of senior design people who actually taught me the correct way to design dust collection systems.
Donovan: So you went from just kind of working on parts and pieces of different systems to actually putting the whole system together?
Charlie: That’s correct.
Donovan: You help us out with a lot of that here.
Charlie: Well, I try.
Donovan: Well, I know everybody here really appreciates your knowledge and experience in that realm. We’re glad to have you on. So after Kirk & Blum did you end up here?
Charlie: Well, I was with Kirk & Blum, I’m not sure how long I worked for them in their engineering department. Kirk & Blum liked to hire internally, okay? At the time I didn’t know it, but they had one of their senior sales engineers didn’t have very good health. He told them that he was going to retire. So they approached me and asked me if I would be willing to work with this gentleman and start making sales calls with him because they wanted to groom me for a sales position. I said, “Well, yeah, I’d love to do that.” At the time I didn’t know that this gentleman was not in good health. I didn’t know he was retiring. I didn’t know any of that stuff. I just knew I was going to get out and start looking at jobs and help him do some quoting.
So, about six weeks of that I find out I was being promoted into sales and this gentleman was leaving. Again, with that I was very fortunate to work with some very, very senior sales engineers that had been in the business for a long, long time. Kirk & Blum being the company that it was actually it was a global company because they had sales, we had sales in Europe. I know one of the jobs I worked on was in Saudi Arabia. They didn’t have plants in the other countries. They sold everything domestically. They sold all over the world.
Donovan: So you’ve had work that are jobs you’ve sold, jobs you’ve worked on that’s just everywhere now, huh?
Charlie: Yeah, a little bit.
Donovan: That’s fun. A little bit of Charlie all over the world.
Charlie: Yeah, not really all over the world, but there are a few over there. I know I have some systems we put in in Saudi Arabia for the Air Force base over there. Theres a few other places. I think we sold some equipment that went over to Korea.
Donovan: Now, the story I heard about how you came on with us is Jeremiah ended up bidding against you on a job and was so impressed with your quote, and I think he lost to you. He lost the job to you and then you ended up coming on board with us. He kept harassing you to come be a salesman for us. Does that sound about right or am I…
Charlie: That’s almost correct, up until the point that you said Jeremiah lost the job because Jeremiah won the job.
Donovan: Oh, he won the job!
Charlie: He won the job, but everything else is true. Jeremiah had somehow saw my quote while he was at the customer’s. I don’t exactly know how that happened, but he said that he got so mad reading my quote that he was going to hire me. You have to remember, this was back ten years ago, and Imperial Systems ten years ago was not the Imperial Systems we have today. Jeremiah was selling. We had another guy here that actually started in the shop and was selling. He wasn’t doing systems, he was just helping out. Then you had Chalmer. Chalmer was selling. I was just stretched to the limit. He was trying to run his company and he was out there traveling. I think he wanted to hire me mainly because his wife was getting a little upset with him being on the road so much.
So he called me at Kirk & Blum and offered me a position. On his first call I thought, ‘This is some kind of joke.’ Yeah, yeah, he’s just another head hunter. Okay, I’ll think about it. Then he called me back a second time and asked me about it, and I said, “Well, I don’t know. Let me think about it.” I actually brushed him off a couple times. Well, the third time he called me I said, “Well, this guy’s really serious.” At the time I was actually thinking about early retirement because I really didn’t like the direction that Kirk & Blum was going in. The Blum family had sold the company to CECO, and I just didn’t like it after it wasn’t a family company anymore. I didn’t like the feel. It was like the employees didn’t really matter anymore.
So, I was actually thinking about retiring. Coming up here to Imperial was like going back home. I did have some things that I had to worry about because my daughters lived with me. Although they were grown, mature adult women they still lived in my house and I had to make sure they were happy with everything before I agreed to coming up here. So, we talked it over and my daughters said, “Go for it.” I came up and met with Jeremiah. We had a good conversation. I was a little dismayed when I first got here because, let’s face it, Imperial Systems wasn’t real impressive, you know?
Donovan: We were little back then, huh?
Charlie: The old plant wasn’t real impressive, and that was before the expansion, so it was really tiny. I went in and I met the people and I liked Jeremiah immediately, especially when I found out that he was a bike rider. So I accepted the position, and I came and worked for him.
Donovan: And now we’re here.
Charlie: And now we’ve grown tremendously since I’ve started. It’s amazing how much we’ve grown in ten short years.
Donovan: Are you saying that’s because of you, Charlie?
Charlie: No, no, no. I’m not saying that at all. I give all credit to upper management and the foresight they had to do what they did.
Donovan: I think we’ve put a pretty good team together here.
Charlie: I think we have an excellent team together. I think the salesmen we have now, on board are very knowledgable and they do a really fine job.
Donovan: Yeah, I would agree. Needless to say, that definitely means that you have a lot of knowledge in this industry. You have been doing this for a long time and today, what we’re really going to dig into now is try to help us understand how this whole thing got started. I mean, dust collection has been around for how long now?
Charlie: Well, dust collection really grew up with the industrial revolution, which started right after the Civil War. Industry started booming in this country. Railroads, mining, oil, and especially in this area with being the home of the oil industry. Companies just started exploding all over the place. The very first dust collectors that were designed were cyclones. The very first cyclone was designed by a guy named John Finch, I believe his name is, in 1885. He had a company in New York called The Knickerbocker Company. It was a textile mill. He designed the very first cyclone, and patented it for his business. By 1900, cyclones were widely used everywhere. They were like a staple in the industry. That remained the best technology that was available up until the early 20s when the first fabric filter dust collector was designed and patented by a guy in Germany. I think his name was Wilhelm Beth, and he designed the first – he patented three designs for shaker dust collectors.
Donovan: Gotcha. So we’re talking prior to this we have the cyclone, which basically is just a tube that circulates the air around and as it circulates around the heavy dust falls out of the bottom, right?
Charlie: Yes.
Donovan: Maybe some particulate, smaller dust makes it back out, but for all the heavy stuff it goes to the bottom. Then the gentleman form Germany took it one step further, right? That’s what happened next.
Charlie: Well, yeah. It was a completely different design. A cyclone works just the way it sounds. You have a little mini cyclone inside that housing and the faster the air spins it throws the dust out until it reaches a vortex point at the bottom and then a second a spiral turns up the middle and comes out the top. Those cyclones are great for, I don’t want to say coarse, but down to about 20 microns they’re pretty efficient.
Donovan: They still hold their place in a lot of dust collection today. We still build them here. It’s not like they became obsolete, but more dust collection came about.
Charlie: They’re good. They’re inexpensive dust collection devices where you don’t need really, really fine filtration. If you’re discharging outside, I mean, you can’t see 20 microns.
Donovan: That’s very small.
Charlie: The fabric filter actually brought the dust into a compartment and passed the air through a fabric media that separated the dust from the air stream and then the air streamed on the other side of the filters. The shakers would shake the dust off and it would fall down into a hopper to be discharged.
Donovan: Now, this is where the term “baghouse” comes from, right? This is where baghouse started, and a lot of people still call all dust collectors a baghouse, but this is really where it got started, right?
Charlie: That’s pretty much correct, yes. That what where the term came from.
Donovan: It’s like a housing with a bunch of bags sticking down out of it.
Charlie: That’s right. Of course, over the years his design was improved upon. A lot of people got into the game. You know how many different manufacturers we have for dust collectors. But the filters improved. They got more media in them. They got finer weaves. They just got more efficient. The next evolution of the dust collector was not until the early 1970s when the first cartridge collector was developed. With a cartridge collector, they just took a baghouse dust collector, replaced the fabric filters with a cartridge media. The main advantage I guess to the cartridge collector is that the filtration is much, much finer than the baghouse.
Donovan: So it allows you to get even more dust out of the air.
Charlie: That’s correct. It’s like our CMAXX filters are efficient down to .3 microns. That’s real small.
Donovan: That’s like taking fume out of the air. That’s very small.
Charlie: Yes it is. Our CMAXX is great for fume systems. It’s great for weld smoke or plasma smoke or anything like that. It’s a great collector for that.
Donovan: So who was the first person to actually come up with this whole cartridge idea?
Charlie: Oh, do you really want me to tell you that?
Donovan: You can say it, it’s alright.
Charlie: The first cartridge collector was developed by Torit. They’re the monster name in the industry.
Donovan: I think a lot of people still refer to any dust collector with that name. It’s kind of like a Kleenex brand.
Charlie: That’s exactly right. They’ll say, “Hey, can you come up and look at our Torit?” And then I find out its something besides a Torit.
Donovan: Right, and it could be even a baghouse or a cyclone, and people call them all Torits. Sorry, didn’t mean to sidetrack you there. Go ahead. Keep going.
Charlie: That’s okay. I’m old. I forgot where we were going. Ask me another question.
Donovan: Well, we were talking about how the Torits were the first ones to come out with it, but their style was a vertical collector, right? Or a horizontal collector?
Charlie: That’s correct. Their style was a horizontal collector. They still tout that as the best way to arrange them and I disagree, because you know how they work. The dust comes down and falls on them and just lays up there. They lose, you know, thirty percent of their efficiency right off the bat.
Donovan: When you stack the filters on top of each other it cascades down onto the next filter, onto the next filter, onto the next filter before it reaches the hopper. So your top filter goes on to the second filter, on to the third filter until it reaches the bottom. It does allow you have a little bit of a smaller footprint, though, when you’re having it as it does allow you to go vertical with it. I know that’s one of the differences between them. After that style came out, after the horizontal style came out on the cartridge collector now we move to a collector style that’s a little more like what we have, is that right?
Charlie: Yeah, that’s pretty correct. It’s amazing how many people copied Torit on a horizontal style filter. Ours, of course, is a vertical filter. So, the dust comes up from the bottom. It doesn’t come down from the top. Theres no way you lose any filtration surface when its collecting the dust. So, personally, I think that the vertical cartridge is a superior arrangement for the filters.
Donovan: Now, I was thinking about this too, Charlie. As things progress, you said the first baghouses were shaker styles where they actually took the bags and kind of shook them and that’s how it tried to knock the dust off. Even that has changed over the years. Even that style and way of cleaning those cartridges and filters, baghouse filters, that has changed too, right? We have a lot of different techniques for that now.
Charlie: Most dust collectors today use compressed air. They use a tank on their collector that stores compressed air. They’ll have tube sheets that blast air down into the filters to clean them off. That’s the way our CMAXX works. That’s the way most collectors work today. Shakers really are not…I mean, they’re still being made, but they’re not as prevalent today as collectors using compressed air.
Donovan: So even the baghouses are using compressed air these days?
Charlie: Yes. Now, our BRF uses compressed air – our medium pressure BRF uses compressed air, but it has it’s own PD pump to provide that so there’s no plant air that’s needed to work that.
Donovan: It’s a whole system on it’s own. So you don’t have to worry about drawing air out of your system in your plant and drawing away from other things that you’re using it for.
Charlie: There are areas where the baghouse, our BRF, is a better solution than the cartridge. Some of the things when we look at a job, we have to see what is the best technology here. Now our CMAXX is always going to be our flagship. That’s our number one collector. Unlike some of our competitors that make cartridge collectors, they don’t have a baghouse to go to. They’ll push their cartridge collector for anything. Whereas Imperial will say, “Well, this application really isn’t good for a cartridge collector. We really should be putting a BRF on it.”
Donovan: I have seen too that we got the whole way back to the cyclone, which is the original, and sometimes you need not just one solution, but multiple solutions. I’ve seen that too where a cyclone will go in front of a baghouse or in front of a cartridge collector, right? That’s another thing. So it’s interesting that while cartridge collectors and things have changed, that technology is still valid and that idea is still good in certain settings where you’ll have a cyclone and then put it into a baghouse.
Charlie: You see that a lot in recycling plants. Tire shredders, things like that, where you don’t want all that heavy fluff from the tires that are being shredded to go into your filters because that will clog up a dust collector, and will clog up the filter media almost immediately. So we always put a cyclone in front of our BRF on recycling jobs.
Donovan: So it’s almost a pre-filter almost. It helps with the heavy dropout on that, right?
Charlie: That’s true. It gets the bulky stuff out of the airstream so only the fine dust – and we’ve already talked about it. The cyclone is not really a high efficiency filtration system, but it is good to remove the bulky stuff and then the finer dust can go out of the top and go through our more efficient dust collectors.
Donovan: So, Charlie, here’s my question now. We’ve talked about where dust collectors have come from. We’ve seen a lot of progression through the years. We’d like to think, and we often say that right now the CMAXX is pretty state of the art. We’ve done a lot of things to it to make a great dust collector that has a lot of features and benefits. Where do you think the future of dust collection – well, actually we forgot a whole subject.
Charlie: What was that?
Donovan: Now, we’ve got into explosive dust more recently. That has been the latest in dust collection. You’ve been in the industry during that time frame where it has really become a concern, right?
Charlie: Yeah, well, you know the whole thing about the safety. We can go back before that. The first dust collection systems weren’t really designed with worker safety in mind, or really the environment in mind. They were more just to make somebody’s process more profitable. It wasn’t until 1970 that we had OSHA or the EPA which are both government agencies that oversee worker safety in OSHA and the EPA is the Environmental Protection Agency that protects the environment. Those were the two big laws that were passed that really helped our industry because companies were now being forced to worry about worker’s health and keeping a clean environment for them and an area that was…
Donovan: Safe
Charlie: Safe, exactly. And the same thing with the EPA. People, before the EPA, were just dumping stuff outside right into the environment. So those two laws themselves helped tremendously. The third thing that came along was today’s concern about explosion prevention. That’s gotten more stringent over the years. What triggered that was the Imperial System explosion in 2008.
Charlie: Yeah, well, we had explosions all along but it was never thrust in to the forefront of the American people. Flour plants exploded all the time, but until that explosion where they saw fourteen people dead and over forty injured, then they decided something had to be done. That’s when they started making the NFPA guidelines more than guidelines. The NFPA laws came on, and you had to be compliant.
Donovan: It keeps betting better for the worker, which creates a better environment. In the end, that’s good for everybody.
Charlie: The newest legislation that’s out there now requiring people to get a dust hazard analysis.
Donovan: Which we’ve talked about on here, so if you guys aren’t familiar with dust hazard analysis, go back, listen to one of our previous episodes. We have that information. You can check that out. Sorry, keep going Charlie.
Charlie: Things are going to keep progressing. The laws are going to change. Somethings going to come around where they have to do something else. The EPA guidelines are actually laws I guess. They change every couple years. They revise it and change something on it.
Donovan: They’re always trying to make it safer. Make it better for the worker and that’s one of our missions here too.
Charlie: Absolutely.
Donovan: We’re trying to create a healthy environment for those people and I think the future of our company is to continue to try to do that with any innovation and any way we can do that.
Charlie: And you can just look at our product line and the fact that we’ve done all the stringent testing we’ve done on our collector. We have the Rhino Drum now, and all the options we have for keeping our equipment safe from an explosion. These are things that are important. If you have a catastrophic failure some place, and one of your employees is maimed or killed, what’s it going to cost to you? You can’t put a cost to that. You can’t put a price to that. So, you know, the explosion stuff is very, very important and almost all the dusts are explosive these days, unless you’ve got rock.
Donovan: It’s always good to have that tested and checked to make sure you know what you’re dealing with and to help create a safe environment to for those who are working. Is that where you see the future of dust collection going? Continue with safety?
Charlie: I think somewhere, eventually, they’ll develop a transporter that will take the dust and just zap it someplace into space.
Donovan: There you go. Straight out of the building.
Charlie: Now you know my Star Trek background.
Donovan: Well, Charlie, thanks for coming on. Thanks for giving us your knowledge. Thanks for sharing you past experience in your own life and your past experience with dust collection. I just want to say if anyone has any questions or anything else, maybe we’ll try to have Charlie on again to answer some questions. You can always email them to us. We’ll catch you next time.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
