Episode 5: 80 Years of Innovations and Their Impact on the HVAC Duct and Fittings Fabrication Industry

Hello everyone. I’m John Welty, and welcome to Shop Talk with Mestek Machinery. In today’s podcast, I’m joined by Mike Bailey and David Daw, and we’ll be talking about innovations that have been introduced in the HVAC duct and fittings fabrication industry over the last 80 years or so, many of which were introduced by Mestek Machinery and our brands, and how they’ve impacted the industry.

Mike, can you kick this off?

Yeah. This is one of the neater topics, I think, that innovation that started in 1938 by the Lockformer Company, up until 2022, basically almost every other year, every five years, every decade, showing innovation that this company’s been able to the duct fabrication world to improve that fabrication for the contractors, themselves.

David can speak to the 1938 innovation. I think he was around then, and I’ll speak more like to the 2000s, and that’s how this is going to work.

Thank you for dating me, Michael. Thank you here. So not quite 1938, but as I’ve been told, a gentleman by the name of George Lamberson, only one or two people in my 50 years in this industry I ever redressed by the mister. He, I believe he and Harley Flagler at some point from Flagler Machinery, or whatever the name of the company was, split off. And he formed Lockformer in 1938. And within the year, it developed the first, I believe Pittsburgh?

Yes.

Pittsburgh roll former. That’s really when it started.

Yes. Yeah. And then that evolved over to, what I believe would be coil processing, which you could talk to, especially with your family.

Not until much later, though.

It was much later. But yeah, that’s the next big step, how we got into the coil processing. With how your grandfather, uncles and father was involved in that, I think in the 1950s, maybe?

Yeah. I don’t know exactly when they started making the duct lines. He actually started with a downspout gutter machine, which is where Art Welty first started, because he was installing it. And he’d build a machine in order to make his own gutter, just to save himself labor. Right?

And then later, started selling that and put a lot of people in the business, entrepreneurs by setting them up with a truck, coil stand, and a machine that could produce gutter right out of the back of their trucks.

Well, what-

That’s where that started. Now, where it made the transition to the duct lines, I’m a little fuzzy on that myself.

Well, during the ’40s and during the war, and then into the late ’40s, is primarily, if I’m not mistaking, heating that they were concerned for. There wasn’t much central air at the time, but there was some ducting of furnace.

But it wasn’t until air conditioning really took off after World War II, that really started moving to develop this. And I believe, it was again, it was all sheet stock up through the 1950s. But it wasn’t … I got into this industry 1968, 1969. I think the first coil processing machine for making, for duct work, was about maybe ’65, ’66.

That would be my guess.

Somewhere in then, and then things started to change.

That was primarily 48 inch wide.

It was all 48. Because when I first started in traveling to Grittendale in ’70, ’69, ’70, most of it was four foot metal. In fact, I was in a garage at Cedar Sinai’s Hospital-

So you’re talking about a four foot wide cool?

Four. Yeah. Well, for the length of duct. I was in Cedar Sinai’s garage here about two weeks ago, and it was four foot duct. I mean, it was just really interesting. And so, you can almost date when this building was built by that. But it was mostly 48, and the switch to five foot coil started around 1970, give or take.

And so, a lot of shops started up with just handling sheets first. I mean, even today, some small shops will start off with handling sheets, because that’s the entry level of the equipment and the investment, the capital investment.

Sure. Yeah.

And then, at what point does it progress? That’s where you see on … When we talk about innovation over time, coil line didn’t even exist prior to that point in time, but then it still became an option as a company was growing. So it’s not just innovation in the industry, it was also innovation for a company, each of the customers, right?

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:04:56]. The biggest innovation was Engel Shopmaster, somewhere in the 1950s. Every contractor in the world had that. Now, at that point in time, Engel was a standalone company, now part of our family. But the Shopmaster was the machine prior coil.

That pulled metal off of a coil?

No. Just sheet stock. [crosstalk 00:05:16]-

Oh, that was sheet also?

It would not. It would shear. It was all sheets. It was all manual.

Manual.

Oh, okay.

I believe that was a Herb Fisher design, going back that late, maybe now?

It could’ve been … What was … Engel. Herb may have been involved, but Engel, and I forgot the guy’s name who started Engel, something Engel, he was the one that I believe was it Ed, but it could’ve been Herb.

But it seems like the history I’ve been told, that’s what developed into the coil. It was the Shopmaster, then the coil line.

Correct.

And the coil line, in that early day, was much different than what it is today. Right? They didn’t do any insulation.

Correct. Not in the beginning.

There wasn’t pinning at the early time?

No.

Did it start as just punching and notching from a coil and stop there?

Yeah, just need to stop so you can test the link.

So it’s just what they call, a starter line today?

Yes, what they call a front end starter line today. And then over time that evolved, the pin became available, insulation became available. Then the bigger one was 1982, 3, 4? Transverse duct connector.

But there was a … There’s an interesting story here because Welty Way, at the time, was only doing the coil processing and the notching. They did not do any roll forming. And-

Yeah. That was all being done at Lockformer.

All being done at Lockformer. And Welty joined forces with George Lamberson at Lockformer, Leo Gayle, engineering over there, and Bill Truska, head of sales. They joined together with Cutie Miskell at Welty, and had a … I don’t know in terms of … How it was in finance, but actually, Welty could take an order for a new line and sell the lock from a part, and they’d bought it from Lockformer. Well, Lockformer could do it themselves, too.

But it was a joint effort between Lockformer’s roll forming ability and Welty’s coil processing. And they merged that together, which was the first really significant line. Again, 1970, ’71.

But the insulation that came in ’73, one of the biggest problems was adding insulation onto that. That was an interesting story because they tried to join forces with Lockformer again, to do what became the Insomatic and Lockformer backed out of it because George Lamberson was afraid of selling a machine that used solid-based adhesives, and a fire problem on the line. Backed out of it and dumped it back into Welty. Roger Welty went out and visited a contractor in Murfreesberg, Tennessee, that had actually developed it, that machine.

But I could see it in 1970, and told Roger, “You ought to go down and take a look at this.” He bought the rights of the machine, and it’s basically not much changed since.

Interesting.

That’s how that whole thing came together. And then, really, not much between maybe the mid-’70s until the little TDC after that.

Yeah. The mid-’80s was game-changing for two reasons, from what I understand. One was the rolled on flange, TDC, TDF connector. But I think the more industry changing revolutionary tool was the plasma cutter.

Absolutely.

That changed the entire industry for a lot of reasons. Automation was one. Craft was another. It started to take craft out of the industry because it did everything for you as far as downloading, it’d cut sheets, and numeric designs, things of that nature.

And when you [crosstalk 00:08:37]. When you say craft, you’re talking about the actual snipping of the metal and that trade skill?

Yeah. Being able to layout a fitting. If you find somebody today, that can do that, he’s retired.

Yeah. No. We recently, I was talk … I don’t remember who it was. I had a guy in the lobby at the factory in Iowa. There’s a bunch of different fittings in the lobby there. They were talking about that. “This doesn’t look that complicated.” And I’m like, “If you unfolded this, you would not recognize what you are looking at.”

When you traveled the shops, you’d see patterns, hundreds.

And they’re all arra … The shape is a difficult to draw and a difficult to scribe out shape and cut. It takes a lot of skill.

There’s a lot of geometry.

And there’s a lot of geometry involved in that.

There’s a lot of … Yeah.

When we talked about, in a previous podcast, I think we discussed about the stickers. The stickers were putting some of that knowledge and the information right there, that could hand to the guy in the shop in order to make that thing. And then, now talking about the place, the plasma table in the ’80s, it then cut. Instead of just giving you a sticker, it actually cut the shape right out of the steel. Is that right?

Correct. Correct, from a download, from a cam.

Not to belabor this, but the ’80s, if you look back on the past 50 years, was definitely the decade. You had the first slide on and then TDC for your joint connections. Then you added the plasma cutting tables.

You actually … Another very big significant was the development of water-based adhesives. It was all solvent-based at the time, which was had environmental issues, fire problems on the line. And then, it went to water-based.

And then the last thing, again, was the introduction of the computerized cam cad systems. So those were four huge events that changed this industry.

Yeah, and I think that created some issues to with architects and engineers when it came to roll flange versus sub long flange. There was a lot of arguments, you could say about, between building owners and architects, as to which one to specify and use.

And SMACNA decided to make a choice on that in 1995, and implemented the roll on flange into the DCS, which also implemented tie rod construction for mid-panel, end panel reinforcement, which cleaned everything up. It really did from a duct construction.

Duct construction.

What were they connecting the duct with prior to that?

It would be slip on flange, could be duct bait.

Like a duct [crosstalk 00:10:51]-

Or TDC (Transverse Duct Connector), TDF (Transverse Duct Flange). Roll formed flange. That was the constant battle, which one was going to be spec’d and which one was better and which one was going to be used. Owners and architects and building owners, they all argued about it.

I think, the story I heard, SMACNA finally had to make a decision, and they made that decision to go with the Lockformer TDC, rolled form flange, and mid-panel, end panel tie rod construction.

Now, has the design of that flange changed much since then, or has that pretty much stayed the same?

No. The functional criteria is the same. We still use the same data as far as specifications that we tested with back in ’85, I would think. Something like that.

If somebody had told me when I first started in this industry, if you look at the original or the first SMACNA manual … DCS manual I have is ’75, and if you look at a number of what they call, T-connections or transverse connections, it’s seven or eight of them.

And if you’d have told me today, around the world there’s one connection, 35mm flange, I never, never, I don’t believe that, never. But there was a war, for very selfish reasons, between the use of a slide on which would proprietary products, and TDC, TDF which was basically a contractor fab product. This gets into a much deeper story, but you’re right. It became a problem because specifications weren’t in the SMACNA duct construction standards. SMACNA has had a history of not approving proprietary products.

So the workaround that, was to go out and test their own. It happened to be TDC, but the test, the rolled on flange and then re-rating them as their own joint, and that did solve the problem. Just completely solved it.

Interesting.

Then we got into 2000s, and now we’re talking about water jets cutting insulation. We’re talking about coil lines are highly automated. Just a lot more innovation in 2000, up to date, 2022.

When I look at it, and I’m proud to be associated with it, is this company has been part of that innovation or the innovation world, the duct fabrication, since 1938, and they just never stopped. They had some problems. They had issues, right? But it just never really stopped them. So I’m proud to have that kind of team, that’s still thinking and innovative. David’s been a big part of that as well. There’s more to come. Right?

So we always look at it, we have to continue to innovate. We have to continue to bring new products to the industry for us to be viable, to be sustainable.

Yeah. The development of the corner machines in the ’90s, it saved a lot of time. But Mike’s right, I can only think of maybe one product that was not really, in my 50 years, going back to the … Well, the Shopmaster was an Engel product, but that’s now a part of Mestek group.

But if you look at the Mestek group today, I can only think of one product that was not of any significance, that was not developed by this company and the individual brands. Up until today.

Yeah. It’s definitely a broad family with a single focus.

When you look at the development of the CAM side, it started out with a scribing machine from CTI, morphed into a plasma cutting, and the technology for laser at that time, was not compatible with our industry. It wasn’t until the addition of the fiber laser, which again, Lockformer picked up and brought the first viable laser machine. There are other, what they call, lights out lasers, that some contractors use, but the ability to coil feed laser table was a huge game-changer, that’s just recent, very recent.

Yeah. I think that segue’s to another podcast we’ll talk about in the future, is some of that technology when it comes to water pick cutting for insulation only. And then now, the fiber laser for HVAC duct manufacturing. It’s quite neat to see how it evolved.

That sounds interesting. I’m looking forward to that. Well, that looks like a good place to stop for today. On behalf of Mike Bailey and David Daw, I’m John Welty and thank you for joining us for Shop Talk with Mestek Machinery.