How the Fiber Laser Made Its Way into the HVAC Duct and Fittings Fabrication Industry

Welcome and thank you for joining us for Shop Talk with Mestek Machinery. I’m John Welty, and I’m here with David Daw and Mike Bailey. Today, we’re going to be talking about the development of fiber laser for HVAC duct fabrication and how it became accepted over time. Guys, what can you tell me about that?

Well, I’ll take the beginning. I remember the ASHRAE show in Chicago, 1981. We had a scribing machine that was, again, I think it mentioned this in the CAM development, but it was developed by CTI Construction Technology, out of Elmsford, New York. And all it did was nest the fittings onto a four by 10, five, eight piece of sheet metal that didn’t cut it, but it scribed a pattern on nesting the fittings, which back, manually would be done with these patterns and layouts by an operator. But not only it was a fast, but it nested the fittings, saving all kinds of scrap. The next step in this was to add a laser that would cut it, and that was done about a year later. So timelines were ’81 and this was a 250 or $240,000 machine, which was a lot of money. It’s still a lot of money.

That was just the describing part. The addition of the laser was another 150. So you had about a $400,000 investment. They sold at least three, that I know of, maybe four. And I remember Allied Sheet Metal in Seattle that got the first laser attachment. It never worked. The sensitivity of the lasers and the cut. Part of the problem, as I understand, was the other machines that were on the floor, duct lines and press brakes were giving a vibration, that it would shut off and disturb the cut. So some contractors would actually cut and isolate with a new concrete slab to separate the laser from the cutting table. It still didn’t work.

So ultimately, all four or five of these machines just crashed, the whole system crashed under its own weight. There are some personalities involved, Dick Levine who ran construction technology was an interesting character. But what he didn’t know and what the industry didn’t know, is that about the same time, there was a company out of Boston, Massachusetts called Cybermation, which was developing a plasma cutting process. And when they hit the market in ’82 with $140,000 a table, that was it. It was over. So that initial laser cutting actually started in the early eighties and because of technology and other issues, it just never took off. And the industry thought it died for decades until 2010, was it?

’14, ’15 is when we started working on the project.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

It was a process, fiber laser, and how we were going to do this, and what we thought was the best tool for the industry. And keep it in mind, this was developed for the light gauge industry. Somewhere between the 10 gauge and 26 gauge. And basically for the sheet metal fabricators, contractors, and mechanical contractors. So it was specific in its designed to our industry. But safety’s one thing, this is a fiber laser that if not protected, certainly could be a harmful tool. So for about two and a half years, we went through the process with the FDA. And finally, we hired a consultant, they came in and spent a year with us. We developed a shroud to enclose the cutting head. Basically that shroud had safety circuitry built in. That shroud came off the metal, well within the 16th, the whole machine was shut down. So you physically could not see that fiber laser. So as we moved along with that, what was important was we were rewarded an accession number from FDA, and that’s huge.

Michael, explain why the FDA. I couldn’t get my head around this when it was told to me we needed an FDA approval for a sheet metal machine.

Well, you had to have safety, and OSHA was part of that. And OSHA, from my understanding actually, adheres to FDA. So we had the one year consultant come in and work with us on the machine. And Mestek’s a pretty big company and they’re safety minded for sure. We’re not going to put any tools in our customers hands that could cause a safety issue.

And the risk, first thing that comes to mind would be blindness.

Yes.

Okay.

Correct. So when we were awarded the FDA accession number, now it’s time to go. And I can remember getting a call from the president of the company, he says, “Mike, it’s time to get one out there.” I happened to be coming out of a council meeting in Dallas, Texas from a Smack council meeting, and me and another contractor were talking about this fiber laser and the guy in the front seat was another contractor and he heard about it and says, “When can I see it?” And I’m like, “Whenever you want.” And he came to Chicago and then within 15 minutes he wrote a check.

That was at the ASHRAE show in Chicago?

No, it was just at the factory in Chicago.

Okay.

So now, my thought process was, okay, if we can get one, in one major marketplace, then maybe we’ll get two in another major marketplace and we’ll continue to move on in that format. And that’s what happened. And it just kind of went viral through the SMACNA community. It went from Indianapolis, to Boston, to Atlanta, to Seattle, LA, all over the country. So it’s not concentrated in just one market in the country, but it’s become widely accepted. We still have a need for the plasma cutter, don’t get me wrong. When you look at your business and you’re trying to figure out duct construction in general, what type of work am I doing? Is it more labor? Or is it more straight duct intense? Or is it more fitting intense? And some of the bigger contractors who have these tighter areas to build in are doing a lot of fittings. And that’s where this machine plays out because it does cut up to three times faster than the plasma cutter. It eliminates the exhaust, as far as the exhaust from a plasma cutter, which is huge for these contractors because that’s a mess.

And a safety concern of itself.

Safety concern. The Clean Air Act, the bottom of these parts are clean. You don’t have to wipe and clean them.

Well, it has an effect on how it ages the equipment that you’re passing the fittings through for roll forming and that sort of stuff also, because there’s a hardening of the edge with plasma that you don’t have with the laser.

Sure. Yeah, it’s cool to touch because that’s the interest guise on your downstream roll formers, that it’s a laser cut, so it’s a fine cut. So that does help with the downstream equipment as well. So there’s infinite things to look at when you’re looking at this fiber laser and why you should be curious about it. And then we talked in another segment earlier today about water jets and how we’re cutting insulation at 1200 inches a minute. Well, now we can match the metal cutting with the insulation cutting because a 24 gauge on this fiber laser, it’s about what we’re running, about 1100 inches a minute. So I’m getting my product through the shop quicker now. Production. And then the labor, that human element’s taken out it.

And face it, every owner’s going to tell you where he makes his money is the straight duct coil line, that’s where his money’s being made. Where he’s trying to limit liabilities is in the fitting area. And now that’s what we’re trying to do here, is we’re trying to get into these roll formers and get into the fabrication, almost three times faster than we once would with the plasma. But we have a lot of different segments to the market that laser’s just not going to be applicable. And so we still know there’s a great need for plasma and we still have a lot of volume when it comes to tables going out around the country.

Mike, wasn’t the key was the development that what we developed was the shroud compared to a lights up model drum system, and that allowed to coil feet, which is the big innovation that we brought to this table.

Yeah, we call it open architecture. It’s the only fiber laser that can be actually coil fed. And most of your laser systems are sheet extractors with enclosures. Well, you can’t be labeling doing things and when it’s a sheet extractor, you got to wait for a sheet to come out and you got to put another sheet in and you got to remove parts and things of that nature.

So it’s not really just that you can coil feed it, they’re also wanting to interact with the cut parts while you’re still cutting other parts?

Yes.

Which doesn’t even come into play with these larger systems that are burning the whole sheet and then you eject the parts. This is actually something where they want to be working with it while it’s running, so there’s an interaction between the operator and the machine taking place.

Sure. Correct.

I actually did this time study because we only think what we know. I want to prove that theory out, so I did the same job on our 20 foot open architecture coil fed laser and it timed out around six minutes. I did the same job on a sheet extractor four kilowatt, another manufacturer laser with enclosure. It took 10 minutes. So it was almost double the time to do it with a sheet extracting system. But my point to that is, that’s the difference in our fiber laser, it is developed for the light gauge sheet metal-

I was going to say, because a lot of times those are for making thicker gauge.

Well, when I first walked over there, the operator says, “Mike, this is not duct machine. What are you doing?” I said, “I’m just wanting to prove my theory.”

Yeah.

And maybe I won’t prove my theory, but I want to know myself and I have a need to know what it looks like and what kind of timelines we’re looking at.

And so it’s solving a different problem.

It is.

Yeah.

As he finished the cut, he finished the job, he said, “I told you this wasn’t a duct machine.” I said, “I get it.” I said, “I understand that.” So it kind of proved out what I thought from a timeline study and a material handling study as well. So it was quite revealing what we found out that day. Again, I go into it and I’m thinking, I’m not sure if this is right for us, at the beginning, because there are all the manufacturers. And a lot of manufacturers of fiber laser and they’re really good at it.

Right.

They have engineers just geared toward that, and I was thinking, this could be good, or this could be a little problematic. But the president of my company said to me, “Mike, what if we didn’t try?” And here we sit. So good thing he did say that.

I might also add to you, that I was on board right from the beginning because I thought it was a strong distribution network that we had locked in since 1938, that other manufacturers we hired to jump into, which has been… Correct?

Are you taking credit for the fiber laser?

A little.

Okay.

Just a little.

All right.

It’s been good for us.

Yeah, the first one I saw was at an ASHRAE show in Chicago, which is why I was asking about that. And I remember they were running a demo and I had noticed the first thing is how fast it ran and how smooth it ran. And then the next thing I noticed was, oh, they must not be cutting because I don’t see any fitting. And I walked around, I was working the booth at the time, so I walked around because they had it on the edge of the booth to make sure everybody could see it. And I walked around the aisle so I could get closer to it, and then you could see the fittings. The cut was so clean that you… It was hard to see, there’s like no curve.

And David and I took a trip to Australia probably 10 years ago, and there was a high-end sheet extractor, self-enclosed CO2 laser at the time, cutting duct fittings. And I can remember that particular contractor saying to us, the only thing he did not take into regard was the fine cut. It was such a fine cut, it was actually cutting through the workers’ hand gloves on the really light gauge, 26 gauge. Now, since then it’s changed to fiber laser and things changed, but he was ahead of the game.

Yeah.

And that was 10 years ago.

Wow.

Yeah. So it was neat to see that.

Is that our buddy [inaudible 00:12:40]?

It was. So as we continue on, our thoughts are, if we could sell, produce, excuse me, 12 a year, that’s a good year. And so far, we’ve been able to track that.

So how many of these are out there now?

Around 41.

Okay.

And we’ve got about four or five in the hole right now. So it continues to gain strength in numbers. We’re starting to see more people that are knowledgeable about it, knowledge is key. So we’ll get more request in that manner. But again, I think there’s a market for it, no doubt. And there was a market for plasma cutters, so it’s good to have both.

Yeah.

I’m not sure if I got my answer correct on why the FDA, and correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I was told or understand that the first use of lasers was in eye surgery. And so that’s why the federal drug administration was really the US agency that licensed that out and it’s trickled all the way down into our industry.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Yeah, I don’t know that anything that affects the eye isn’t covered by that. I know there were some devices at CES at one point, I can’t remember how many years ago that was. They were looking at, instead of the smart glasses that Google had out for a while, they were going to actually project what they wanted you to see onto a contact lens on your eye, so that you would have an infinitely large, high definition screen in front of you anytime you wanted to. And of course, they were announcing their idea, but their problem was they had to wait for FDA approval because, of course, they’re going to be shining… Which was my first thought was, wow, that sounds scary, and awesome at the same time. But yeah, so I would imagine it’s along the same lines, it can very quickly become a health problem.

Yeah. We’ve also learned in the last six years if you do, we train these four per week, and if you follow the training regime, it’s what we call a safety lens, which is the consumable, which is about 50 bucks. You can get up to 60 days or more out of that safety lens, which now we’re finding out the consumable cost is that or less of a plasma cutter.

Right. Yeah.

And the neater thing about it as well, we’re just using compressed air, shop air. We’re not using gases and things of that nature.

Oh, really?

Yeah, so the cost of the operation is not very much, it’s the same footprint as a plasma cutter as well.

But that’s another example of the most recent one of Mestek and the brands taking a gamble on developing a lot of money into a machine that weren’t guaranteed this is going to be a saleable item. But again, not towing Mestek’s acumen, but we certainly have brought a lot to this industry.

Well, and I think we talked about this before when we were talking about the timeline of the industry, but you can see where that… Because of that focus of machine building with a focus on HVAC, that innovation’s being poured into to that specific industry that you get some of these things. Like for instance, the large laser tables that are the lights out situation, like you were talking about, whole different marketplace and those builders weren’t necessarily looking at this space.

Well, a water jet did not come up our-

Same thing with a water jet-

[inaudible 00:15:59] neither did a laser.

But there were water jets for cutting thick steel before that, but again, nobody was applying it to this industry. So you just see a focus on HVAC taking place, and that’s where some of this innovation comes out. What I think we’ve talked about before, was just that how much software is involved in this whole industry, that a lot of people just don’t don’t expect. Because you look up in the ceiling and you see duct work everywhere you go and the restaurants nowadays, they show the spiral duct and some of the stuff you see it painted now. But you don’t really realize how much goes into making that, it’s just tremendous.

Whenever I walk into an area where there’s exposed duct work up here and my wife’s with me, she looks up and she says, “What a boring industry.”

And my wife will nudge me and say, “Quit looking at the ceiling. You look weird.”

Well, it’s funny because my father was a manufactured rep for women’s shoes. Rack Room, he would say, is the reason we got through college, when he got that account show at North Carolina. But when he goes into a room, he looks down and when I go into a room I look up and that’s just what is. But I’ll go back and segue what you’re about earlier, the first gentleman, Joseph Lansdale, who bought the first laser and he had a self-enclosed, four kilowatt CO2 laser already in place. So again, as I go back, and I asked Joseph, I said, “Why?” And he said, “Because I had five dollar per pound duct work fittings, tying up my 50 dollars per pound self-enclosed, four kilowatt machine. I’ve done a lot of manufacturing work.” And he said, “It just doesn’t sense.” Over here is 50 dollars per hour, over here is five dollars and I’m putting five dollars per hour on the 50 dollar per hour machine.

So right tool for the right job.

Yeah, exactly. Different industries. So since then he has two. And we’ve seen that too, couple people have two of these just to completely get rid of the exhaust as well.

The one thing I’ve noticed… I’ve always been focused on the fabric duct side of things, but when I go into customers and installs and stuff and start to notice some of the other things that you guys have been involved with for your whole careers. The amount of ducting and the ventilation systems and everything that have to be added to a building in order to install the plasma.

Yeah.

We start to see that now, as we’re doing plasma in the fabric duct line that they have to run all of that to the duct line now. There’s a lot to it, and so you don’t have any of that with a laser table.

You still have the ducting. We still require a 3000 CFM fan.

Okay.

But it’s a zoned exhaust table, it’s got three zones to it.

Okay.

And it just produces zero exhaust. We’ve even run the machine without ducting on just to see and it’s zero exhaust.

Okay Yeah, because if you run plasma without the ducting, you’ve got a cloud going immediately.

Oh, yes. But we still-

Within an hour you’re coughing.

We still require that negative 3000 CFM.

Okay.

Yeah. And duct.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, but like you said, there’s lot of different customers out there that have a lot of different scenarios, so it’s just a wide range of options to get the right tool in the right hands.

Yeah, I think that’s why we’ve been very specific to say it’s geared and it’s been designed and developed for this industry we live in, which is the sheet metal contractor, duct fabricator, and mechanical contractor, light gauge sheet metal industry.

Yeah. Well, that’s fascinating. Looks like a good place to stop for the day. On behalf of Mike Bailey and David Daw, I’m John Welty. And again, thank you for joining us for Shop Talk with Mestek Machinery.