Chip and Coolant Management for Machining Automation with Blaser Swisslube and Hennig, Ep #9

[0:00] Speaker: I don’t understand why this one machine has that, like, funky, nasty smell. That particular operator chewed tobacco. Oh no. And his spittoon was the machine tool. It was a

Speaker 2: custom coolant. It was freaking nasty. You’d be

Speaker 3: shocked at the stories we could tell. Yeah,

Speaker: people, hey, the bathroom’s on the other side of the shop, right?

Speaker 4: Talent is scarce, experience even more so, driving up costs and sleepless nights. You may even think to yourself, can I do this? But this new era brings new technology and a different perspective on your operations. What you will hear will turn on a lightbulb in your mind. So you can turn out the lights in your shop.

Get ready to sleep soundly while your shop never stops. Get ready for making chips lights out with your hosts, Nick Golner and Jason Zanger.

[1:00] Speaker 5: But

Speaker: how do you know you’re at the IMTS? Everybody wearing a blazer. Okay, that’s terrible, that’s terrible. Alright, so we brought a whole squad today. I’m just going to get right into it and introduce the guests here today. The first guest is a strategic innovator with a passion for people and industry. She serves as the business development manager for the Americas for Blaser Swiss Lube.

One of the many amazing female manufacturing leaders here at IMTS where women make manufacturing move. Welcome to the show. Tiffany Bryson.

Speaker 6: Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker: Yeah, it’s going to be awesome. Second guest is on the same team and he’s living out his passion to bring the value to customers every single day, including weekends, every single holiday, Christmas, Easter.

[2:00] He never stops. He serves as the national sales director for Blazer. Welcome to the show. Christopher Porsche,

Speaker 7: thank you. At your service. 24 7, I guess. .

Speaker: Yeah, I signed you up for that. Yes, you did. It’s on the podcast, so now it’s a thing. It’s a thing. And then we have a couple of my closest friends and colleagues from my team.

First, he’s been working for over three decades to make his customers successful as a leader in. Machine protection, chip and coolant management, and coolant filtration. A longstanding veteran of our family business at Hennig Inc. serving as the business development leader. Welcome to the show. Scott Cooley.

What’s up? Thank you. And I have to

Speaker 8: say, Nick, thanks for finally letting me come on board. I know it’s been 400 plus shows you’ve done. And this is the first time I get to actually connect with you. I’m embarrassed because we’ve done like, we’ve done like 200

Speaker: sales trips and zero podcasts. And then lastly, our final guest is a young entrepreneur.

[3:00] on a mission to digitize the factory floor. He’s the innovator behind the high pressure coolant systems from Hennig. He’s the creator of Slytec. Which is a technology platform that helps manufacturing leaders monitor machine tool conditions, coach for continuous improvement and leverage adaptive controls to optimize tool life and maximize machining performance.

He’s also being recruited by Hollywood elites since his performance yesterday on the IMTS plus main stage. Welcome to the show, Cameron

Speaker 9: Schley. Thank you. Thank you. Said it better than me.

Speaker: So how’d it go? Day one. How was it for you guys at Blazer?

Speaker 6: Uh, we had a great, great showing actually. As soon as we opened those doors, it was like a floodgate.

Yeah.

Speaker: We’ll take it. Nice. Yeah, I think we had a really good first few hours here, too. I mean, Scott?

Speaker 8: Oh, we’ve, we have like one to two hundred people that I know are coming to our booth. So, you know, connecting with, you know, With old friends meeting, meeting new people. We’ve got new products that we’re showing.

So it first day was great. And I think it’s going to be even huge today and tomorrow. Yeah.

[4:00] Speaker: We’re a bit more high tech with our booth than we were in the past. A lot of it has to do with Cameron being a part of the team and everything he brings with the IOT connectivity and all that. So excited to get into that a bit, but what do you guys feel like normally is the biggest traffic day for IMTS?

Speaker 6: I would say Tuesday and Wednesday, actually. I was going to

Speaker 7: say Wednesday for sure. Tuesday, I’m a little unsure today, but Wednesdays are normally the big day.

Speaker: Yeah, awesome. Okay, cool. So before we get into our main topic, I always do like a custom segment. So we’ll segue into a bit of a custom segment here.

Speaker 4: In this community of manufacturing leaders. There’s always somebody doing something amazing, but most of the time, it goes unseen. Making Chips wants to change that, one leadership story at a time. It’s time to give credit to the best in the business. It’s time to learn from our peers so we can all rise together.

It’s time for making chips to shine the manufacturing leadership spotlight.

[5:00] Speaker: We had quite the night last night. Are you going to sing karaoke? Um, that’s actually what we’re going to talk about. So one of the custom segments that we do is like a manufacturing leadership spotlight. So someone who’s just doing some amazing things in the industry and you want to call them out and shout them out.

This guy doesn’t even know he’s a manufacturing leader. So last night. We get a, a cab to dinner. We had a nice dinner with the guys from Okuma. Great people. Yep. And this cab shows up. It’s like, what was the car, what was the vehicle again? Uh, it was

Speaker 9: like a Toyota, some type of Toyota minivan. That was like spray painted yellow.

Yeah, it was spray, total paint, taxi colored.

Speaker: Absolutely. It was for sure. I’m just, I’m just gonna be the world’s best Uber driver. We get in , everybody sits down. He throws me a microphone just like this, like almost exact same type of microphone. The Uber driver? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And then he turns on a disco ball.

And then he gives us a little iPad and he says, what’s your favorite song?

Speaker 3: Get out of here. And

Speaker: so he’s like, and it’s like, uh, taxi cab, karaoke, karaoke cab. Okay.

[6:00] Speaker 6: So he got five stars, right? Oh yeah.

Speaker: And like a huge tip. So I ended up singing creep by radio head. You guys know that song? And the lyrics have never been more true.

I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here. We had a great time. Cameron’s got a video of it. We’re probably not going to post it on LinkedIn. It’s not

Speaker 6: one of those things to be posting. Yeah, it was

Speaker: just a blast. So like, okay, why is this guy a manufacturing leader that should have the spotlight on him?

He probably has nothing to do with manufacturing, but you know, so many of us are in crowded market market spaces, right? Like there’s a lot of people who do coolants and fluids. There’s a lot of people do chip management. And so like, how do you stand out, you know, when you’re in a, when you’re in a really crowded space, I would, I would venture to bet that this guy is getting like three, four or five times the tips of every other Uber driver who’s got the exact same size car, who’s using the exact same app, just cause like he makes it a blast.

[7:00] Scott, you ended up getting his number to make sure we got a ride home from the same guy. Yeah,

Speaker 8: he gave me, he gave me this card. He said, Hey, I can be there. You just let me know when. He came in five minutes and, uh, I’ve given it to Caleb and a couple of others. So we’re going to use them all week. He’s just so fun.

I’ll get it to you. So as soon

Speaker: as we’re done recording, we’ll show you some of the videos from last night, but let’s just say the ride home was a little bit more wild than the ride. We had a couple, we had a little bit of liquid courage in us and the karaoke was flowing, Tiffany. You brought some swag to the booth.

Some like little goodies.

Speaker 6: I did. I want

Speaker: you to explain that for us real quick.

Speaker 6: So, um, I want to be able to bring things to the actual booth. So we have, um, our mini drums, which is obviously branded with Blazer and we all know that everybody at IMTS likes to indulge a little bit, maybe some evenings. So I have a liquid IV in there, um, that I can hand off to people.

And what we always like to say is that Blazer has a solution or a fluid for every application, if you know what I mean.

Speaker 3: I love that. Isn’t that fabulous? That is awesome.

[8:00] Speaker: It’s good to be proud of like the really great swag that you have, you know, cause my philosophy on that is, you know, if you’re going to have like some lame fruit of the loom t shirt with a logo right here and you give it out to people, you just gave them a shop rag, really, that’s what you do.

So you either don’t do anything, don’t do like all the little trinkets where everybody’s got the same crap and you spend money on it and just like pollutes the world or you do something remarkable or awesome that has a story with it. And so I was. You should be proud of that. Thank you. Very cool. So, all right, let’s get into the topic today.

So again, this is the Lights Out podcast. We’re talking about, you know, everything we do has to equip and inspire manufacturing leaders to elevate their game. And so we’re talking about chip and coolant management as it relates to automation. Usually when you think of automation, you know, you think about robotics, you think about more software, technology, things like that.

[9:00] And chip and coolant management isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But when you talk to a veteran who’s working through these applications, I think one of them told Scott like, yeah, coolant is the bane of our existence. All the chips and everything. It’s the, it’s the most challenging part for the machine tool folks.

So I think it’s something that needs to be talked about more and I’m hoping we’re gonna cover that pretty well today. So my first question for the Blaser team, how has the technology advancements and push for a more unattended machine time situation for manufacturing leaders changed your product or the way you serve your customers?

Speaker 7: Well, I think there’s two things. I think the first thing is is that you need a repeatable process that people can depend on. Uh, because if you want to run 24 seven, but the machine’s constantly down or it’s alarming out, or if it’s foaming over, uh, Uh, that doesn’t happen. And I think technology has pushed us into a tech, uh, into a different type of technology that allows for repeatability and a tuned in, you know, a really honed in process.

[10:00] Speaker: Yeah. We always say on this podcast, like you don’t want to automate an unstable process. So part of that stability is going to be, you know, the fluids that you’re using for your coolant. Scott, same question on our side. You know, as machine tools have become more and more automated, how have we had to change our product, like the way we design it, the way we go to market, to support that?

Speaker 8: So every, every customer is cutting a different material. They have a different machining process. We need to understand what type of materials are cutting so we can come up with the proper solution. And, uh, uh, our CDF system, which is our high end filtration system, we can get between 25 to 30 microns of nominal filtration.

And the whole idea is to create that lights out experience. So the customer can come in, you know, when they’re, uh, working 24 7 that machine, but they’re not there because automation has become more of a thing. So it’s really important to be able to keep that moving.

Speaker: And let’s talk about the volume of the tank as well too, because sometimes we’re starving the machine of, of cooling.

[11:00] And so we were, we had some standard products for a couple of builders that, you know, they were buying, they were buying, they were buying, and then we were getting some issues like, Hey, this isn’t enough for us. So maybe touch on that a bit.

Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve worked with many OEMs where they’re bringing machines in from Japan or Europe and the standard machine comes in with a small tank.

And it’s fine for a given application. And that’s where we start to look and realize, Hey, I want to put a Trinity on here because I need to run this Lights Out. And now at that point, you end up starving the system. So we really try and understand what the application is. What size that is. And sometimes we have to even double the amount that the standard tank comes in.

Speaker: So just like, you know, basically expanding the tank and figuring out how to work that in, in a way where you’re not expanding the footprint of the machine tools too much, because especially in like a. Certain parts of the country, west coast, like the floor space of the shop is such a big deal. And depending on the

Speaker 6: industry as well, I mean, that floor space is Yeah,

Speaker: exactly.

[12:00] Yeah. So back to the Blaser folks, uh, you were talking about, you know, creating a stable situation and, you know, we’re in chip and coolant management more as it relates to filtration and high pressure and things like that, but the chemistry of coolant isn’t really what we do. So, Walk us through kind of like the process of how coolant comes to be and then how you might have to change the chemistry so it’s a little bit more stable or a little bit more tuned in for certain applications.

Speaker 7: Well, I think that the first thing that we really need to, that we need to do on our side is, is we take a look at the, the human compatibility and the machine compatibility because the, we don’t have the workforce as it is right now, you need to make sure those people at the machines are happy. But then what you do is you take a look at the chemistry that not only affects the production.

[13:00] Uh, but the sustainability and the ecology, uh, of the climate and such. And so from that standpoint, you’re always going to be looking at something that can be the most process stable, process capable, but you also have to be aware that at some point you have to dispose of it, waste stream, reducing consumption, looking at what the best ingredients are for that, uh, because there’s so many downstream items that are affected.

I mean, just the freight of getting multiple. drums someplace make a big difference. And so really, you’re going to look at the process, and then you’re going to look at the overall safety, HS& E. And then from a climate stability and sustainability standpoint, that’s really what goes into making sure you have it and then making sure that it fits the processes that the customers need, because you have the safest fluid in the world, but it doesn’t work.

You know, it’s no good for anybody. Sure.

Speaker: So in my imagination of like how the Blaser factory looks, I’ve never been there. I’ve been to Switzerland to visit some other, some other partners, but I’ve never, I’ve never seen you guys. You know, I imagine there’s all sorts of different fluids, all sorts of different chemical barrels, and they all get mixed together depending on a certain application.

[14:00] So maybe 30 percent this, 20 percent this. Now you’ve got like your, your concentrated mix and then you add, you know, water or whatever else to it. And then you get your, your perfect mix. Like like making a cocktail almost. Is there, is there like kind of a one size fits all solution that can work no matter what, or is it really kind of custom designed, custom created?

How far off is my imagination from what it’s really like there?

Speaker 6: Oh, I think the number one thing is got to remember it’s chemistry, right? So, you know, we need to know what the application is. We need to know what your water is. We need to know what the material is. There’s a lot of things that go into that before we can really make a decision on what’s the best thing.

that’s product for you. So, you know, similar to what you guys do, making sure that you guys have all the answers of what the customers doing before we make that decision. That’s the important part.

Speaker: Okay, so it really is kind of like tailor made. Hey, how do you like your Manhattan? How do you like your old fashioned?

Uh, whatever it is, as you’re making this cocktail of coolant. It’s not like you could just say, Hey, this is going to work for 90 percent of the shops exactly as is. Is that how you can get into some trouble actually, if you, if, if people do misapply the coolant for the application? Absolutely.

[15:00] Speaker 7: Yeah. And I think that preconceived notions of what’s going to work is also an issue.

You really have to understand. What the customer is doing and you know, let’s go. I’ll use an old fashioned because that’s what I make for my wife most often You know, you may have three ounces of bourbon in there, but you’re gonna have two ounces of something else And so like Tiffany said if your water quality is not good or if you’re having to put a bunch of additives into that I mean remember you’re looking at 90 percent of the of the fluid in the sump is water So if you’re not paying attention to what’s going into the fluids What the, what other processes are being done?

Is there tramp oil that’s getting in there? Then yes, you’re going to, you’re going to misapply if you don’t understand the big picture, because it really is, it’s a big thing of soup and you’ve got a bunch of different ingredients that go in there and you have to make sure they’re properly done.

Speaker: Yeah. So we’re talking about soup.

We’re talking about cocktails.

[16:00] So this one’s for Cameron. So, you know, chip buildup, it can be a real problem for an automation situation when you have an operator there in between jobs, he can clear it off. Right. But when you don’t and everything’s. You know, being loaded and unloaded with a robot or however, whether it’s moving the workpiece or moving a pallet or a new tombstone in that chip buildup can really shut down the entire lights out situation.

You were hoping to get a whole eight hour shift of unattended time and you got, you know, 38 minutes and then something just, you know, Something got all jammed up or whatever, right? So talk about how high pressure and chip build up, like, how does that all work together to enable automation?

Speaker 9: Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, high pressure obviously has been around for a little while, but I think it’s becoming more and more of a standard, right? Uh, most machine tools are coming prepped for it now as a standard as opposed to about 10 years ago when it wasn’t. because automation is becoming more prevalent, right? So, um, as far as the chip build up, there’s a number of different ways.

[17:00] The high pressure helps that obviously. And I think it really comes down to the chip breakage, right? Breaking that chip or in a deep hole drilling application, extracting that chip out with the high pressure, right? Uh, in a turning application, it’s about chip breakage. So you don’t get the chip wrapped around the tool, that high pressure focused really, really accurately at the chip.

Cutting tip, right. Of the insert or whatever type of tool it is helps break that chip. Yeah. You know, in a typical application, that’s not automated. You might have a lot of chip wrap, or I should say without high pressure, you know, a lot of chip wrap and the operators in there trying to pull it out and so on and so forth.

Which goes into your conveyor and then jams up the conveyor. Right. So there’s a number of different negatives to that.

Speaker: One of my favorites is actually from our sister company, Advanced Machine Engineering, where we had a really hard time, we make tombstones, right, for horizontal workholding. And so, we bring in the tombstone casting, we machine the heck out of it, and then it fills up the table.

And then we, you know, we want to run lights out. So then we have to go get the next pallet and it’s just covered in chips. And so we tried those fans, you know, you see those chip fans that you can put in the spindle and that wasn’t working. And then one of our guys had a brilliant idea. So we’re running through the spindle, high pressure coolant, and he created a program that basically like a.

[18:00] Like a super soaker, like our spray one, like a car wash, ran the program, blasted all the chips off, cleaned it off, and now we were able to get through the night. So I thought that was like a really creative idea to use the high pressure, not just to impact the exact point of the cut. But, uh, you know, use it to clean off the entire pallet.

Speaker 9: Yeah, absolutely. And I think in addition to that too, there’s um, the added benefit of tool life, right? You’re trying to run through the night, high pressure coolant typically extends your tool life. It’s all going towards, uh, you know, a better automated cell or machine or process.

Speaker: That’s awesome. So, okay, next question.

The messaging that I saw, you know, your liquid tool. What does that mean to you guys? Why do you call the coolant a liquid tool?

Speaker 6: Well, one of the reasons why we call it a liquid tool is that it’s an actual tool, right? This is not a commodity as in just fluid. You know, the liquid tool is something that you utilize with your machine tool and also with your tooling.

[19:00] And we really believe the fact that it is part of the process of having a tool and it’s in your toolbox.

Speaker 7: It absolutely is. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s looking at something where you’re just buying price wise. Versus something where you’re trying to get a value back. And so we consider it a tool because We believe it’s an investment in your process longterm, repeatability, sustainability, you know, and everything that goes along with your P and L and your bottom line.

And so from a tooling standpoint, we don’t believe it’s just a coolant. It’s a liquid tool that helps you do everything in conjunction with your other processes.

Speaker: Yeah. You can run high speed steel cutting tools and they’ll cost less than a solid carbide cutting tool or whatever. And then. You get the results that you should expect, right?

The tool costs less, but maybe your throughput is way worse, and you’re just really struggling to get that overall performance where it needs to be.

Speaker 9: See, I think that’s genius, really, because, uh, when you’re setting up a job, right, you’re going to run 10, 000 parts of whatever. Everybody goes to the tooling catalog and picks out the right insert and the right drill and they go high end, right?

[20:00] They’re trying to automate this, whatever it is. And then unfortunately I think sometimes coolant is just goes by the wayside. Ah, it’s just a coolant, right? So liquid tool, I think is a genius to drive that point home, that it is super important, right?

Speaker 6: Well, I think that that’s one thing I do want to mention is that, you know, before, you know, Blazer.

I was telling machine tools and I know that a lot of people don’t think about the fluid, but I got to tell you, I’m watching it change because so many people are getting into turnkeys and process and whatnot, and they actually recognize that this is all part of the overall process, and it’s so important.

So it’s really about education and learning how important it is. And

Speaker 7: lastly, it’s the one item that legitimately touches everything in the process.

Speaker: Yeah. Everything in your shop. Yeah. Yeah, it touches everything even if you don’t want it to. It’s, it’s all in your machine. If you don’t have a miscollector, it’s all, it’s in, it’s in your lungs.

It’s all over your shop. So, you know, we need it. We need coolant, of course, but, uh, it can be the messiest thing in a shop. But it’s

[21:00] Speaker 6: also your most important thing. Yeah. It’s your people. your equipment. I mean, those are very expensive things in your shop and your, you know, customer parts.

Speaker: It’s like the blood inside your body, you know, when it gets out of your body, it’s like, Oh my gosh, what a mess, you know, but, uh, but you need that flowing, you need that working or else nothing else works.

Yeah. So, uh, let’s talk a bit about like material compatibility. We talk all the time about like misapplying, you know, for the application. So I would say, so similar to, we have a lot of things in common with the coolant folks where we tend to be an afterthought. Nobody sells a machine coolant first or chip conveyor first or high pressure system first.

But then it’s like, if we’re too much of an afterthought and they don’t apply the right solution, then they come back, Oh, this machine tool I bought sucks. Or these, these guys at Henniger Blazer. Yeah, I don’t like the product. It’s like, it’s the wrong product. Of course it doesn’t work. So Scott, maybe talk on, help the manufacturing leader understand.

What type of chip conveyor you need based on the type of chip and the application?

[22:00] Speaker 8: It’s fun being here and and being with the Blazer team and hearing what they’re saying Because everything they’ve said I just wanted to come back and say ditto. Yeah, because we’re in the exact same Role that they are

Speaker 5: right

Speaker 8: Conveyors used to be considered the necessary evil I have to have it

Speaker 5: right

Speaker 8: and and it will work really well if you understand the application And so understanding what type of material you’re cutting, what type of chips you’re producing.

Are you cutting those chips or are you not cutting those chips? It’s a different process for us to help you succeed. So it’s just understanding what that is. Are you going to be running a lathe and you really don’t care about the high pressure coolants and so it’s not an issue or you’re going to be running a five axis machine and you want lights out capabilities.

So just understanding in every single application, I don’t have off the shelf conveyors. Uh, we do custom design for every application if somebody gives us the information.

Speaker: Yeah, so I’ll throw you a couple quiz questions that I know you, so I know these, these, these are softballs for you. But I’m, nah.

[23:00] Speaker 3: At least they hope.

Yeah, right. Yeah, well, otherwise

Speaker: we’ll just have to edit that. Right. No, with his, with his experience, these will be easy. So like AME, we’re running cast iron a lot because tombstones need to be made out of cast iron. It’s really dense material and, um, doesn’t vibrate much, but the chips are terrible. So. For an AME application where we’re making the the tombstone or machining cast iron, what’s the right chip conveyor for us?

Speaker 8: So I have to say that really is a softball because I’ve already given you on those machines. Yeah, so basically it’s it’s our CDF chip disk filtration conveyor, which is a scraper design.

Speaker 5: Okay,

Speaker 8: and with our filtrated conveyor we can make it as a hinge belt or a scraper Depending on the material you’re cutting.

Cast iron, always, 100 percent it’s going to be a scraper design.

Speaker: Yeah, because it’s these little fines pretty much that come out.

[24:00] Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah. And then filtering that conveyor, we also have then high pressure that you have on your machine. So at that point, I believe on your system we have bag filters. Uh, but we can use bag filters to cyclonics to get down to that level that we need.

And back when we made that, that was before we were partnered with CAM. And now that we, uh, now that we have these standalone high pressure systems, we have so much more opportunities to be able to service and help the customers with the different applications they have.

Speaker: Yeah, because the high pressure system doesn’t just create the high pressure, it also adds a level of filtration too, correct?

Right. Yeah. Right. Awesome. Okay. Sludge. So, sludge is the, often in cast iron applications, you make this like thick mud, and I think that’s why the chip fan didn’t work, you know, cause you got this like sticky kind of sludgy stuff and the fan’s not gonna blow it off, but I wanna go back to the chemists over here.

Uh, Dr. Chris. So, how do, what’s your role in kind of reducing the amount of sludge that gets created when you’re machining those kind of nasty materials?

Speaker 7: Well, first of all, you want a fluid that’ll carry that stuff.

Speaker: Yeah. And

Speaker 7: then it will get caught in the filtration.

Speaker: Sure.

[25:00] Speaker 7: Because fines, sludge, that gives opportunity for bacteria growth because it stops the flow in certain areas.

It can build up on the bottom or in the corners. And then you’ve got stagnation. And if you’ve ever seen a, seen a pond that doesn’t move much. That’s what stagnation can do. And so the ability to carry those fines and allow for proper filtration is something that will really help because again, you don’t want areas that don’t move in your sump because you’re, you’re destined for issues at that point.

Speaker: Would you want like a thicker viscosity? to carry it out? If it’s, if it’s like those tiny fines or would it be a thinner viscosity or how would you create the chemistry for that?

Speaker 7: Well, I’m going to punt on that one because I’m really not sure that the thickness of the fluid would make a difference. Um, you just need something that would be able to carry those fines well.

And normally, Most water miscible fluids, if you’re running at about 10%, we’re gonna have similar viscosities from that standpoint.

Speaker: I imagine, Cameron, like, having high pressure versus not having high pressure helps keep it from getting stuck and clumped up in these, like, nasty sludge balls?

Speaker 9: Yeah, the chips don’t have such an opportunity to clump together, you know?

[26:00] They’re getting blasted all over with a thousand PSI or whatever you’re running at, right? Yeah. Yeah, which helps that Monday morning stench after a long holiday weekend when the machines have been sitting, you know? Yeah. Everybody’s familiar with that. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. So, Scott, you know, sometimes these sludge nests, for lack of a better word, they end up in the tank.

Yeah. And, you know, typically find their way to a corner, they get all nestled up. So what are some of the things that we do, some of the design features that we can incorporate to get rid of all that?

Speaker 8: Sure. Well, there’s systems out there where they call it a sludge less tank, uh, and basically what you’re doing is you’re always agitating the coolant in the tank.

So you, you make sure that you don’t have pockets that the sludge will connect to. Um, but it does happen. And in those cases we have products that we can offer. Uh, we have something called a cyclo flow. Mm-Hmm. . Um, it has a bag filter and a cyclonic built in, and it’s used to basically use like a dialysis machine to clean the sludge out of the, the coolant tank.

Speaker 5: Mm-Hmm. .

[27:00] Speaker: And then you mentioned like a, like a stagnant pond. Mm-Hmm. . You know, so I know we’ve done some stuff in the past where, um, we’ve got like different like series of tubes and hoses that kind of. are within the tank and, and kind of move, move it out all around. Yeah. Yeah. I think that. It’s all about just keeping things moving.

When it’s stagnant, then the bacteria starts and

Speaker 7: Movement is key because once you take away oxygen, uh, you start to get the anaerobic. And there’s your Monday morning because there’s nothing worse than anaerobic bacteria in there because that’s what causes most of the smell.

Speaker: So my buddy Jason, who’s been, who was the originator of making chips, he told a story once in an episode where we talked a bit about coolant, where they tried everything, you know, they, they tested the coolant, they looked at the filtration, they looked at the conveyor, they said, I can’t, I don’t understand why this one machine is that has that like funky, nasty smell.

This is going to gross everybody out. That particular operator chewed tobacco and his spittoon was the machine

Speaker 2: tool. It was a custom coolant. That’s freaking nasty. You would be

[28:00] Speaker 3: shocked at the stories we can

Speaker 7: tell. After we’re done with the podcast. Hey,

Speaker: the bathroom’s on the other side of the shop, right?

Speaker 7: I mean, we’ll think about it.

Just, I mean, bacteria, mouth bacteria. Yeah. Is by far the worst.

Speaker: Yeah,

Speaker 7: and so anything like that’s gonna cause big trouble long term.

Speaker: That’s disgusting. Let’s talk a bit about heat You know, heat dissipation. I imagine there’s different, uh, formulas, different mixes that help with heat. And then, you know, Cam, I want you to explain a bit, so first on, on like the, the chemistry of like heat dissipation from your end, and then Cam, you could talk a bit about like the heat barrier.

And, and give, give the manufacturing leader some insight into what that is and how we deal with that.

Speaker 7: Well, ironically, water is the greatest heat disperser. Really? Okay. But it’s not a great lubricant, as most people know, and it doesn’t do much for your machines either. And so, from that standpoint, coolants are normally When you look at those, they’re for lubricity.

[29:00] They’re for the ability to machine. Water’s going to cool. That’s why with oil, sometimes you need fire suppression. You don’t need that for a water miscible item. So from a chemistry standpoint, you’re really looking at the lubricity. And added lubricity will reduce friction, which will reduce heat. So it’s not all about the water.

It is about the additives, the chlorinated paraffins that will activate when that heat or that pressure comes along. But from that standpoint, you’re really looking from a heat dispersal standpoint. It’s going to be the water is going to help a lot that’s in the mix, but then you’re looking at the additives, the lubricity, which will reduce the friction, the pull, the tear, uh, and that on those.

Because the one thing you want to do is you want the heat to get out of, out of there with the chip. You want to keep it away from that point of contact. And so that’s what we’re trying to look to do is to be able to, especially with high pressure, like you said, get the chips away. You’re going to reduce the heat in, in that.

Speaker: Yeah. Let’s talk about the heat barrier. What is that?

Speaker 9: So there’s two things I want to talk about related to heat. The first being the heat barrier. So the heat barrier. Is a buildup of heat around the cutting tip, right? Your inserts or your drill or whatever it is, the actual

Speaker: friction between the tool, the

Speaker 9: friction between the tool, cutting the material.

[30:00] So it creates this heat barrier and traditional flood coolant does not penetrate that heat barrier. So the very tip of the tool is actually not even being cooled in a traditional flood coolant setup, right? So high pressure actually penetrates that heat barrier and gets the coolant, preferably Swiss lube, to the tool.

Breaking that heat barrier and keeping the tool cooler makes the tool last longer, keeps the workpiece cooler, right? So just more, a much more stable process. The second thing related to heat would be for unattended machining, right? So Um, lights out operations or whatever. If you’re running high pressure coolant in a traditional fixed flow system, let’s say it’s running at a thousand PSI, eight gallons a minute, the pump’s running nonstop, um, the orifice of the tool changes.

So depending on how big the orifice is in the tool, it’s going to offload or, um, send coolant through the relief valve back to the tank, right? So it’s generating unnecessary heat in the machine itself, right, in the tank. Um, so our Variflow and a lot of our different products have, uh, variable flow. That’s hence the name Variflow, right?

[31:00] Sure. Um, so what that does is it actually only runs the pump as fast as it needs to, to generate the set pressure. So you’re not bypassing a bunch of coolant back to the tank, generating excess heat. Yeah. It’s just a much more stable process.

Speaker: And I think about like the, a fire hose versus like your pressure washer cleaning off the side of your house, you know, the amount of pressure that goes through a fire hose is Intense or the amount of flow that goes through a fire hose is intense, but it might not have the actual pressure to like, you know, scrape the algae off the side of your bricks on the side of your house.

So our system allows for it to kind of consider the, the size of the hole that everything’s coming. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 9: There’s a set point for a desired pressure and then the system will run anywhere between one and eight gallons a minute basically.

Speaker: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Last question. We’re here at IMTS.

[32:00] You know, everything’s about innovation and what’s headed towards the future. So I’ll serve this up for whoever wants to go first. You know, I know we’ve got some stuff here at our booth that’s, you know, new to us, maybe kind of in the front end of the adoption curve in the industry. But where do you think the coolant, you know, roadmap is for you guys?

What’s next? What’s, what’s on the horizon for Blazer? That’s a

Speaker 7: pretty good question because R& D keeps those pretty close to the vest. But I think that, As we get further and further, uh, into the future, it’s going to be sustainability and how we, I guess, affect the waste stream down the road. There has to be the ability to be, you know, sustainability is not just about using a vegetable product.

It’s about not putting stuff into the waste stream, not having to treat the water, and all of those other things that come by. And I, I think that sustainability is going to be something from a climate friendly standpoint that’s going to, I mean, you’re still going to have your mineral oils out there.

There’s no way to get away from that, in my opinion. But I think long term, you’ll be looking at things that are more climate friendly, waste treatment friendly. And, uh, just easier to use, uh, sustainability wise.

[33:00] Speaker: Yeah, I think that’s a brilliant insight because for good reason, we’ve got to take care of this earth we all live on, but I think the EPA requirements are only going to become more stringent and thinking about what happens after the coolant’s been used, that’s important.

Yeah. What about us on the, on the conveyor side? And

Speaker 8: so here at IMTS 2024, so excited to be able to introduce a lot of new products for us and it’s high pressure systems, as I mentioned earlier, We have put high pressure systems on full units, but we didn’t have a standalone product. So our now partnership with Cameron has been, has been awesome.

Uh, Cameron owned a, owned a high pressure company for 12 years and we partnered with him now and we’re just so excited to be able to offer these additional features. That, uh, again, customers out there, they really need this. And it was an area that I think we Henig were, were lacking to support.

Speaker: Yeah, it really was a perfect match.

[34:00] You know, he was, uh, an entrepreneur with, you know, two employees and had the perfect product. We’d love the product. We, you know, had 50 year history, lots of employees, lots of different products, a lot of, uh, larger network and a larger infrastructure, but we didn’t have that product. So it wasn’t very long after we met and we were like, Hey, this is what I need.

This is what you need. You. The acquisition happens. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 9: absolutely.

Speaker: But let’s talk a bit about maybe go beyond just the product itself and more about the digital side and some of those innovations that we’re showing here. So Cameron, I’ll just serve that up to you.

Speaker 9: I think what you’re really going to see is people working towards the adoption of not the biggest fan of the buzzword industry 4.

0, but that’s what it is, right? Yeah. Fourth industrial revolution. I’ve seen a lot of people on LinkedIn talking about the fact that we’re already at industry 5. 0, which I think is absolutely crazy. And the reason I think that is because nobody’s really widely adopted industry 4. 0.

Speaker 5: Yeah,

Speaker 9: and so there’s there’s a lot of really cool.

You’re still at 5. We should just come out with industry 10. 0. I mean, I mean, I think it’s important that people are thinking about what’s next. Yeah, there’s a lot of really cool technology out there. A lot of providers and a lot of really good solutions, but on the whole, Uh, not a lot of people have adopted that yet.

[35:00] So I think really what you’re going to see is companies starting to focus more on the adoption, right? How to make it more user friendly, how to make it easier to install. Um, I think that’s going to be the next biggest thing for the digital side.

Speaker: Yeah. And especially as it relates to automation and not being there.

to see what’s going on and to see the conditions of the machine. Talk about some of the features that we’ve added just to the whole system that helps you see those conditions and kind of what they are.

Speaker 9: Yeah, so a lot of the Hennig products now come standard with connectivity, right? So it can connect up to the cloud, whether that’s the slide tech platform or somebody else’s platform.

As simple as the mist collectors, you can view your filter life remotely and get alarms when those filters getting clogged on the high pressure. You can see the filter life again, the set pressure, you know, current pressure, Uh, but more importantly, what’s related to this is, uh, at our booth here at IMTS, we have a CDF conveyor and we have it decked out with all kinds of sensors.

We’re measuring coolant concentration, coolant temperature, coolant level, chip bin level, coolant flow through the different pumps. And that really allows for an easier lights out setup, right? Yeah. Because all those things are very important, right? Your coolant concentration can’t run all night if your water starts to evaporate, right?

[36:00] Speaker: Yeah, I think it’d be a, a fun tag team here with, you know, some of the coolant companies like yourselves to figure out, hey, how do we create a system that, you know, I always think about your swimming pool, you know, it’s such a, I had a swimming pool for a home that I only, I only lived in for like a year and part of why I wanted to get out was the damn pool, you know, because it was just like a leaf falls in the pool and next thing you know, like it has AIDS.

You know, . Wow. That went down. My goodness. But it feels like that. It’s like, what the heck just happened? You know, like everything’s all green and I can’t get the, I can’t get the chemistry right or whatever. So then, then there’s these really expensive systems where it’s like, uh, okay. It’s just like always reading itself and always correcting itself.

And I think it’s exciting to get to maybe where that would be, where, you know. almost like a little microcosm of what’s in the Blaser factory with all the, all the different chemicals that make the makeup and then, you know, connect that to what we’re doing, sensing all the conditions and, and figuring out, okay, how do we self correct?

[37:00] Which is really what automation is all about. It has to correct itself because there’s not a person there to correct it. So, I don’t know, maybe we’ll go sneak into this R& D room in Switzerland and work on some stuff together.

Speaker 7: Technology, uh, center is always open, so.

Speaker: And, and also any excuse to go visit Switzerland.

Yeah. It’s not bad either.

Speaker 7: So, I was wondering if I might be able to go back to something. Yes, of course. When Scott mentioned the, the high pressure coolant along with Cameron, there is one other thing that I think that is important as we go forward is, In order to run 24 seven with high pressure, you need to be able to control foam and air entrainment.

Speaker: Yeah. We did not talk about foaming. Yeah. And I,

Speaker 7: and I think that’s important because, you know, foam can be a nuisance, but it can also be a big problem because. Foams pure concentrate and there’s no lubrication. So if you’ve got foam at the point of contact, that’s a problem. The other thing is you don’t want from a safety standpoint, you don’t want it foaming over high pressure can be difficult.

Speaker: It can kind of create some foam or help create some foam.

[38:00] Speaker 7: And for oil, it can be even more difficult because you can get air entrainment. And so like, uh, just as a little plug here, we have this, uh, we have GT oils. It’s gas to liquid technology. Uh, it gets rid of air much, much faster because air at the point of contact, not good.

You don’t want, you don’t want a heat generator at the point of contact with oil. And so I think that long term, the stability and the process control is also going to come from foam control and the ability to get rid of air so that you can run long term, not only from a process capability standpoint, but also from a safety standpoint, whether it would be from a, uh, concerns with flash point on the oil or foam on the floor.

Because again, It’s pure concentrate, slip and fall, and so there’s a lot of things that can be, can be looked at. And one other thing is automation. You know, being able to make sure that the sumps are full, make sure that the concentration is right on it. Uh, you, you have to be able to look at that stuff from an automatic filling standpoint.

So, smart coolant management is going to be something long term. Because, I mean, we’re all flush with employees, right?

Speaker 5: Yeah, we’re so, right. So to

[39:00] Speaker 7: be able to give the ability to help offset some of the labor issues that we do have in workload areas is something that we’re going to be looking at also. And I was remiss in not bringing that up.

Speaker: No, I’m so, I’m so glad you did that because I didn’t even talk about foaming. And that’s one of the biggest problems that we deal with. Because the foam, Scott, talk about like what happens with the foam as it relates to the chips. You know, it creates like a boat, essentially, right?

Speaker 8: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn’t get down into the coolant and it’s just floating and, uh, now you have overflows and you just have all kinds of issues.

So, you know, again, it goes back to having the right coolant, having the right concentration. Again, autofills and that type of stuff. So important. So you can manage that lights out.

Speaker 7: So you guys don’t like floating chips either? We know, no.

Speaker: Hey guys, it was awesome. IMTS is all about this. Yeah. Having great conversations, starting new partnerships.

[40:00] I’ll be in the tech center in Switzerland next, next week. So, uh, working on some of these crazy ideas. No, but all jokes aside, thank you so much for joining us because yeah. Automation has a lot to do with chip and cooling management. So thanks for having us. Thank you very much. We sign off the same way every time on making chips, and we end with something that’s all dear to our hearts.

If you’re not making chips, you’re not making money. Bam!