The Journey from a Design to a Product

In this episode of The Engineering Passion Express, we take you on a journey from being the person who knows the physics, to understanding how a system will be fabricated.

This is not a narrative episode, rather it is an interview based episode with Lance Thrailkill, owner of All Metals Fabricating. Lance is a nice guy and great person to work with. You can check them out at https://www.ametals.com

Join me and learn how an engineer can increase their value by understanding design for manufacturing. Lance also left behind some valuable pieces of information. Here are his notes:

Manufacturing Tips for Sheet Metal

https://www.ametals.com/post/design-for-manufacturing-5-tips-for-sheet-metal-bending

Optimizing for Installation

https://www.ametals.com/post/dfm-tips-to-optimize-your-part-design-for-hardware-installation

Choosing the correct steel

https://www.ametals.com/post/how-to-choose-the-right-steel-type-for-sheet-metal-fabrication

Considerations for Punched Parts

https://www.ametals.com/post/five-dfm-tips-for-punch-press-operations-in-precision-fabrication

Welding Design Tips

https://www.ametals.com/post/7-dfm-tips-for-faster-better-and-higher-quality-welding

Precision Machining

https://www.ametals.com/post/7-dfm-tips-for-your-next-precision-machining-project

Surface Finish Considerations

https://www.ametals.com/post/your-guide-to-perfect-surface-finishes-how-all-metals-fabricating-matches-you-to-the-ideal-option

Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:14

On this episode of the Engineering Passion Express, we'll have a guest on named Lance. Lance is the owner of a manufacturing company, and we're going to talk about design for manufacturing. When I think of design for manufacturing, I'd like to think about new tools like generative AI software that design parts. As that AI has grown in capability for engineers, there are still areas like design for manufacturing where thoughts outside of equations matter. Making sure that your design can be built that it can save an unbelievable amount of time. Understanding the constraints of different tools can save massive costs by reducing unnecessary steps in production. And Lance is going to give us a little inside knowledge about the importance of understanding manufacturing constraints, drop a few hints to engineers who want to learn more, and tell you where you can get some more resources on better understanding the manufacturing process. With that being said, let's get into the episode and let's talk with Lance. Alright. Welcome to the Engineering Passion Express podcast. Today we have Lance on with us from Alni Adult Fabrication, generalized manufacturing around metal components. It's nice to have you on, Lance. I'd like you to maybe introduce your company a little bit and talk about what you do.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47

I'm the third generation owner of All Metals Fabricating, differentiator between fabrication and fabricating, because there's all metals fabrication in Utah, but we're all metals fabricating. My grandfather bought the business in 78, and I've been here since 2007. We're a contract manufacturer specializing in sheet metal fabricating, precision machining, welding, powder coating, and assembly, including electromechanical assembly. And so we're a one-stop shop for giving people a complete solution for their products.

SPEAKER_00: 2:22

Great. Since you guys do all of that in sort of a generalized way, I think that is a little bit of a contrast with engineers who are sort of becoming more and more specialized, just as technology grows and things like that. That's a trend that I think is only going to continue. I'd like to hear, Lance, your perspective on working with engineers who maybe don't understand manufacturing at a high level and maybe some of the challenges you run into when you deal with that.

SPEAKER_01: 2:49

We have an engineering internship program here, which we can talk more about later, but we believe that it's very important that you actually understand how parts are made before you start designing them. And so a lot of the challenges we run into are people designing a part in a way that is not manufacturable or would cost more to manufacture it that way. And so on a machined part making a hole or something very difficult to get to, or on sheet metal having holes or countersinks or threads too close to bend lines, hem nuts not being able to be installed because of the design of the part, not being able to access that. You can't also can't have hem nuts or studs too close to bend lines. You have to factor that in as well. And so things like that would be probably the the biggest, or putting, for example, machining tolerances on sheet metal parts. So having unrealistic tolerances on sheet metal or or welded parts is where we see a lot of mistakes. Also, parts not unfolding properly. So the way you model it, making sure that we can get the flat pattern easily is another thing.

SPEAKER_00: 4:06

Totally agree with you there. I think in my career, especially since I grew up in a machining business, what I've seen is uh more than probably anything is probably unreasonable expectations on tolerances. And that was probably the biggest driver of increased costs for a lot of people, at least in my experience.

SPEAKER_01: 4:27

Yeah, it's as simple as like you put a machine tolerance, uh machining miller lathe tolerance on a sheet metal part, and like that can be doable, but then you got to put it on the mill for that hole. And so that's significant setup costs, additional programming costs, and it's a more expensive operation. And also people putting a common mistake is is putting too small of holes on too thick of material. And so that then forces it to be machined. And so just knowing what in sheet metal, what hole size is appropriate for what thickness is of material is another easy mistake.

SPEAKER_00: 5:08

I guess I'd like your opinion on why do you think so many engineers choose not to go to into into a manufacturing job? I mean, my personal feeling is they feel like you'll start them on the wrong path in their career because they're interested in maybe cars or rockets or consumer products or things like that. But I mean, do you have any insight on why you think that is?

SPEAKER_01: 5:27

Some people may think they're that's below them, or they may not want to do hard manual labor, not necessarily hard, but manual labor, or just an ignorance to I think it's probably more just an ignorance of like the need for that, would be my guess. I think if people knew that that would help them in their career, they would probably do it, but they don't really realize that. So would be my what what my takeaway would be.

SPEAKER_00: 5:55

I agree with that a little bit. I think when you go to school as an engineer, you learn a little bit of things like calculus and physics, and you you want to solve sort of these optimization problems for performance of a product. But all of that actually does become pretty pretty routine in itself a lot of times, except for maybe the absolute most innovative industries. And I think most people miss out that there's a lot of challenges to be solved in manufacturing. Many, many more than I think they would that they would be surprised.

SPEAKER_01: 6:26

For sure. And then just design for manufacturability. So I mean, like you design a part with machine tolerances, a shop could arguably be incentivized to just quote it how you designed it, instead of saying, hey, do you really need this type of a tolerance? That's going to drive the cost of the part up. So we we really at all metals fabricating try to do a good job of letting people know that, asking clarifying questions. All of our estimators have been in sheet metal fabricating their whole career. And so they really understand design for manufacturability. And so we'll we try to ask a lot of those questions because we could just quote it the way it's designed. Sometimes, sometimes this tolerances are too tight, you can't do it. But a lot of times it's doable but drive up the cost.

SPEAKER_00: 7:13

I think most engineers would find themselves in a surprisingly nice place to work in a manufacturing environment, or at least a change of pace from the typical desk jobs that they get otherwise. Can you maybe shine some light on what you think an engineer would be doing on a manufacturing floor at a company like yours versus maybe their typical sitting at a computer all day and and working on a CAD tool designing something all day long?

SPEAKER_01: 7:41

So we're really targeting engineering students, so college students in our internship program. And we really typically they'll it's difficult to have one of them floating around the shop all summer long. But so we'll typically try to find them a home base. And oftentimes, if we have the uh workload for it, we'll put them in assembly so that they can kind of see how everything comes together. And then before the summer's over, we we get them an opportunity to shadow in every department, and so that really gives them full exposure. You know, you can't really put them in welding, is the one, but allowing them to shadow people in every department to really understand the whole process is and ask questions, I think is is really beneficial. And so we get them, yeah, the last week or two of their of their engagement with us, we try to bounce them around as much as possible so that they can really get a full understanding of the every step of the manufacturing process. And bending press break is a big one. Like really understanding bending, for example, like be putting different radiuses on the same part. Is that really necessary? Because that's gonna that's gonna be multiple setups that's it's gonna drive up the cost. And what what can be done on a press break versus drawing and CAD and understanding interferences and how you you're able to get to that bend to be able to form that part is is a really big one.

SPEAKER_00: 9:15

Yeah, and I think it's so much easier to learn these things early on in your career than later once you've beat your head against the wall trying to get something that you've designed up made and you're hearing this stuff anyway. So I think interning in the manufacturing field is a great way to get your foot in the door. I did want to maybe talk a little bit. Not every engineer gets that opportunity, maybe because where they're geographically located, or maybe they were recruited out of college to a design job, and sometimes you just go where the job is. But I guess for engineers that maybe didn't come through this kind of environment, how do you work with them and maybe educate them a little bit more on the manufacturing process?

SPEAKER_01: 9:57

Yeah, so when when we get a customer that has we have some DFM feedback on, or we see a consistent pattern of not being able to unfold their parts and stuff like that. We have our programming team, which is essentially engineers. Some of our programmers actually are engineers. Give them that feedback. I always tell them in that department. I'm like, guys, if you just keep it, if you don't say anything to them, they're gonna keep getting what you get. And so educating them on the issues we're experiencing, we really push the the idea of partnerships with our customers. And so partnering with them of like, if we're if it's taking us, if your parts are always taking us more time in programming because we're at the fixture models, then we're gonna be charging you more. And so, how do we how do we make this most efficient and and giving them that feedback up front in order to help educate them? We also have a design for manufacturability guide on our website. The website is ametals.com, and I'd love to make this available. Maybe we could have a link in your on your the notes of your podcast to be able to download that. That's a great resource. We have other resources in terms of design for manufacturability with hardware and bending on our website as well. So there's a lot of great content. Our blog is mostly targeted at educating engineers and buyers on everything from design for manufacturability to powder coating and finishes and what and material types, which material to type to select for which product. And so that's all available on on ametals.com under our blog resources, and be happy to make that available to your audience.

SPEAKER_00: 11:41

I will definitely grab that link and put it in the show notes. I think things like that are a great resource for engineers to leaf through, especially if they have any downtime in between projects or a program place on hold or things like that, just for the continual education. I guess for somebody that that does come through and does learn that manufacturing, how long do you think most engineers would need to work on a floor to no longer need that design guide?

SPEAKER_01: 12:09

Like it's tough to say. I mean, I think the what I'd say is the more experience you have on the floor, the better. But it's not like you can when you're doing on-the-job training, the the certain parts have to come through to to drive that opportunity to teach on that point. And so I think that you can learn a lot in a summer, but I mean, really, you would need to spend probably at least a year on a manufacturing floor, and that would be pretty aggressive at spending several months in each department to really get an and then a better understanding. But the more experienced, the better. The best thing you're worked on the floor, period.

SPEAKER_00: 12:49

Agreed. And I think one year to somebody who's 20 years old might sound like a lot, but when you have a 40-year career ahead of you, you're talking about maybe 2% of your time, 2% of your career spent just making sure you understand how the stuff's going to be made. That doesn't seem like that big of an investment in your career.

SPEAKER_01: 13:06

And you could accomplish it over the course of several summers of internships. And I've actually heard that that companies are actually looking for on the floor experience now when they're hiring their engineers. That's a real big bonus and attraction on their resume. So yeah, if that's the case, that that would be that employer would be intelligent to be looking for that and and and putting those types of people at the top of the list.

SPEAKER_00: 13:34

I agreed. I mean, I think any employer is going to be smart to be doing that because just like you said, the more time you spend going back and forth with the manufacturer, you guys have to sort of bake that time into the cost of the project. So they their employer ends up paying more for the work they're getting done by all the communication and extra time and projects get delayed instead of being completed faster.

SPEAKER_01: 13:56

Yeah, and when it gets picked back too, it's just more work for the engineer to do. So they can learn from their mistakes and fix them moving forward.

SPEAKER_00: 14:05

So I was gonna ask you a little bit about the payoff for you and an engineer who are both knowledgeable in manufacturing working together, but we kind of just hit on that point. It's just save some time and effort on the engineer. I'd like to point something out about you, Lance. You've been around manufacturing, and now you sort of think in terms of manufacturing challenges. And often manufacturing challenges are sort of the biggest opportunities. Like when you hear about a new method of manufacturing, like maybe 3D printing, that opens up an entirely new industry, so to speak. So I'd like to use an example that you actually have another business that you've started called Printed. And maybe talk a little bit about how you were inspired for that, the challenge you saw, because I think it's sort of an inspiring story for engineers to sort of end the conversation on.

SPEAKER_01: 14:53

Yeah, so I'm an opportunist, right, and entrepreneur. And short story, my my family's been invested with my co-founding partner of printed for over 30 years in residential real estate. And back in 2019, he purchased a 3D printer to print homes for the residential real estate portfolio that he owned. And took him a couple of years to get it, the machine to actually work, a lot of retrofitting. It was early stage. But he successfully printed the seventh and eighth 3D printed homes in America. And and meeting with him and getting updates on the investment portfolio and what he was doing, I just became fascinated with this 3D printing because at all metals fabricating, we are highly focused on automation and implementing Industry 4.0, which is the fourth industrial revolution of manufacturing that includes automation, robotics, AI, data analytics, machine monitoring, machine learning. And I just rattled off a lot, but we're highly focused on all that. And so I having I've built several of my own personal homes, not as the builder, but worked with builders and and also done some investing in and building residential real estate. And I just saw that I mean, it is the most inefficient industry in the world, I would argue. And it's also we're also building houses the same way we did 100 years ago. So I mean, in manufacturing, we're not even doing all the same things the way we were doing it 10 years ago, much less 100. And so I don't think you'd find another industry in the world where you're doing it the same way you've been doing it for 100 years. And so there's a re I saw a huge opportunity and got really excited about this technology. And so I pitched to my co-founder partner that we what if we brought a manufacturing mindset to home building where you're focused on efficiency and you're using automation and robotics. There's 3D printing to help solve the affordable housing crisis, which is arguably one of the largest crises facing our country, and really it's a worldwide issue. And he loved the idea, and so we pivoted our our the money in our portfolio over to launching printed technologies. And our mission is just to revolutionize construction, uh, specifically on the printing side, home construction. So all metals then redesigned the machine, and we really focused for the last year and a half, two years on our bead quality and consistency. And so we redesigned the machine. Now we've achieved some really good consistency and quality of beads. We're actually now developing and designing a print head to print more of a brick style to appeal to traditional architecture styles, and also being able to offer a smooth wall finish, we could do currently, but being able to do it in an automated approach as opposed to a manual approach is what we're the next next hill we're we're charging. And so, yeah, it's really exciting. Designing a new machine is is always fun and and challenging. And and so now we're we're actually raising capital to scale the company and looking for great people to add. And so a lot of opportunity there. I think we build there's a seven there's a shortage of 7.3 million affordable homes right now in America, and we're only building 1.4 million homes per year, of which less than 10% are focused on affordable housing. And so the number is just gonna grow and grow, and it's a simple supply and demand. The the less supply, it's more demand, the cost cost just continues to go up. So we have to fix the supply issue, which I really believe utilizing automation through 3D printing will help tackle this problem that is rapidly growing.

SPEAKER_00: 18:34

Yeah, I think that's an amazing story with a great purpose. I remember uh maybe like five to ten years ago, there was an article about the home building industry, and they said if the home building industry gained efficiencies like other manufacturing industries do, the labor required to build a house would be in the range of$20 to$100. But instead, obviously, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. Obviously, it's not it's never going to be gained the efficiencies that that some industries do, but there's certainly room for improvement like you're working on.

SPEAKER_01: 19:05

Yeah, and and the regulations are the biggest bottleneck right now for the industry to really take shape and um start making a dent. So and cities don't know how to inspect the plans, much less approve the prints. And so there's some movement right now on an international committee, ICC, to standardize what's acceptable. And uh I believe once that is uh done and accepted by cities, then we'll start to really see 3D printing can help. Uh, right now, like we can print a house for 20% less and build it and 30% faster. But in order to really move the needle and improve on that, you need economies of scale. And so right now we're limited to printing in rural areas for the most part, uh, other than a few cities that have been early adopters. And so I think once the mass adoption occurs from the municipalities, then we can really start to see economies. Of scale and and get the cost down even further.

SPEAKER_00: 20:03

It's great. I'm gonna put a link to your printed website in the show notes as well. I think people should take a look at that because it's very interesting the houses that you're designing. I mean, they they look great from the outside in my perspective. So I think you're doing good work there. I guess we'll just wrap up here, Lance. Um, it's been great for sharing the work that you guys do at All Metals. Can you tell the audience maybe where to go to find you, especially if they need work to work with uh a company like yours?

SPEAKER_01: 20:32

Yeah, go to ametals.com and I didn't mention earlier, so I'm mentioning now we serve virtually every industry. The company is built kind of on the telecom boom in the 80s and 90s. We've always done some banking equipment on the on top on the uh cash sorting side, and also when you pull up to bank putting the the uh tube in uh to to send the cash or the deposit voucher over, we make those. We also but we now we we really do a lot in alternative energy, and that's our biggest sector, along with data centers, a lot in medical, and we even do a little bit in aerospace and defense, but we serve virtually every industry, so uh we're pretty agnostic, and it also gives us a lot of exposure and expertise in virtually every industry. And so ametals.com. Uh, if you're an engineer and you want to get a quote, you can go to our quote portal, request for quote, just click that, and you can you can upload the PDF and the STEP file, our CAD file, preferably in step format, and um along with the manufacturing type, then quantities you want quoted. And actually, we have an automated quoting tool that will start to build out that quote in the background for you, and then it notifies our estimators to go in and evaluate it, put the finishing touches on the quote and get that to you. So we'd love for you guys to uh to use that resource and um would love to earn your business and trust.

SPEAKER_00: 21:53

And just a quick reminder, I think you mentioned you also have like uh a bend table they can download for for the bins that you guys use, right? Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01: 22:07

And so that noted when you design in what our our bin deductions are, that allows us to streamline programming and not be making adjustments to your files on the flat pattern.

SPEAKER_00: 22:21

All right, so they can go there and download that. Anybody interested in that can go look at the show notes.

SPEAKER_01: 22:26

We also, yeah, we also have a tooling library. So big thing is is knowing what tooling the shop you're working with has, because if you don't have if they don't have a tool, then they're likely going to charge you for that tool. And so, for example, on a louver, you may draw in a certain size louver, but we've got a size just smaller than that and a size just bigger than that, and typically with airflow, the you can deviate one up or down a little bit and it'd be fine. So just knowing what shop you're working with, what tooling they have available is very beneficial. It also helps streamline on uh lead time. So instead of waiting for a tool to come in for two to three weeks, you can program it in a few days and get it to the floor immediately. Whereas you can't really a little bit of the programming without the tool, but ultimately you have to wait for that tool to come in to release it to production because you have to draw that tool in the CAD, put it and save it in the programming software, and uh to be able to use it. So that's another great resource. And I'll make sure you have all those so you can include all of that in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00: 23:31

Okay, sounds great. Thank you for being on the show today, Lance. Again, that was All Metals Fabricating, and you can check them out at ametals.com. Lance, thank you, and I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01: 23:43

Yes, sir. Thank you very much, Brandon. Have a great day. You too.

SPEAKER_00: 23:47

Now, me personally, I've spent a lot of time in shops or talking to shop owners, doing tours, and in my career, I've learned a ton about how foundries create their products, how injection molders create their products, how roto molders create their products. And I've been given the opportunity to understand a broad range of this. Recently, it's been brought to my attention that far fewer engineers than I would like to think really understand these manufacturing methods. There was even a Smarter Everyday episode recently, where Destin had created a smart scrubber for a grill. And even he's showing that even up to a few years ago he didn't necessarily understand the manufacturing processes of molding. So I think as an industry, there is a chance for you to level up by spending a little bit more time in understanding design for manufacturing. Lance left us with more information about pen tables and design for manufacturing guides. You can find those in our show notes. Please check those out at the engineering passion express.com. And I'll see you on the next episode of the Engineering Passion Express.