The Secret Weapon in Liquid Finishing Technology is Nitrotherm

What does it mean to manufacture a stronger standard, at least it means to solve challenges and help manufacturers achieve more through our people, our technology and our belief that anything is possible? This is manufacturing a stronger standard. A podcast by Doug e! Hello, and welcome to manufacturing a stronger standard, your source for thought leadership in manufacturing and finishing from the East corporation. I'm Tyler Kern. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of the show. Now, today, we're kicking off a new series from digest called What's New in finishing technology, where we're doing a deep dive into each of their product offerings and providing some education and insight into what it is, how it's used and much, much more. So today's episode is going to focus on nitro thurm. And joining me are two subject matter experts. We're going to tell us all about it. First and foremost, we have Director e, president of disease corporation and Lester us a Derek, Thanks for being here. Hey, Tyler, Thanks for having me. Absolutely we're also proud to be welcoming bill Robinson to the program. He's the president of coding delivery technology. Bill, thank you so much for being here. Thanks excited to be here. Well, we are excited to have you. And let's start off here. Just give us just kind of some background on what nitro is, where you discovered it, and how it made its way to North America. Yeah, I would say that as we opened up the USA and brought lesters technology to North America, we also just saw our international travels. We discovered other products that were being used because of automation that was available in Europe that they were able to utilize that we just really weren't. Some of the technology like nitro thurm. What I didn't never heard of it before. So we are traveling over in Europe looking at our last robotic solutions, learning on how to use them, visiting customers, seeing how they're using robots in general, industry customers from small through man shops to big, big 1,000 people, companies and their robotic solutions that we were looking at. We would go talk to how their systems were put up and see how they put them together. And nitro thurm kept coming up. And a lot of the places we had been so and like, what is this technology? I mean, you have an amazing robotic application here and you talked about how proud you are of this thing. And that was kind of a unique thing, is that we're over unfiltered because we're talking to companies, because halfway across the world, you can have a real conversation. And it's really refreshing. And it's a unique opportunity that I really learned a lot from. And nitrogen was something that really we knew that we had to have once we found out what it did. And what it was, we knew we had to bring it to our operation. And so as we were building our system, we had to find out, how can we get this to the US because I've never heard of it. And calling around and the people around us had heard about it in the Midwest and stumbled upon it and got found out about coding delivery technologies and called a bill. And I met Bill for the first time and told him that we got to bring this technology into our facility. And we need it. And and that's how we met. And got started. That's how it was. I get a call from South Dakota for somebody saying they need a nitro thermate. We've been in the business for about 16, 17 years now, and basically nobody calls and orders on. It's up. It's a strange little product and doesn't have a tremendous market, especially in the US. And have someone that was familiar with it was pretty amazing. And Derek called and said they wanted to put it in their plant. And actually out of all the years and business was the first time we actually got an order. And I didn't actually meet there till we got there for the installation. So it was pretty exciting. And we decided it would be a good opportunity to work with them, with their knowledge. We hooked up the robots and we laughed. And he called back and said, we're putting in a lab. And we're going to move some of these micro terms. And it's been a great alliance because they have the understanding of the robots and they have the niekro therms. They're now they have them in their lab. And it's a great opportunity where people can see exactly what it does with their application in a real environment, which is pretty exciting. Well, one of the things that the bill that would say that that's different about our situation and your current customers, I mean, you have you've told me, you've got applications all over North America in all kinds of different applications. But when you look at it on a manual setting, gauging some of these is harder to be able to find out where the gains are and what it can do in the differences when just you don't often get to talk to people or people. So this becomes kind of the best kept secret on how this can work. And so when we're over in Europe. And we're talking to a company who has a system and they're saying and telling us the benefits and gains that they've had, it just we see the proof. And it's just it's working. And like we need we need to replicate the success. They had. And so that's was kind of what's different, I think, about when. We called and we met for the first time, and this is really one of the things that we want I really want to get into and talk about is this the benefits of what it does? Bill, can you maybe just explain to everybody, since we haven't really talked about yet, I could say it, say later here, but why would anybody want this possible? And to address part of the reason why. Nobody knows about it is probably more than 75% of our clients like Toyota or whoever. We have confidentiality agreements because their system, they want to protect what they're doing or what their age is. And so the neutral term in most cases, every case basically other than the keast, we have to go and prove the system, which involves going to their site and looking into their production and getting an opportunity to hook up while they're running production. And then evaluating and testing it. But the niekro term itself is really not rocket science. It's just combining three unique things that give painters or robots controls that they don't have. What happens is we're taking standard compressed air, which basically hasn't been addressed. Everybody knows that they use compressed air for atomizing liquid or for spraying powder and they try to make the air industrial clean is what you it is what this saying would be. But compressed air is it is a carrier of liquid in this case, or powder. There One is not the most efficient carrier. So what we do is the nitrogen hooks up to their compressed air system. We didn't filter out everything, but about 97% nitrogen. You're breathing nitrogen. Now about 78% But when you get to a high concentrated nitrogen, it's in hydrous, it's inert and it's a better carrier of fluids. So we're able to actually reduce the atomizing air pressure that they have and get a better transfer efficiency and that that reduces overspray and provides a better replication and a more consistent application because compressed air is constantly changing with humidity, dew point in temperature. So we're sprayed with nitrogen, which is the first and most consistent thing. And then we've added a few other controls on there. One is heat and liquid nitrogen, and we actually have the ability to heat, not the paint. We're not heating the paint. We're heating the compressed nitrogen now, which at atomisation at the point that it meets the liquid. And a perfect example of that is last week, we were in North Carolina at a facility that does tool tool beds and they don't have a recirculating Bake Oven. So they have to spray. Then they have to leave for a bake. And it doesn't it only it's a 90 degrees temperature up. And so they're not getting a full cure on their product. And we were able to turn the sealer up to like 140 degrees of temperature. So the sealer flashed off instantly. And that saved eight minutes. And then they were able to put the top coat on faster and smoother and we had that temperature up to about 135. The result was in 20 minutes, they were bringing the product out. And in one case, believe it or not, they had to run a big run. And usually that means that thing has to sit around for a day and a half before they can rub it and send it and do it again, the manager said. Let's see how long that's going to take. And I said, it's ready. So they took a sanding block and started it in products ready to go. And it's just amazing thing. We can cut down bake times, bake temperatures and reduce the time, which which is huge in a production environment. Third thing is an organization process, which is actually putting a charge again on the carrier and that allows for holding down the product better. It eliminates the modeling that happens with the metallics and provides a more even dry film build. And you just put those three things together and have those controls. And it basically gives them tremendous results. Usually there's a significant savings, significant reduction in rework and faster production, which also allows them to increase production. And that's what's so neat is that it's been here for no one really knows about it. And and I think it's funny how you say it. Maybe you can say it. So I don't get I don't get assassinated or someone coming after me. But the reason why haven't people heard about this bill? I mean, you've been around you put them in. But but why why would someone out here say, like, if this is so great, how come I never heard about it? What would you say, though? There's a lot of reasons. One is if one of the major information services for a paint company or anybody that's using paint is their paint supplier, the paint suppliers don't really like us. We go to an account that might be spending $4 million a year in paint and all of a sudden there's been in 3.2 or something like that. And it's not a happy situation. The other thing is they like to have control for their warranty and how they mix the product and the temperature aspect gives the actual users some advantages that lets them optimize their product. But when you really get into why is the market not there? This product is made separately, which is about 90 miles North of Rome. It's made by the inventor Mr Miller has about. And patent's, 11 or 13 patent's, I think, started in the welding gas business, found out that that nitrogen can really enhance spray painting and created the nitro thermal product. And he went through two importers here. I was the sales manager for one of them before I got the import rights. And we started building the business. And typically, I mean, if they were owned by a great career, somebody probably everybody would have one. But that's not the case. The other issue is because of the product, you call somebody and you say, this is what it's going to do for you. How many do you want? And they say, well, we'd have to see that. So there's a pretty elaborate process and having to prove this. And test it out. And that is the wonderful thing about the guest now. So you have your lab up there. And we have knightdale turbulence up there. And when you bring in a customer in four robots, you set it up and you get them going with the compressed air and then you flip the switch to nitrogen and say, by the way, here's an improved finish, will reduce time in and less materials. And it's a great thing that they can actually see in an environment that's not having to wait for production issues. And that is one thing with our company of the corporation, our automation side. We have that set up in our test lab, but in our production side of digi steelworks and our finishing divisions, we also were using these products. So we're using them in our production environment. And we know what the savings are because we're using them. We can show our customers. We've got four large booths to run in poxes into your thayn top coats and we're running nitro thurm on all of them. I would not want to run without them. That's amazing, too, because when I go, we were up there for that testing or the I think it was powder that time, we were in your facility and after being in facility after facility. And then we go into your facility there and the hang line is running and all the materials are getting all the products getting painted. And I think in the whole day we were there, we saw somebody walk to the paint shop like one time where normally it's a very intense labor control, monitoring, working, changing, updating. And the robots and the Pro terms were just jamming away with pretty much the lights off and everything going in that itself has got to be pretty, pretty impressive to customers or prospects. What does helps it show. So we can talk to them about the journey we've been on. And so we started with our pain application specialist, Brad Rupert is with us. He works with all of our customers. And when we brought this back, I initially had been to Europe before we came on the first time. And I had been over there. And I told him about it. And he's like, yeah, that sounds like some voodoo magic stuff. I don't believe in. And and then when we put it in, we almost had we had to change our whole equipment set up because our velocities in our spray that we wanted to build was going down. So far, regulators couldn't even handle it. So we reduced our pressures so much that we had to change their equipment set up. And we went down and we ended up. We're saving like 30 some plus on our pain, running the same robot programs. And I knew it would work even when I first when I called you because we were at a customer about three years ago now. And we are first getting started with vlasto or Turenne and there is a lesser robotic liquid spray application system and they were used in the last robot and they had production rack parts. They're running for, I think John Deere and some other large ag and some other big companies. And they were running these parts through, and we got to meet them how they did their system. And then we came back would be two years later with the rest of our automation team, as well as they were going through training and for our launch the last to USA. And we went back to that same facility. And they had redone their system at that time. They were using Kremlin and they added an auto and auto color mix changer. They had like 30 different five gallon buckets of different and they all tied into a system automatically going through the justice system. But they were doing the same parts. And so they were using the same programs that they had made. And for the robot with susta and then they put nature with their mom, the only change. They made is they had a natural turn and the guy was just beaming. He was so excited to talk to him about it because he had taken the same programs. They had increased production over 30% because they are now they are spraying with paint. You didn't have you didn't have the solvents in there. And we were in the flash office quicker. The cure time is quicker. So we could increase the speed that he was running. And then he was running the same programs. And he was able to TakeOver 30 of his material of his paint off of each program because you're able to reduce your velocity. And when you reduce your velocity, you increase your transfer efficiency. And that's it. That's it. And not only that, now that you reduce your velocity and increase your transfer efficiency, now, they went from running these same programs, the same parts that they were running, and they were replacing their. Both filters and changing out their booth every three weeks, they now run in the same programs with an extra thurm hadn't changed their booth filters in three months. And that's something no one really thinks about. But that's downtime and that's labor and that. And that's showing. And those filters cost money. So I was another. I mean, it was that's why when I came back home, it's like I'm like, bill, give me four of these things as soon as you can. And our wire that we are going to have on it was going to be probably about four or five months, maybe. So that's why we were ready to go. We'd seen it and we'd seen what it can do. And so that's one of the things that we replicated in our test lab for our customers is to say, OK, give us your book, we'll spray paint, we'll use your equipment, and then we'll run it with compressed air. And then when we turn the nitro thermite and we run the exact same robotic program that got the mill thickness build that you wanted on your paint, and now we run it again. And it's like running. So that we keep turning it down, turn it down to get to that metal thickness. We show you what that changes. And then you can calculate and see your savings. I mean, it's just right there. There is no there's just use in science. And I would say I would say the average in the liquid, which which has tremendous applications, I would say the average return is 4% to 11 months. It's hard to figure out. Sometimes the savings is irrelevant because like an aluminum extrusions, those large vertical lines, we've had facilities, they can go from 9 to 14 feet a minute in production. I mean, that's that far out of material savings, out of the material savings are still there. But we have applications, of course, in the OEM with Toyota. We have woodworking on the flat lines, just about any applications that spring, manual robotics, if they're spraying with compressed air. And the majority of the time we're going to have significant benefits for them and speed finish quality and say, that's a good point, though, because it isn't just spraying liquid on metal parts. I mean, just happen to be what we started with, with our company. But it works in the wood. It also works in fiberglass, too, right? Yes Yeah. We have a lot of business going on right now with gel coats and fiberglass on boats, because the overspray is a big problem, especially for the ones that have multiple colors. You know, spraying a reverse into a mold and they're having to put tape in there to change the lines. And if you get a blue ribbon or you get overspray in another area, it makes a big difference. The way it lays out the metal flake items like bass boats is tremendous. And we have I think we have nine different installations. Now between tracker ranger, Yamaha, skeeter, and we've got two more tests set up in the next month with the company. So chilcote's, a pretty big thing as well. Fiberglas, it's amazing. There's one application in Europe that uses they spray those the big rounds of cheese by using the nitro thurm. They were able to spray that wax on quite a bit faster. So glucosamine pieces on flatlines. There's a lot of almost any application, whether we're doing some gluing stuff right now, too. Well, that's going to be we're getting set up to do some testing in our lab. And that's the one thing that we want to be able to do in our lab with our robots is that we're not going to take time out of their facility, out of their production environment and take their people's time. We're going to take their coding. And we're going to take the equipment that they're going to use. We're going to set it up in a robotic application in our lab. And we're going to run it. And then we're going to use compressed air and replicate what they're doing now. And then we're going to turn the system on and show them what to do. And so it's an exact science. And we're going to show you the difference. And then I think the really cool thing about you and your team is when you and Chris is that you guys go to their facility when we put it in and we help teach them how to use it. And we work together to build to dial back to find that new sweet spot. And then to help train because the science is there. And it does its job. And now that we've proven that, now we also go to the next step with our team. And together, we go there. And we helped teach them how to use it and to its fullest. Yeah, it has to be optimized. You know, you can't how I wish we could just ship them in a box and they plugged in and it was perfect. But, you know, there's different types of paints, different types of spray booths, set UPS, different type of guns. And so it has to be optimized to really maximize the use. The one other really good thing that point, I want to make that the thing that we were most passionate about. I mean, the savings are awesome. And some of the other benefits are really cool. But as far as a manufacturing owner of a robotic solution. And as we've had a lot of robotic solutions and a lot of different applications at our facility, it's the most important thing is you look at bringing in automation is eliminating variables the most important thing. And with this one is the easiest way in a patent system, which is very complex processes. Is that you can eliminate variables, and the one is that you have the same temperature that you're constantly have at the gun year round, whether it's August or whether it's January, does the humidity, temperature, all that is controlled, and when you're controlling those variables, that creates a better application for a robot. And so the savings to us, where we're kind of a cherry on top because we were eliminating variables, we had the same constant temperature. And then we knew what we were getting year round. And that was important for us to build, to make sure that we're going to put down a good product or eliminate or decrease or rework. And so that was kind of the start of that. So and the other thing is that we just had to plug it in. It was the barn on the easiest, simplest thing to be able to do. Can you explain this? Maybe the science of how it works with compressed air and then do you have to in just that? You don't have to do a whole lot of prep to set it to get it set up? Yes, it's quite simple. Sound simple. I mean, you've got to into their production environment. But basically the big variable of atomizing spray is compressed air. Where's the compressor? How far away? What's the temperature? What's the temperature, the compressed air in the morning compared to the afternoon. If it's raining, it's not raining. It all changes the density of compressed air. Arguing it simply is. It's a box like a control panel. It's used as 110 voltage. We plug it in and hook it up to your compressed air line. And there's a membrane in there. There's already 78% nitrogen in the compressed air. It's the other 21% of oxygen, inert moisture point that's affecting and changing. So by pressing everything out, basically going through a membrane and ending up with a condensed nitrogen, you have a very stable product. A lot of the turbulence or possibly all the turbulence is eliminated and you have a more efficient carrier that doesn't change unless it's over 300 or under 300 degrees. So it comes out of that membrane. The temperature is also interesting because, you know, when you try to heat paint, where did you heat it? How long did you heated? What's the temperature when it gets down to motivation? When we say 135 temperature, we're providing 135 temperature within six inches of the gun typically, so that you're getting a consistent atomizing temperature all the time. And that lets you gives you a control factor that you normally don't have. That's why in manual's painting, a real good painter looks at it and says it's not going on that right. So he has to adjust. There is air pressure or the fluid with robots. It's critical because they're set up to do the same thing over and over again. And they don't have a way to adjust. So by having that consistent carrier with the always the same charge, always the same temperature, and it's not changing like compressed air, you can dial in that robot, and it's going to be that way every time. Some people would just say, well, why don't I just pipe over my nitrogen I'm using for my laser and just pipe that into my paint system. Just all we're doing is adding nitrogen. Why don't I just get a nitrogen tank? We have a genius foreman or somebody that comes up with that idea on every test we call that we. So we got nitrogen right outside. Well, that's number one. That's a completely different nitrogen that's bottled usually under high pressure. And and it costs money. I mean, people say, well, where's the nitrogen for this? And then you spend three days working with them. And then they go, where do you get the nitrogen? It's already in the air. We're just compressing. And we're taking basically to a membrane system, taking everything out, put the nitrogen. And that's a huge part of it. If you had to supply nitrogen do it, it would be it would be wouldn't be cost effective. So and it's just a membrane process up. 15 years ago when we started selling these, the process of condensing nitrogen out of compressed air was a much the unit would be 4 times the size and you had to heat it and you had to do all kinds of things. Well, the membrane technology has gotten so good now, which is just a tremendous amount of fibers that only that take everything out of the nitrogen. And it's not a high pressure. It just works on your typical shape under 10 pounds. So it's a very efficient way to get an extremely efficient carrier. One, then you're not just using nitrogen either. I mean, you're using pure nitrogen from your compressed air at the unit. But then through that unit, we are also adding the ionize that controlling the organization. And then also fine tuning with that. And using that to able to use the temperature that you're controlling at the gun. If you're just using compressed nitrogen from outside of your laser tank, you have the same problem as compressed air, don't you? I mean, your temperatures could be changing all the time, right? Well, the nitrogen I mean, if the nitrogen was outside, it's really not going to affect it as a carrier. It's just that you only have one of the three tools we have. So if you've got nitrogen, you could reduce your atomizing air pressure to some extent. Are you going to get the flow that the ionization adds? No are you going to get the added advantage of. Of a constant temperature and being able to accelerate the temperature to decrease flash time, no. So it's the three things together that make this product. What it is. And the ability to control those three things at the application site. So it lays down better to like. How does that work? Because I've seen that our transfer efficiency is going up. It looks better. It's laying out nice, not just because we're also we're reducing the solvents near spray and paint. And when the heat is huge to this. Right, because we're taking the solvents out and you warm up, paint, your molecules are smaller, and you're just getting paint on there. Right, while you're reducing the solvents. So you have. So you have a higher percentage of the high solids, which is what you have left on the body when it dries. But the point is, when you have compressed air, and it's going through a compressed air system, it picks up a negative charge, it picks up static electricity and it's static, like if you spray metallics, the different metallics pick up positive and negative charges. And they kind of run from each other like a Toyota. If you look at the bumpers, particularly if you spray metallics on those, they run over to the edge and flip up, and then they change based on what charge is coming through the compressed air. When you have the same exact charge, do the ionization process that's going on there. The metallic just laid down, the material lays down. It's not it's not fighting each other. So, you know, there's a lot of turbulence and compressed air and different molecules are actually make this material move around and it just works. And put it on. You make changes. Some places are different. Some places have temperature is absolutely unimportant. Someplace temperature is critical regardless of what the application is. If they're spraying with compressed air, I mean, you understand atomisation happens from compressed air at a certain pressure. So if your typical pressure could be 60 pounds with electrostatic, it could be 30 pounds or 40 pounds with a regular conviction's Bragan, we are able to drop that down by 40% And so now that's where you're transferring efficiency. And it's that overspray that picks up trash and brings it back into the spray curtain that gets all over the spray booth, that fills up the filters. So eliminating all those things is just one step after another that makes a better finish. Then you put the heat on it. And you can reduce the cycle time for the product. And then the electrostatic charge that you have also improves or overcomes the Faraday effect as well. I mean, that's one thing that we've really seen is that we're able to get in places that we couldn't before. And so that's kind of been a really, really added benefit for us as well. And a huge benefit in powder coating, which we use the food system for. I mean, that's just a critical factor there. So, bill Derek, because we begin to wrap up our conversation today, I think it's worth just discussing and maybe summarizing some things and making sure that we've covered all of our bases. So, bill, let me go to you first to just give us a quick summary of everything we've talked about today. And also, if we've missed anything, if there's anything that we need to add on to this conversation as we wrap up our discussion today about nitro thurm, appreciate the time. And it's exciting to be working with the keast, with the nitrogen, which is our liquid application. And of course, they're going to see that in the lab. The other exciting thing is that they also have a powder coating in the lab. And we have a fluid product, which is very similar. We're going to reduce material usage, improve quality and improve production time in both installations. And with the geese, they have the ability to actually see the work as they test the robots and we're bringing robots into their business. And I would say to follow up on that bill, that working together with keates decades of application experience with nitro thurm and their other product, the fluid, now, coupled with our production experience, using it in the production environment. And now adding these new applications to our robotics and then also to our robotic customers, it's a really powerful combination that we bring to our customers. And then it's just a simple solution. It's a complicated problem that made simple. And you eliminate variables. And when we add a robotic application, it's eliminating variables is the name of the game. And the more you can eliminate, the more successful you're going to be. And it's the same as a manufacturing owner of a company. It's the most simplest and easiest piece of equipment you've ever bought. Bahnson I mean, we plugged it in. We came in once. We had it set up and dialed in. It was there's almost zero maintenance. It just works. And we turn it on. And it's been fantastic return. And it's been fun, fine tuning and continuing to make our processes better as we check this one off at this snowballs. That we can make the next one better. And it helps improve the next one, and it's been a really fun journey together. Well, the other big advantage, I mean, in with the robots, because we're running. This is I think about it a lot. Somebody just spent X amount of money setting up the robots and setting up their process and their time. And then we walk in with this box that allows them to reduce the pressure and spray differently. And spray with different temperatures. And it's a so they have to say, are we going to retool right now? What are we going to to do with the geese as they move into adding robots? They're already going to have the set up, which is the critical part of your factor, putting it all together in your facility before you take it out there. I mean, that's to me, is one of the most powerful things about working with robots is the fact that you're doing a whole implementation. And as we tie nitrogen in with that, that's just one more part of the piece all put together at one time. Yes, absolutely. Well, Derrick and bill, guys, thank you so much for joining us today here on the podcast, talking a little bit about nitro thurm and bringing all of this down for us. So, bill, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. And everyone, thank you for joining us for this episode of manufacturing a stronger standard, your source for thought leadership in manufacturing and finishing from the e corp. We are so thrilled that you join us for this episode. And of course, we have plenty more episodes on the podcast channel for you to consume. A lot of thought leadership, a lot of expertise when it comes to a lot of different areas of the manufacturing process. And so you're going to want to go check out those podcasts that we have there on Apple Podcasts or Spotify are also on the guest website. Make sure to go check those out. And, of course, we'll be back soon with more episodes of the show. But until then, I've been your host today, Tyler. Thanks for listening.