After deciding a career in welding might lead to an “early retirement”, Justin turned in his welding torch for a polo shirt and a degree in mechanical design. He worked for several years developing machinery and automation in the semiconductor industry before switching to a different industry entirely where he designed and then led a company developing high end iron doors for residences and commercial buildings. These days, he spends his time as the general manager at Interlink Engineering providing on-demand engineering services and as a reseller of 3D printing machines.
Pipeline Design & Engineering partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, or automation equipment but don’t have the bandwidth or resources internally to develop that equipment. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com .
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
After deciding a career in welding might lead to an “early retirement”, Justin turned in his welding torch for a polo shirt and a degree in mechanical design. He worked for several years developing machinery and automation in the semiconductor industry before switching to a different industry entirely where he designed and then led a company developing high end iron doors for residences and commercial buildings. These days, he spends his time as the general manager at Interlink Engineering providing on-demand engineering services and as a reseller of 3D printing machines.
Pipeline Design & Engineering partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, or automation equipment but don’t have the bandwidth or resources internally to develop that equipment. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com .
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Welcome to the Being An Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Justin Smart, who is a mechanical designer and has worked at a few well known product companies such as Emerson, RYOBI, and Motorola as well as several smaller companies and currently manages his team at Interlink Engineering, where they focus on 3D printer sales, product design services, and on demand contract engineering placement for companies in need of short term engineering support. Justin, welcome to the show.
Justin Smart:Aaron, thanks for having me.
Aaron Moncur:Alright, so first question, what made you decide to get into the field of CAD design mechanical design? What, what was it that was attractive about that space for you?
Justin Smart:Um, honestly, when I was younger, I, in high school, I thought I wanted to be a welder. And I did a lot of welding into welding every year in high school. And then it during my senior year, I noticed that a lot of people in the welding field that were older than I was, had very poor health. And it just suddenly occurred to me that it probably wasn't the best line of work and occupation. And so I guess I had always had kind of that design, bug in man like to take things apart as a child and put them back together and build things and
Aaron Moncur:Classic engineer.
Justin Smart:Yeah, so it just, I like to make stuff and I thought I wanted to weld things together. And then, I thought, well, maybe, maybe I should get a job inside of the office, instead of I don't know, in the middle of a refinery.
Aaron Moncur:Not breathing the fumes in every day
Justin Smart:Lot of refineries, so there's a lot of piping design, so
Aaron Moncur:What are those, pipeline design?
Justin Smart:Yeah. So these very large, complicated isometric drawings, it was kind of like a wiring diagram for a refinery. But instead of wires, there are pipes. And there's millions of pipes and 1000s of valves and elbows and they can't run into each other. So keeping track of all that, spaghetti, something that would get you as you know, when you're around refiners, you see it everywhere. And then, so, we got into that in college and just been floating there
Aaron Moncur:Where did you grow up? Where did you grow up?
Justin Smart:Just outside of St. Louis, the St. Louis metro area, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, and what were all the refineries were these like, like? Not oil refineries with like, mineral refineries?
Justin Smart:They were definitely oil refineries.
Aaron Moncur:Cool, okay.
Justin Smart:You got, we had Shell and Standard and Amoco, and they were pretty much all in the same area. And because you're right on the Mississippi River, so you got to be different. You know, the Mississippi, people don't realize it and probably not as much as it used to be, but it's for North and South. It is all the commodities traveled throughout our nation. And so, whether they come from from other places, they might land in Louisiana and to get on a barge and head north, or grains that are grown up in Wisconsin or put on a barge and then sent south and you got coal and grain and sometimes tankers full of oil and stuff, too. So
Aaron Moncur:Okay. And how did you get introduced initially to welding was that something like your family dad or your dad did or you had friends that were into welding?
Justin Smart:Yeah, my stepdad, he was a, he was a welder. He was also heavily involved in the in the local pipe fitters union. And so it was a very lucrative job if you could survive it, basically.
Aaron Moncur:I didn't think about welders and then all working in a toxic environment, but I suppose there are tons of like fumes, chemicals that you're breathing and then beyond that you're working with heavy pieces of metal that are probably getting moved around and there's just physical danger due to that, right?
Justin Smart:Yep, my stepdad broke his back fault, fell in a hole.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, ouch.
Justin Smart:So like I said, it's looking good if you survive it.
Aaron Moncur:If you survive it, yeah. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so cool. You made the choice to depart this field fraught with danger and health risks and jump into a cushy office job. Nice. Alright, so right out of college, you took a job with Emerson who, who is like a huge company, they do so much stuff. Your particular role, I guess, was designing electric motor components and r&d fixtures. What were some of the projects that you worked on at Emerson?
Justin Smart:Well, Emerson Electric is, at the time the largest motor manufacturer in the world, I'm not sure if they still are. But they had like 54 divisions that pretty much all of them were somehow related to electric motors. So you probably have one of your house InSinkErator is a division of Emerson, right? So it makes your garbage disposal, which is a big motor mountain through the bottom of your, your drain. US, I went to actually work to work for US Motors, and, and then I moved from US Motors, I got promoted down to R&D Division within Emerson. But oddly enough us Motors was a company in Prescott, Arizona. And right before I went to work for them, they actually got moved. Or Emerson bought that company and moved almost all their employees to St. Louis. And so my boss and my boss's boss, they were all guys from from Prescott, pretty much that had moved to St. Louis, it was kind of odd, ended up out here.
Aaron Moncur:Is that how you got introduced to Phoenix, all these guys?
Justin Smart:Coincidence, but I just thought odd later in life that I came out here and they all went, went back to St. Louis.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, the universe wanted you here at some point, right?
Justin Smart:So they make very large motors, some motors you could actually stand inside of, and then a lot of their product deal, you can actually see as you drive around the Phoenix metro area, whenever you come to the intersection, and you see where's there's a canal, there's sometimes a pump station, where they're trying to raise the water from one height so they can get the flow down. The next canal was also very large vertical motor, painted bays. It's moving that water of a few feet from one canal and X. And those are almost all US Motors. So we make very large industrial electric motors.
Aaron Moncur:Cool. I'll have to take a look. See if I can find this next time I'm driving past the canal.
Justin Smart:You drive nothing, you just don't realize it, was just I just happen to know that what the castings look like because I worked on the drawings all the time, so I can spot that chasm canal.
Aaron Moncur:That's pretty cool, isn't it, to see something you worked on out in the wild? What a great feeling.
Justin Smart:Yeah, I've got a few things I've designed in a while when I worked at RYOBI. When that's what moved me out here it was RYOBI.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, okay. Let me ask a question about RYOBI. I went when I saw that, I thought, Okay, this is RYOBI, like the big company, lawnmowers and all that stuff. And then when I tried to find the locate, I had no idea that they had a location here in Arizona. So the ryobi you worked at that's like that was the big RYOBI the one that everyone knows the the one that's in Home Depot, right?
Justin Smart:Well, yeah. And so there was two divisions, there's rally outdoor products and they make basically the lawn and garden, the line trimmers, hedge trimmers, that type of equipment, the ryobi that makes them drills, like the hand drills wasn't vision and wasn't related to us with other than the name and the corporate headquarters back in Japan
Aaron Moncur:Got it. Thin company
Justin Smart:MTD purchased RYOBI Outdoor Products a number of years ago. So basically all the guys that worked with it right away or some of them became became MTD and then MTD just got purchased about two years ago, maybe about a year and a half ago by Black and Decker.
Aaron Moncur:Okay.
Justin Smart:They're still called MTD. I think under the trade name, they they kept the name, but they're owned by Black and Decker now.
Aaron Moncur:Got it. And what were you making? You said it was lawnmowers and things like that.
Justin Smart:Yeah. And I wouldn't say that that's a product that I worked on when I was there was the attachment. And it was a hedge trimmer attachment. So you can still go to Home Depot and buy that, that that product. Me and another guy design 20 to 22 some years ago, 23.
Aaron Moncur:Really? 23 years ago, they're still selling it, huh?
Justin Smart:And it looks it looks exactly the same.
Aaron Moncur:Oh man, that's fantastic.
Justin Smart:But otherwise, it's the same.
Aaron Moncur:This is a hedge trimmer attachment. It sounds like I mean, it's not a hugely complex component. Is that accurate? I mean, it's like a plastic part that gets attached to your head trimmer, right?
Justin Smart:Yeah. So that the the rattle, we had this thing called the, it was called the'quicklink system,' but basically a lot the gas engine, and instead of being a solid boom all the way down to your head where your does the string would come out for trimming weeds. That boom was split and you could add a multitude of attachments. Right so they had the line trimmer, they had a hedge trimmer and even had a small snowblower that I took up skiing with me one weekend and test it out for all weekend long.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so when you say an attachment, it's not just like a piece of plastic it's like a sub assembly.
Justin Smart:It's basically you're using the gas engine as your power unit. And you could attach whatever you needed to do We got plenty of saw
Aaron Moncur:Got it. Yeah, yeah
Justin Smart:The line trimmer they had the the leaf blower a hedge trimmer, my head had caught the saw blades were you know your standard hedge trimmer
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, looks simple for me
Justin Smart:To polish your lawn and garden to
Aaron Moncur:Like a pair of clippers, right, where there are two blades that reciprocate back and forth relative, approximated right up against each other
Justin Smart:At the walk bar.
Aaron Moncur:Right Right, right. Yeah, that's a little bit like a chainsaw but it's not a chainsaw.
Justin Smart:Yeah, I go linear chains almost right.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So okay, I want to learn a little bit more about how long it took to develop that attachment because like it at first I was thinking this is just like some plastic attachments and little cover or shroud or something. And even then I was I was gonna say how long did it take to develop that because it's hard to appreciate how long it takes to develop something that's going to be mass produced even something that's relatively simple, but now we're talking about something that's not just like a plastic part that gets snapped on this is an entire sub assembly. So till how long did it take to develop this hedge trimmer assembly?
Justin Smart:Well, the lawn and garden industry is a it's a tough industry to live in because there's this big trade show that everybody goes to so basically you have to get everything done within a year or less than a year everything isn't like these one year or nine months cycles because you got to take your your product to the show and at that show you get all your orders for the next year basically.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, okay.
Justin Smart:Kind of one year cycle and so it's, it's a very compressed timeline and it's it's definitely not easy and and how I took, so it took us a less than, less than a year because you got to have everything done before you go to the show, and and basically when the guy when the sales guys go to the show one year they come back and tell the engineering what everybody want us next year.
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Justin Smart:We got a year figure it out and get to the show with your product.
Aaron Moncur:So what you you design this hedge trimmer and it was you and I think you mentioned one other engineers with like a team of two basically.
Justin Smart:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, when you when you to develop this hedge trimmer, did you have like a predicate device to start with? Or was this just from scratch?
Justin Smart:Well, the way RYOBI worked, there was some some fellows that were in a separate building from us that were from Japan. And they were in charge of industrial design. So all of our products started out as this look. And as an engineer, we had to figure out how to make it work within those confines. And that was probably the toughest part of the job, I wanted to increase the size of something because I wanted we had a bevel pinion gear, and I wanted to change I wanted to reduce the speed of my, my blades. And so I wanted to make a bigger bevel gear. And after multiple meetings and battles, I lost the the industrial design of that company was the end all be all and it had to look a certain way. And it took me a long time to really digest that and get over it, but it's the brutal reality of the consumer products.
Aaron Moncur:People buy pretty things.
Justin Smart:Right? I always tell Rich, it's like, you know, the guys that work at the companies that sell fishing lures, they're not analyzing fish, they're analyzing fishermen because no one pick it up that lure off the off the shelf and saying this is the one I think is going catch fish, but they don't, they never serve a fish the feeling that it gives somebody when they pick it up off the shelf. And so I guess as an engineer, I push back on that mentality. But the reality is, doesn't matter how good your design is, if somebody is not going to buy it, it was always the time anyway. For products world.
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Justin Smart:Industrial that is completely out the window. Right?
Aaron Moncur:In the consumer products world, did you feel like that was the right strategy to make it look pretty first and then figure out how to make it function.
Justin Smart:At the time, I thought it was the worst idea ever. I was, I was in my early 20s, or in my mid 20s, and was probably full of myself. And now almost 50. And it makes more sense than I used to say that for sure.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Well, that's a big point. All right, you moved on to the semiconductor industry. And I wanted to touch on that for a little bit. Because we've all heard, you know, the term semiconductor that gets thrown around a lot. It's a huge industry, here in the US and in the world. But I feel like at least me anyway, I don't have a really good understanding of what semiconductor is, like, if I were to go into a building what what am I going to see? And and know, 'Oh, yeah, okay, this this is semiconductor.' Give us a sense for what that that space looks like, what's what was happening, what the equipment, the machinery was, like, sharing a little bit of that.
Justin Smart:Right, so I was, I just had this conversation with a fellow employee this morning about how the term semiconductor industry is overused, under defined and just way too broad of a statement
Aaron Moncur:It's good, I thought it was gonna come out sounding really dumb asking that question.
Justin Smart:There's a million things that fall under that group. And there's things that like I worked on in Motorola there, that I never handled wafers, right, I never polished away for. But some people think that's really all there is to that. And there's, there's so much more. So we did there, we did these things called a ball grid arrays. And so we would have a tray full of chips that had a an array of metal flats on them. And we would take, we put this into a machine, our machine would have one and one end effector, that would dip about 10,000 needles down into a thin layer of flux paste, and then go over and then these little pogo pins would touch each one of those little metal pads on 10,000 spaces, and transfer just a little bit of that. plugs, paste, right. And then we had another head and that same machine, they would go over a tray full of solder spheres. And that's a little ball of solder that's maybe ten thousands of diameter and eight or eight thousands in diameter. And, you know, static is a real problem with this, you imagine a little metal sphere like that. So we would pick up 10,000 spheres in a vacuum chuck, and then set those 10,000 spheres down on those ships. And that, and then we drop them, and hope that sphere landed right in the middle of that pad and got stuck with that little bit of flux we just put down.
Aaron Moncur:How far were they being dropped? Not far, I know.
Justin Smart:I'm not sure. But you're talking about a 10,000 ball.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Justin Smart:It didn't take much for it to go awry on you. And then so those would come out with you know, you'd fill up multiple trays, and then that would go over to what they call a reflow oven. And basically, we are going to heat up that ship just enough to where the ball the bottom of the ball melted, and then attached to that path that it was sitting on. So then you would have a chip that would have, let's say 100 or 200, or how big it was, a little spheres of solder that were attached to the contact pads on there. And then those things can be put on an actual circuit board and they would run it through again and that process of basically the pad on your chip had a sphere of solder melted to it and then that same sphere would melt to something else. So highly controlled temperatures and get back to melt just right obviously the melts too much it can bleed over onto your Natvia Jason Contact, so was high precision type of things, we also made some some machines that would take a wood cut up chips with a saw blade that was about six thousandths of an inch thick.
Aaron Moncur:The saw blade was six thousandths of inch thick?
Justin Smart:A wet sold and so it was just like a razor, it was spinning
Aaron Moncur:What was that made out of?
Justin Smart:Like a thin metal, and then it had like some sort of ceramic thing on it
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Justin Smart:You can see the damn thing, it was like we bought a machine from an Asian company in and then reworked their equipment to work with our system. So it was a lot of you know, buying the equipment, and then making equipment that didn't exist. So you can get, you know, this chain of machines that you put something in one end, and at the other end, game a bunch of something else, so the combination of custom equipment or reconfiguring off the shelf equipment to meet the customers needs. And so it's just a lot of one off machine design, and pretty unique. So
Aaron Moncur:That's sounds helpful, one off machine design. That's where we live.
Justin Smart:Yeah. That was a fun job. I like to work or that was fun.
Aaron Moncur:This six thousandths of an inch psi. I keep going back to that I've never heard of a six thousandths of an inch thick saw what what was it cutting? And why did it have to be so thin?
Justin Smart:Because we're cutting these little they started instead of making the chips, they came with the idea instead of making these chips and cutting them up into initially. And then that's having to locate and drop the balls on there. They said, hey, what if we cut it off at the last step. So it print this whole circuit board. And that circuit board would have actually, you know, a couple 100 components on one board. And then they would do all these processes. And the last thing they would do, they would cut it up in the little in each individual component, but would have all the other processes done. And it was kind of nice, because we didn't have to locate 100 times we only located once. Right? Okay. But these things up and they were so tiny, that any if we only had that much room plus our tolerance because if you went over it the blade was thicker it would you know it would cut into the end of the component, right?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I see. I get it. Alright, quick break here. Short plug for my company. The Being An Engineer Podcast is powered by Pipeline Design and Engineering, where we work with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey custom test fixtures, or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. And you can find this at test fixture design.com we're speaking with Justin Smart today. So the next place that you actually you went you went to another semiconductor place three as Phoenix, I think but but after that you went to a completely different industry, Coletti Design. Am I saying that correctly? Coletti?
Justin Smart:Yep, yep.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. Coletti design? Tell, I can't do it justice. So you tell us a little bit collective design completely different industry? What what were you doing there?
Justin Smart:Yeah, I went from high tech to low tech and a very extreme way. I didn't get to do you know, back to the welding thing again, but I wasn't doing the welding I had, you know, I was designing the stuff that got welded up. So. And, to be honest, what happened was, if you if you look back at the chronology of that was we had a recession, basically. Right. So a lot of things were kind of going south on us. And I had, I guess, I'd felt like the semiconductor industry, I'd had a couple of jobs and it was just seemed to be kind of a little shaky, you know, it was up and down, kind of a feast or famine thing. So I had, I had saw the job opportunity in this place called quality design. And I worked there for a couple years doing basically a drawing iron entry doors, so I wouldn't drop in doors, all the artwork that went inside of them. And then all that, all my my output would basically go out to the shop via a plasma cutter, or a few other tools and to make the parts that I designed and then they got all welded together and it would become a door for very high. I'm talking like a $20,000 door. You know, it's
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I was looking at the website, the impression I got these are not cookie cutter house doors. These are like, high-end
Justin Smart:Very, next door, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Was it? Was it mostly businesses? Or was there a lot of just high end residential homes as well? What was the spread there?
Justin Smart:I would say, at Coletti, it was primarily high end residential.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. What what were the common manufacturing processes that you all use to produce these doors?
Justin Smart:So, it Coletti it was very old world, you know, they, the above, the only thing that was automated was the fact that I had a plasma cutter, that was CNC control, okay, for let's say, if I had a door with arch on the top, you know, and we didn't have a hydro form, or to roll to, you know, that big, heavy wall to, so you would basically form a tube out of four pieces of metal. So we're going to cut the arches, and then roll some sheet metal on top of that, and form a box or a tube. And then that gets repeated throughout the door, you got the door, then you got to the frame on the outside, and any window sashing and things like that. So that was what the highest tech thing we had was a CNC control plasma cutter to cut arches that we would need. And then everything else was welded and around to just differ, you know?
Aaron Moncur:And was was everything so manual, just because of the kind of the intricacy of what was being designed? Or were the company just kind of hadn't moved on to the next phases of the engineering world with automation
Justin Smart:A little bit of that, but at the same time, we're talking about an old world practice, you know, metal forming blacksmithing. It's kind of, you know, blacksmithing will always be old school. Even if you get some new tools, you know
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Justin Smart:You used to have to kick your bellows in your fire hot, you know? Yeah. You can hit up, hit a switch on a fan and it'll blow heat into your into your furnace box and get a cherry hot for you. So
Aaron Moncur:Do you think that's some of what these homeowners were paying for the fact that there's some custom element to each one of these doors, right, like just some guy out on a shop rolling these things up? It's not been stamped out of machine at, you know, 100 cycles per minute or something?
Justin Smart:Yeah. And to be honest with you, there's, when we, when I first started industry that was not as common as it is. Now, there's a couple of companies that are making doors, turn the name of the one, but I believe it's just across the border in Mexico, and they sell a lot of doors in the southwest and these metal, but they, they're, they have like five different designs. And they're they're kind of automated, you know, they look old world, but if you get up close to them, you can tell that it was really, you know, not so custom. Right. So okay, yeah. It kind of depends, um, the, you know, you get what you pay for, right?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I saw one picture on the website, the quality website, it was a set of doors that had been designed, I guess, specifically for like, a large wine cabinet. And I wondered, do you have any any memories of projects that were kind of interesting, you know, like, you think of doors, as you know, as the front door of your house, but they're probably doors for a lot of other things. Do you remember any projects or experiences where you guys develop a door for something that you might not think of every day?
Justin Smart:Well, I would say that what so I worked at Coletti. And then I left there and went to work for their competitor. And you know, so it was kind of doing the same thing. We did a ton of wine doors, wine, wine cellar doors, you know, people have this tendency to it was in their basement had a lot of stonework. And so that iron entry door just kind of really fit the motif was a company that's called King architectural products. And they're like the worldwide leader for iron components, you know, you can by hand rail and the balusters used by all this stuff out of catalog and then weld it all up and build just about whatever you want. And for some reason, they have gotten they had a ton of like, grapes and grape leaves, and a wide assortment of those. And so we could just get all these really cool grapes and grape leaves and make these really fancy doors for your wine cellar. And I mean Tarnovo, everybody that bought one for their fancy house had to have a little one for their their wine cellar in their basement. That those were always kind of interesting. And then I did a couple of doors for a gun store. That was I don't, we just shipped him. I never saw the place. But we advanced specified, we used a we had to order some special steel. It was bulletproof, or recess. I remember it was a little more difficult to manage out in the shop. I think we had to crank up the power of the plasma table a little bit, you know, to get it to cut right. But that was interesting.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Justin Smart:Some idea behind that door some day and some other some other guy trying to shoot his way. And I was wondering if that was even allowed.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, you never know. Yeah. Either dad or the cybertruck needs to be there to stop it.
Justin Smart:Yeah, exactly.
Aaron Moncur:So that the other company, the competitor of Coletti, that was First Impression Iron Works, I believe, and I've read on their website, the word wrought, wrought iron, which I think I mean, that kind of refers to like banging on something with a hammer, where they're
Justin Smart:Passing process, which is, you know, nobody's doing that anymore, really, that these days. But, um, there's a company called HEBO, that makes these. It's a German company that makes these, what I would call blacksmithing tools of the 20 or 21st century, we bought a bunch of those from Germany. But the tooling for that they sold was astronomically expensive. And even if you were willing to pay for it, the lead times were like, you better plan a good year in advance, if you want to hit some good, there was an amazing long lead times. So after we bought the equipment, my boss, we quickly realized that we had this problem that we only purchase certain tools. And we needed a bunch more. So we decided to kind of reverse engineering their tooling and make our own. So we could make more stuff and more designs and create basically create more tooling. So we could make different and expand our library of parts of these HEBO machines could bend and they're basically like, you know, if you think about blacksmith taking a piece of bar, and he's hammering it around a an anvil, right, you know, so that anvil horn has got a specific shape for a reason, because you're typically want to form things around it. And so this, this automated machinery pad would allow you to stick a bar and it would have some cam levers, it would just basically roll something or bend it or, you know, we had a few different machines, but it was modern blacksmithing. And so that that was closer to the old world stuff than than a lot of companies are doing because most companies are buying those things pre made from chain. Right.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, yeah.
Justin Smart:So we were forging on a daily basis
Aaron Moncur:In in my world and in your world now, as well. We're concerned with tolerances that are down in the 1000s of an inch spectrum. I imagine that was not the case at Coletti and it at first impression iron worse, what kind of tolerances did you guys deal with?
Justin Smart:Well, it's an architectural product. So we're going to work in fractions of an inch, not decimals, right?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Justin Smart:And you know, I would say it's dependent on the product and what part of the product you know, but but to your point, everything was custom and basically kind of ground to fit you know.
Aaron Moncur:So you're like pushing things into place to get them to fit and welding it. It nothing is precision here plus or minus, I don't know what 16th of an inch
Justin Smart:On the on the OD or the door you got a quarter inch on the width quarter.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, okay.
Justin Smart:There's always a gap and you're going to put your shims in and then you're going to cover it with trim anyway.
Aaron Moncur:Right. Good point. Okay
Justin Smart:You're gonna see a doorframe and it's not even close to the studs and there's gonna be pipes and chunks of wood stuck in there as shims
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Justin Smart:You got a certain tolerance on the when you get out there with the with the iron door, it's got to fit in the hole you know so on that kind of thing, your tolerance you always want to go plus nothing minus something basically.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Justin Smart:Otherwise, you're taking the solids all the something that you probably didn't want to
Aaron Moncur:Maybe that's a good opportunity to bust out that six thousandths of an inch semiconductor saw get some there and correct me if I'm, wrong, I think that you were the director of operations at First Impression. Is that right?
Justin Smart:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:How was that going from being a design engineer to director of operations?
Justin Smart:A lot of hard work. And, you know, just, I'm a problem solver. Regardless, and, you know, I could just get the job done and, and get the team motivated. You know, we had close to 200 employees over there. I have a big team, I had four different departments that, that I basically was in charge of the design group only being one of the four. So it was a lot of a lot of 60 hour weeks is what it was.
Aaron Moncur:Really.
Justin Smart:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Did you miss being a designer?
Justin Smart:You know, the design work, they're so rudimentary that I quickly kind of, you know, it's not like, not real design work in the sense that I was really challenged with a real problem, you know, you're, you know, okay, once you figure out the problem, I would I would do is to train somebody on how to deal with it. I didn't want to, you know, continually have the same problem every day. So
Aaron Moncur:Okay, so the director of operations, that was a much more interesting problem for your brain to noodle on that. About some, what were some of the more interesting problems or challenges that you ended up solving?
Justin Smart:Well, it wasn't my departments was the shipping department. We had when I started there was basically we just serve as Arizona. You know, that was our customer base was Arizona. Security screen doors, and we got into our into our event started growing and growing and growing. And then someone said, 'Hey, can you show me one to California?' Okay, yeah, we can do that. But in the box shipping over there. And then but the most interesting ones I got, I had a customer of in Canada said, 'Hey, I have a house.' They had a house and somewhere here in Arizona snowbirds. Right. And but that their main residence was back in Canada. And so they had ordered a door from us for their house in Arizona, and they loved it. They said, 'You know what, we got to have a big iron entry door for our house in Canada.' And they sent me some pictures of their door that winter after it was installed. And I came to the realization to metal doors like that. In Canada, where it snows a lot. It's really cold. Not the best idea
Aaron Moncur:Because of rocks and corrosion?
Justin Smart:No, mainly just because they're thermal conductors. So the and it didn't seal that well to be honest with you, you know, we put door seal in there, but they just the nature of the sides of them. The old world was of them. It was no space shuttle door, you know. And so even though they were blown with foam on the inside the steel tube would just conduct so much thermal energy that they sent me a picture and basically, there was a it looked like he had left your freezer door kind of open or a little it was like an iceberg on the inside of their house that had frozen on
Aaron Moncur:Wow.
Justin Smart:It was a mess
Aaron Moncur:They couldn't open the door?
Justin Smart:No, it was just a little bit of that the air was so cold outside. Because it's in Canada.
Aaron Moncur:Uh huh.
Justin Smart:It's so cold that it's making the whole metal door cold.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, and then that just makes the inside of the house cold.
Justin Smart:The inside of the door is almost as cold as the outside.
Aaron Moncur:I see, okay,
Justin Smart:And the door because it's metal it's below 32 degrees.
Aaron Moncur:Woof
Justin Smart:And so a little draft was coming in I guess from the door a combination of the, they might have been running a humidifier in their house because a lot of people do we're in cold weather climates, I know when I was growing up in Kolalu we would have tended to run a humidifier in the wintertime because the arrogance so dry and so we formed a nice room basically the giant icicle on the inside the house and they were you know it was a problem
Aaron Moncur:And they probably paid many many 1000s of dollars for this custom door in Canada?
Justin Smart:Oh yeah, $15,000 door at least it was
Aaron Moncur:the moral of the story is don't lick the inside of your iron door in Canada
Justin Smart:Even if you get a double dog there, do not get it
Aaron Moncur:Even if you get a double dog there, yeah, forget about it. Go shoot your, I am scared.
Justin Smart:I think it's it was there. They're better suited for your warmer climates. As you know, metals are a really good insulator whether you want it or not, you know?
Aaron Moncur:Alright, so fast forward to current day you work at interlink engineering, tell us a little bit about Interlink what, what does Interlink do, what's your role there.
Justin Smart:Well, I started out working for Interlink, I took the job as a mechanical designer, and I worked in, in that department here for probably about a year and a half. And the opportunity arose for me to move in, move up, and move into a more of a managerial role and also focus on sales. So it was, you know, a new challenge for me, so I had never done before, um, everybody that I know, kept telling me, that's what I shouldn't be doing. Because, like, I have no idea. I still don't really know. But most importantly, rich, my boss, he was a believer, he believes in me, you know, he believes in my talent. And by my, what I have to say, and what I, you know, my getting close to 30 years of experience and doing this I've seen quite a bit and done quite a few things. So it's, it's definitely been a growth path for me almost on a spiritual level, you know, just same thing for your whole life. And then it's kind of this whole new thing. So it's been kind of mind expanding, and fun for me. frustrating sometimes, but, you know, I really, I really enjoyed it. And then working for Interlink in general, um, you know, sometimes all my jobs I've had, you know, I work for a manufacturing company that did this, right, you know, whether it was doors, or, or automation equipment, or electric motors, it was one thing right, you did one thing and Interlink, in you don't like what you're working on, just wait a couple of weeks, you'll be on something different. Really enjoyed that constant, new, exciting problems that come across our players. So I'm still heavily involved with, you know, I can go out and sell a project, and then communicating that back to my team what needs to happen, and then still be involved, sometimes on a conceptual design standpoint, so I might kind of flush out the idea and then pass that down to one of my designers or engineers, kind of wrap up the details and get it to something we can get manufactured. We also, we started selling 3D printers a few years ago, that's been super exciting, because I actually started using 3D printers back in the 90s. And so it's, I've seen it come a long way. And I am impressed what we can do with them nowadays compared to what we did 30 years ago. And just it's been a lot of fun. Really like working here.
Aaron Moncur:We're like working here. What are some of the the, the challenges some of the biggest problems that you face? Not necessarily on a daily basis, but just generally at work? What are some of the biggest challenges that you have to overcome?
Justin Smart:You know, lately, it's been a, it's mainly been managing how to maintain a sense of normalcy throughout this COVID experience, you know
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Justin Smart:That's been, I think, probably, you know, I would say that I've been through two recessions since I've, you know, been in the working world. And this is way worse, you know, even though you know, I haven't, you know, we're still chugging along, it's just, we're in such a weird space. And, you know, nobody, I never thought that we'd be walking around wearing masks. I never thought that you know, I love going to my customers office and walking the floor with them and helping them out with their problems, and not being able to do that, you know, and get down and where the rubber meets the road and look at the machine right there next year.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Justin Smart:That's been super challenging for me to try to, you know, keep things going I guess. Um,
Aaron Moncur:Are you, do you prefer to work in a space where there are other people and you can get to interact, I mean directly physically with other people? Or do you prefer a space where you kind of, you know, just by yourself doing your own thing and you don't have to really worry about what other people are doing.
Justin Smart:I gotta have to two lives in that sense. Um, you know, I think more during the daytime, getting pulled out of different directions and helping people out and, you know, answering questions from different coming from different directions. At night time. After after dinner and the kids put to bed. I I definitely have some quiet, focused work time. I probably get most done after nine o'clock at night.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, really?
Justin Smart:Yeah, just because I can, nobody's calling me. Nobody's sending me emails. Nobody's asked me.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Justin Smart:And, and I, for some reason, I feel a little more creative in the evening hours. I don't know why. You know, like laying in bed. I get my best ideas like literally laying in bed. So I think it's really just that time of day for me when I can really kind of when that basically all the other noise stops, you know?
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, Justin, we need to wrap up here. I don't want to take up too much of your time. But last question, how can people get a hold of you?
Justin Smart:Well, you can go to our website is interlinkengineering.net. Or, you can reach out to us by phone at 480-699-0600. Or you can shoot me an email at justin@interlinkengineering.net.
Aaron Moncur:Excellent. All right. Well, Justin, thank you so much for sharing your time today. It's been really cool hearing about all the different things that you've done, especially like in the architectural world, we've never really had an engineer on the show that has been in that space. So that was it was really interested in hearing about how doors are made and kind of that old school blacksmithing. Great, a great twist to the show. Appreciate appreciate you sharing all that.
Justin Smart:Well, thanks for having me. And it was fun.
Aaron Moncur:You bet. Until next time.
Justin Smart:All right. We'll talk to you soon, buddy.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at testfixturedesign.com. Thanks for listening.