VIDEO: HOW TO Put Innovation to Work for You

JACOB SANCHEZ: Innovation in manufacturing, it's not always about these products. It's about how you're putting them to work for you. Look, we're small to medium sized shops. We barely have the people. We don't always have the time and the money to invest in every little latest and greatest that comes to our doors. You need expertise. You need tested solutions. If I'm being honest, you need a partner that's proven time and time again that they can drive results with products like this and better.

That's why I'm here. I'm here at the 3M Customer Abrasive Methods Center, the CAM center, here in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where this isn't just another R&D lab. This is 30,000ft² of solutions, of play, of room for you to bring in your people, bring in your products and get the job done. So you and I, one moment, are going to be going along, and we're going to be learning HOW TO put innovation to work for you.

Thanks for having me in today, man. I'm excited to talk.

MIKE EGGERT: Thank you for making the trip. It’s great to have you here.

JACOB SANCHEZ: All right. I got what I’m using now. I got what I'm making now. Mike, how's it going?

MIKE EGGERT: It’s going great. You brought the parts.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So, quick background. Jacob Sanchez, Sanchez Solutions CEO. I got my workers at the facility.

This is what we're making this week. Thousands of them a week. This is the disk we're using for all this grinding. Got to get it nice, shiny, polished. Before we dive into that, though, like, give me some little background about what this place is, what you guys do here at the 3M facility.

MIKE EGGERT: So 3M company, we've been in the abrasives business since 1902.

In 1972, we built this facility so customers like you could come in, bring your parts, and we're going to look at that and say, all right, let's get you the finish that you need, that you desire. So we're not terribly interested in how you're doing it today. We're interested in what you want it to look like when you're done.

We will ask questions about your tooling, your budget for additional tooling. Is there an opportunity for automation? What kind of safety concerns do you have? And then we'll figure out a process that works for you. And we have everything we need here to do that. We've got every kind of tooling and equipment, off hand tools, automated tools, back stands.

And then we have a whole staff of robots, if you can call it a staff.

JACOB SANCHEZ: I like that, I’ll call it that.

MIKE EGGERT: And that could represent what you might have in your facility or could get for your facility based on your budget and everything that's going on there. And we can develop a process that's going to make you happy when you're done.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So it's not just you also having the technology that I may have in my facility, it's you having the technology I may want to get in my facility. Absolutely. You have this mixture of products, to go along with all those different combinations. You know?

MIKE EGGERT: We do. We do have some amazing products, and they're a pretty important part of the equation, too.

JACOB SANCHEZ: And is there anything else that I need to know from, from this facility, from what 3M can offer me, for my company, for my workers. Anything else from you?

MIKE EGGERT: Well, the best thing is, if you grab that hammer and follow me and we'll go figure it out.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Oh, okay. So I guess we're going to go take some action.

MIKE EGGERT: This way Jacob, the magic of the 3M CAM Center. Our world famous application engineer. This is Kaeleigh.

KAELEIGH WILKINS: Hi. Nice to meet you.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So I'm coming in. I'm representing the industry. Sanchez Solutions CEO. This is the wheel that we're using at the facility. This is the product that we're making this week. And this is actually going to go over to, he mentioned you have a robot lab, we are going to go over there with this. We're going to get some grinds on this.

But he said before that I need to stop over here. And you got something for me.

KAELEIGH WILKINS: Yes. So I actually laid out a little test for us. I've got two bars with some sub arc welds on them, so they're quite large. I believe they are probably a half inch wide by a half inch thick. So they're very beefy welds. What we're going to do is we're going to test how you guys are currently doing this today and maybe something that might work a little bit better. So this is the Cubitron 3 1182 C Fibre Disk. So I'm going to have you run your disk over here. I'll run that over there to see how it works, and then we'll switch just kind of see what you feel, what you notice.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Okay. Oh, my gosh, are you done?

KAELEIGH WILKINS: All done.

JACOB SANCHEZ: You finished yours?

KAELEIGH WILKINS: Yeah.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Okay, so we already established this is a beefy weld. I didn't think that. Oh my goodness. I still have like half of it left.

KAELEIGH WILKINS: Yeah.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So what's going on here? Give me the rundown on what I just experienced.

KAELEIGH WILKINS: Yeah. So this is an aluminum oxide portable bonded wheel. The press center grinding wheel that you brought in. So what we have over here is precision shaped ceramic grain. So it's called Cubitron 3. What we did with Cubitron 3 is we actually changed the shape of our mineral. And then we also changed the way that it's bonded.

So it's now molecularly bonded instead of being phenolic bonded or resin bonded. We also oriented a lot of those grains on the surface to stand up straight. So what this means is you end up seeing longer life. It's a very smooth cut, very consistent cut. And then there's less heat transfer on the part, right? So it also elongates the life of the actual abrasive.

JACOB SANCHEZ: That's interesting. Can I try it? Can we switch?

KAELEIGH WILKINS: Of course. Yeah. Let's do it.

Are you all done over there?

JACOB SANCHEZ: I didn't even finish it. But it's so pretty. That is awesome. Okay, so something I've already noticed going from that to that, I felt like I was driving a freaking truck when I was grinding with that thing. The vibration was just nuts.

KAELEIGH WILKINS: Yeah. So what you were feeling was actually hand arm vibration or HAV. So it's very common when you're using a right angle tool like a grinder to experience hand arm vibration. It's relatively dangerous because it's been shown that prolonged exposure to hand arm vibration can cause some health ailments down the line. So this product over here, the fibre disc that we had you run, this reduces that hand arm vibration by 30% over what you were using over here.

So it's going to be a lot easier on the bodies of the operators. A lot less hand arm vibration, just a safer workplace overall. It's also very quiet. I don't know if you had noticed that, but it's a much quieter product along with everything, every other benefit in terms of its speed, its life and durability.

JACOB SANCHEZ: So it sounds like it's making the overall experience in the shop safer. And I mean, from an efficiency standpoint, it gets the job done. I didn't even get through half of that weld, and I definitely could have finished that weld with another 10 seconds to go. That's amazing.

This is what we've been waiting for, everybody. This is what I've been waiting for all day long. This is the automation lab here at the CAM Center at 3M. How's it going Tyler?

TYLER NAATZ: Good, welcome.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Give me a little bit of a rundown on the automation lab, on everything that we have here, and what kind of goes into making a program for something like this.

TYLER NAATZ: Yeah. So as you can see in the lab, we have different tool partners we work with. We have every color robot you can think of. But for us it's the abrasives that's really important. How do you push on the abrasive to get the finish that you're looking for? And that's something that we have a lot of knowledge in, is how to use the products that Kaeleigh had with a robot.

You can push harder. You can use bigger sizes, potentially. A person is limited. They can run a four and a half. Sometimes they can run seven-, nine-inch tools, but they get to be a lot more cumbersome and harder to use. So, a robot who doesn't really care how heavy the equipment is on there, we can optimize the size of the product to really optimize your whole process.

JACOB SANCHEZ: That's sweet. Well, I'm ready to get after this attempt one. We have not run the program yet, but we're about to. Let's see.

Tyler, I've waited all day for this, and you have not disappointed. This is roughing. Finishing. All done in a matter of hours. I think it looks cool, but you're the expert. Give me your opinion.

TYLER NAATZ: Yeah, so we did what we wanted to do, right? Remove the weld and then leave a paintable finish. So this two-step process prep for paint, powder coat. The finish is what we're looking for. You can see we're removing the welds. You can still see some of our problem areas that we had from the fibre disk.

But again that is something that will happen in these proof of concepts. So we really want to show off the major areas. We're removing the weld. We're getting the finish. So some of these areas that didn't get finished with the fibre disc, you can actually see we cleaned up with that second pass. The further you get along with this, through integrators, we can really fine tune these processes to what's good all the time.

JACOB SANCHEZ: First try, a matter of hours, and it got the job done. That's what I'm hearing. I appreciate the work you did for me and the work you do for all the customers at 3M to be honest man. Do you mind if I address the audience real quick?

TYLER NAATZ: Be my guest.

JACOB SANCHEZ: Thank you brother. We learned a lot today. This was a big day. We came into the 3M CAM Center with a problem, with the product, and we needed to leave with a solution. Now if I'm being honest, I feel like we did. That's what we needed done. This place taught us a few things. It taught us about partnering with someone that can actually back up what they say and give us results.

We talked to people with expertise. We got to see the process that we were doing now in our small to medium size job, next to an innovation and how we can improve. We also got to check out some products that we may want to be investing in. Something we would never even think to get into our facility because of that big capital investment.

But here it is. Here we are getting hands on with these cells, getting hands on with robotics so we can figure out a way to improve our businesses and to improve the quality of life for our workers. That's what matters here today. And I hope after watching this episode, you learn HOW TO put innovation to work for you.

Narrator: For more metalworking tips and industry best practices, stay tuned for the next How To episode and subscribe to the MSC Industrial Supply YouTube channel, a source of original manufacturing content Built To Make You Better.