Unlocking Industrial Efficiency: Insights on Compressed Air Systems w/Rob Michael

Discover how optimizing often-overlooked compressed air systems can revolutionize industrial efficiency.

Nikki, Ali, Courtney, and Senior Compressed Air Technician, Rob Michael, share practical wisdom on avoiding design mistakes by consulting with domain experts, delving into technical insights and real-life experiences in working with air compressors. 

Uncover the common pitfalls in compressed air systems that can lead to inefficiencies and equipment failures, and how working with experienced professionals can greatly enhance system performances, saving time and money long term. 


P.S. - Due to some technical difficulties, this episode’s quality may not be the best. We will fix it within the week. Thanks for your patience!

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Co-Hosts are Alicia Gilpin Director of Engineering at Process and Controls Engineering LLC, Nikki Gonzales Director of Business Development at Weintek USA, and Courtney Fernandez Robot Master at FAST One Solutions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody to an episode of Automation Ladies.
It is Wednesday, october 9th2024, in which we're recording
this.
We are back to recording forSeason 5.
We had some episodes air onSeason 5 already that we
recorded over the summer.
We were at a lot of shows, alot of trips, a lot of work and

(00:25):
we needed a little break.
But we're back to it because wecan't help but meeting people
that we want to haveconversations with.
Apparently I was really talkingto today's guest, rob Michael,
about compressed air.
So welcome to the show, rob,and thank you so much for
joining us.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Thank you, my pleasure to be here.
I'm excited.
Thank you, my pleasure to behere.
I'm excited.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Rob, you want to tell us you are in your car, which
you are not the first or thelast guest to join us on your
phone in your car.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
That is the nature of the work, but you want to give
us a little intro about whereyou're at and what you're up to
today.
So, yeah, phoning in from themobile office here for sure, so
we were talking before therecording started.
I'm actually at a powergeneration plant right now.
They're in the middle of a bigshutdown and just taking care of
some of their equipment,rebuilding a couple of desks and
dryers that are used forinstrument air.

(01:17):
So finished up the one just alittle while ago, so I turned it
over to those guys.
They're going to get itunlocked, get it back in service
and get the the other onelocked out for me and then, once
we're done here, I'm going tohead back and and get on that
lotto box and start tearing intothat guy.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Are they using that air for like uh driving, like
like Fisher valves or like uhair compressed air valves?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
okay, yep, yeah, uh, fissure valves, uh, whatever,
cylinders, all that stuff, itall, it all runs off that, off
that system got it.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
yeah, so I um, even though, rob, you're not exactly
an automation guy, what you dotouches a lot of what we do, uh,
and so very pertinent to havethe conversation.
One of the goals we have atautomation Ladies is to try to
ourselves and, by extension, ouraudience learn about all the
different types of jobs that arein a plant and how they affect

(02:11):
automation and controls and allthat kind of stuff.
And with my background I workedat Festo for a while compressed
air I'm a bit familiar with it,but I don't know that it's
something that a lot of otherpeople think about, and so when
I meet people that are reallyinto it, I think that we have a
lot to learn from you.
So can you tell us a bit aboutyour journey?

(02:31):
How did you get into whatyou're doing and what did it
take to get here?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
So, yeah, it's well like all.
Like all good journeys, it'sgot a lot of twists and turns in
it.
I actually started off mycareer as a as an auto mechanic
and figured out through thatthat my knack was kind of in
electronics and drivabilityproblems, check engine lights,
all that kind of fun stuff, andafter a while I decided I was

(02:58):
going to go do something else.
So I went and worked for alocal electrical contractor
doing commercial residentialwork with them, signed on as an
apprentice, went through afour-year apprenticeship, got my
degree in electricalmaintenance and construction,
stayed on with them until 2008,when that whole bit with the

(03:22):
housing market and all thatstruck and, of course, being a
mostly residential contractor,work dried up pretty quick and
found myself laid off.
And then that was when Iventured into the industrial
electronics world and went towork building some ethanol
plants and very quickly workedup the ranks from lowly conduit

(03:46):
runner to being the guy incharge of commissioning all the
new projects.
So a lot of, a lot of writtenblueprints, terminating,
wringing out wires,troubleshooting, you know,
whatever it took, whether it wasa mechanical problem,
electrical problem, whatever myjob was to get the machine
running.
And that was when I lived inNebraska.

(04:09):
That's pretty much where I wasraised.
My wife is from Pennsylvania.
When we met and got marriedalso in 2008, she came out to
Pennsylvania or to Nebraska,where I was for a few years
Pennsylvania, or to Nebraska,where I was for a few years and
after that, after about, I think, five or six years and a couple

(04:33):
of babies, she decided that shewanted to go back home.
So we packed up, came toPennsylvania and I had a job
lined up with an automationcompany actually, and you know
the guy was super cool abouteverything.
He's like yeah, just give me acall whenever you guys get into
town and we'll get you set up.
And I was like all right, cool,and got into town and I went
and met with the guy and theschedule we had discussed was 5%

(04:55):
to 10% travel and the schedulehe handed me was almost 100%
travel and I was like this isn'tgoing to work out, buddy, yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Big mismatch of expectations right there that
seems to be happening a lot,like I mean, that's the bait and
switch right, but like how isthat?
Why are they doing it and howis it working?
Like it's not working,obviously, because, like you can
just be like no, that I need tosee my children.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
I mean that particular change is huge.
I've seen a lot of people getpromised like 35, but it turns
out it's 50.
But like going from 10 to like100 is holy cow.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, I'm not opposed to traveling, but not 100% of
the time.
Yeah that's too much.
So of course, I immediately wenthome and started just
dispersing my resumeindiscriminately amongst job
sites, because I needed to finda job, and got contacted by a I
would say a mid-sized compressedair distributorship and they

(05:55):
said, hey, we, you know, wefound your resume once you come
in for an interview.
And I came in and I was like,well, hey, I've never worked on
an air compressor in my life,other than I think I tied into
some some digital outputs on acouple of them for some
monitoring and stuff.
And they're like yeah, we'renot worried about that, we'll
teach you that end of it.
We want you for the electronicside of what you're capable of,
because everything's going tomicroprocessor controls and

(06:19):
variable speed drives and allthis stuff, and we have nobody
that knows anything about any ofthis stuff.
And so that was where thecompressed air journey began.
So from there I've kind of I'vekind of been here and there and
everywhere.
I said I worked for them for awhile and I went to work for a,
for an OEM, for a little while,um, did my own business for a

(06:40):
little bit and, uh, you know,now I'm over here at Cumm,
cummins, wagner having a blastwith these guys.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Very cool, you've stayed.
You've said you've stayed inlike compressed air jobs, but
like that stuff is applicable onlike all of the all of the
industries I mean, or even justif you stay compressed air.
Compressed air is used in everyplant, everywhere.
Yeah, so it's like you get totouch every single industry.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
It's like you have electricity you have water and
you have air, but I don't thinka lot of people think about the
air part so compressed air isoften called the fourth utility
right because, as you said,you've got water, you got
electricity, you've got gas andprobably 90 of the places out
there in the world that areactually making anything.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Oh, we lost your audio.
I think we lost your volume.
But I was actually going to saymaybe there's five.
Now, though, Isn't internetpretty much considered a utility
at this point, Like you've gotto have internet connectivity?

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Connectivity or something.
So he is an automation guy.
Like he's not an automation guy.
Like he's not not an automationguy.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
We need yeah, we need to like reverse what we said it
was interesting because hisremark about the guy telling him
you, we can teach you that youknow, like, hey, like I don't
know this part that this companyspecializes in and it's like,
well, the company specializes init.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
We can teach you that we need exactly when I went to
festo they were like well, wehave a lot of pneumatic sales
guys that know how to sellpneumatics but we want to push
electric now and they are notthinking of the electric when
they're looking at theapplications because their whole
background is in pneumatics.
So we want someone that doesn'thave the background in
pneumatics so that they don'tdefault to pneumatics, so they

(08:25):
don't go right to that.
Yeah, exactly, it makes a lot ofsense and I think it's very
smart sometimes to hire for youhave a certain set of skills
that are, like, really necessary, but not the rest of the job.
The rest you'll hire foraptitude, right, which I guess
we're about to find out.

Speaker 4 (08:38):
If I yeah that still works on me all, right I think
we got it all right with audiowith audio even.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, that was, that was word there for a minute, so
sorry about that and I want toapologize for calling you not an
automation guy, because that is, I guess, patently false well,
I mean, I'm technically not, um,I mean that.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
I mean obviously there are guys out there that
would, uh, that would runcircles around me.
When it comes to automation andthings like that.
I've got a good enoughunderstanding of it that I can
see how it applies to compressedair and I have a good
understanding of how to tiethose systems in with the
compressed air system, which Ihope we'll dive into today and

(09:21):
maybe give your audience someideas of how you know how they
can be more effective in helpingwith that and maybe generate
some leads for them, some workfor themselves.
So absolutely.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Well, why don't I just let you dive into that?
What do you want to say aboutthat?

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Well, so I mean first and foremost, like we said,
compressed air is a utility andit's amazing to me that so many
of these manufacturing plantsand places like that will
monitor every utility they have.
When it comes to compressed air, they're blind.
You can talk to the reliabilityengineer.
He can tell you how manykilowatt hours and all this

(09:56):
stuff with electricity that theplant's using.
You ask him how many CFM doesyour compressed air system use?
And you get a blank stare.
And when you're talking aboutsomething like a compressed air
system which is between 30 to 50percent of your overall energy
consumption for that plant, whywouldn't you be looking at that?

Speaker 3 (10:12):
yeah, that's, that is a lot yeah, like that's just
nuts and I've had instanceswhere, like we didn't check
pressure in lines and we'll,we'll turn on valves.
And we're like, we definitelyturn the valve, like the output
is on, and then the whole pondis dead and we're like, oh my
God, and it's because there wasno air.
Yeah, it was open, there was noair being given, but it was

(10:32):
electronically saying yeah, andthen we didn't have what is it?
Limit switches.
So we don't know for sure thatthe valve really open.
Another reason why why the hellwould you do that?

Speaker 4 (10:43):
um, but yeah, definitely I was at a plant
where nobody did the math on howmany cfm we needed using
venturi valves to uh pick upproduct suction cups and we were
dropping product becausesomebody undersized the
compressor that was feeding thefour lines.
Yeah, they're like.
Why are we dropping things like?
I don't know, I turned it onand a venturi.

(11:07):
A venturi by itself uses a tonof compressed air, like 3.1 cfm
per circuit and for big productsthey were using like three
circuits and then that's everyline.
So it was a lot of air.
It was a lot of air and theyjust undersized the compressor.
But it was funny.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Stuff was dropping left and right yeah, tell us
more about like yeah, what?
What can you be monitoring?

Speaker 2 (11:29):
so really you're.
You're only limited by yourimagination, really.
Um, most modern air compressorsthat have a, that are
microprocessor controlled, aregoing to have, uh, some form of
monitoring.
I mean, if you look at like asolar which has air links on it
from the factory, so you've gotremote monitoring right there.
That's already built into themachine.

(11:50):
All you've got to do isactivate it.
Okay, same with anything fromlike Atlas Copco or Quincy.
The remote monitoring is rightthere from the factory.
All you have to do is activateit.
If you want to pull it intoyour own, to the plant SCADA or
to the historian, something likethat, there's generally going
to be some programmable inputsand outputs that you can put

(12:10):
into that controller and that'swhere you've got to make friends
with your local distributor forthat particular compressor.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
And ask for that when you buy it.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Well, either ask for it when you buy it or, as the
automation professional askingfor the hey, can I have the book
on this controller?
So that I can you know I canlearn what I'm up against here.
I'll give you a great example.
Like on a Solaire, the newestcontroller they have, the SCS.
There's plenty of programmableinputs and outputs on that thing
for you to use.
But you got to know how toaccess the menu and how to set
it up and all that stuff.
And once you know that you'regolden and you know anybody that
does this for a living couldprobably put peak in that book

(12:47):
for about five minutes andfigure it out.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
And it makes you look amazing in the field, because
other people won't go read itand all you have to do is
believe that that is the manual.
Like the part number says thatthat's really the part.
Like this is from the internet.
Like and you are a genius andyou can help people because of
that.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
And not only that, but most of your smaller
compressed air distributorhouses don't have a guy like me
on staff.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
So most of your smaller compressed air
distributor houses.
They're a very niche industry.
They understand how to repairthat air compressor, how to size
it properly, how to PM it.
They understand all that stuff.
But when you come to them andsay we want this air compressor
to talk to our plant DCS, that'sintegration Right.

(13:33):
We want this air compressor toreport to this historian, they
don't know.
They're not SCADA engineers.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
That's not fair.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Well, I mean, they wouldn't even know how to get
started most of the time.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
You know, most places they don't have a guy, a guy
like me, on hand.
Now, some of your bigger OEMshops, like your Ingersoll Rand,
for example the majority ofIngersoll Rand outfits are
corporately owned and theyactually have regional tech guys
that go around that know how todo all that stuff and and can
take care of it.
But if you're a smallerdistributor for you know another

(14:13):
brand, x, whatever you want tosay there's a good chance that
they don't have that capabilityin-house and so someone from
your audience, for example, cancome along and come alongside
them and say, hey, when you havethese kinds of projects, I can
help you, like I know what'sgoing on.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
So I know that controls and automation people
have great relationship withlocal automation distributors,
because when their customersneed integration right, they
probably don't do that.
But I don't know if automationpeople are thinking about having
relationships with these aircompressor distributors.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
I don't know if automation people are thinking
about having relationships withthese air compressor
distributors Only if they'rechemical engineering backgrounds
and they're sizing equipmentfrom originally.
Those are the only ones thatreally have pretty good
relationships because they'resizing the compressor or they're
sizing the valves.
Or I used to be a processengineer and I had a guy like
you.
His name is Lance Frederick.
I still use him.

(15:05):
He's like, shout out to him but, um, he was just showing me,
like, how bad our piping was.
He's like okay, you see howyour air pipes are above your
valves and now, and how rustedout all of your um gauges are.
That's because water falls down.
And I'm like, damn it.
Like, and we already piped allthis like, so it's um, it's yeah

(15:28):
, I mean, engineers need to betaught.
And that's really why I go backand say, like engineers, when
they're out there, they have towork with someone like you to
show them that stuff, otherwise,like, you're just going to keep
making like bad designdecisions.
And like, if you don't have thePE ahead of you, like maybe
he's too busy, if the other, ifyour supervisor, I mean there's

(15:50):
just a lot of reasons why thingsdon't get built the best way
that they should have been builtand then they have to be
rebuilt, and working with peoplethat are experts in that domain
is super under, like underrated, and the engineers don't know
to do that.
I'd be like tell them you don'tknow what to do.
This is the first time that youare trying to design.

(16:11):
Someone told you to go get anair compressor.
Like what do you do?
It's like go talk to thecompressor people and then you
also don't know who's good andwho's bad.
And that's something thatyou'll just have to learn in
your life, like by by usingpeople, like not using them, but
, like you know, giving them anopportunity and then seeing what
they are able to do for you interms of do they give you

(16:32):
knowledge?
Like do are they just trying tosell you the thing, or do they
be like, are they telling makesure that you succeed with that
thing?
And that's kind of where you'recoming from is, uh, making sure
that they succeed and makingsure that they know that they
bought something, um, that hasall these other capabilities and
that they can use them and thatyou can uh enable that.

Speaker 4 (16:51):
that's amazing and young engineers think they need
to know how to do everythingalready and it's hard to accept
that, like that guy knows hisproduct better than you.
Yeah, so just talk to him aboutthat product.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
That guy doesn't have an engineering degree, but he
knows way more than you willknow.
At least for another 10 yearsit's going to take you to know
what he knows, so it doesn'tmatter what his degree is.
You better like respect.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
You want to get ahead and it's interesting that you
bring up piping, becausecompressed air, piping is
something that nobody evenreally thinks about.
But a properly piped compressedair system can be like I mean
orders of magnitude 5%, 8%, 10%more efficient than a system
that's not piped properly.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Save your energy, yeah you don't put a thousand
elbows everywhere.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
You lose all your shit.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
I've made the.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
Virgin Mary.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
And even something as simple as what you just said
about.
Uh, water's heavier than airand it falls downward, so
condensation yeah so maybe,instead of at your, all your
service drops, maybe instead ofcoming out of the bottom of that
header pipe, you come out ofthe top and you go up over and
down.
That way you don't end up witha bunch of you know at your, at
your process valve, your blowgun, whatever, whatever you're

(18:08):
hooking that drop they wererusting the valve.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
We already paid the valves and they're rusting.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah was that just the placement of the valve in
relation to the pipe, or wasthat also like a lack of air
prep?

Speaker 3 (18:20):
or both the fact that it wasn't let me both would
have helped not produce that, soA like.
But we had an air dryer, like awater separator somewhere we
had a small desiccant air dryer,so maybe it wasn't working.
But I mean, even if it doeslike produce way less water, in
the line like eventually thereis some water and it will
condense and so they willcollect in low spots somewhere,

(18:48):
and if those low spots are yourvalves, shame on you shame on
your process engineer, and I'vedone it myself, so shame on me,
but I didn't know any better.
I didn't know any different.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
I said what's some of the dumbest stuff you've seen.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Uh out there oh boy um make your favorite no, why
did you do that?

Speaker 2 (19:08):
you don't have to name your names yeah, yeah, I
won't name any names, don'tworry um.
Yeah, I don't know, I mean the,the same type of the same type
of stuff alicia's talking about.
You know you've got um you'vegot.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
They didn't even put a dryer.
They're like it'll be fine inthe south, like what right?
Or?

Speaker 2 (19:23):
or you've got they didn't even put a dryer, they're
like it'll be fine in the South, like right, or, or you've got,
you know, you got a, uh, yougot a refrigerated dryer which
is going to give you about a 38degree dew point and you're
running that to instrument airin the middle of Pennsylvania,
where it gets well below zero inthe winter.
Okay, yep, yep, somebody wasn'tthinking there.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
So there's, there's, I would say like the dumbest
thing, but what would you say isprobably the most common
oversight or things?
That is like, in your view, themost lowest hanging fruit, like
just around in general, thatpeople aren't thinking about,
that they should condensatedrains.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Okay, um you know your, your air compressor yeah
your air compressor.
Yeah, your air compressor hasone.
Every receiver tank in yoursystem should have one, and when
I go to solve a moistureproblem for a customer, I will
glance at the air dryer and makesure that it's working.
If that air dryer is working,I'm going straight for the

(20:17):
condensate condensate valves,and nine times out of 10, you're
going to find one that eitherdoesn't work or it's plugged up
with rust or whatever.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Yeah, yeah, and you're just backing up into
whatever I'm just now thinkingof like residential HVAC, but
I've seen that way too manytimes.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
So the interesting thing about that now too is, for
the longest time the industrystandard was what's called a
timer drain, which is basicallyjust a little solenoid valve and
it's got a settable timer on it.
Which is basically just alittle solenoid valve and it's
got a settable timer on it andyou can say, every 10 minutes I
want this valve to open for fiveseconds and discharge all the
water out of here.
Well, now you've got the zeroloss drains, which have the high

(20:54):
and low sensors and when theydischarge, they only discharge
water, you don't lose any air.
All that and a lot of companiesnow have taken that one step
farther.
And those zero loss drains nowhave contacts inside of them
that if that drain would go intoalarm for whatever reason, that
set of alarm contacts nowcloses and you can monitor that
remote.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
You know you can tie that into— Tell them to go fix
that, yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Right when it happens .
Yeah, you could tie thatdirectly into a PLC that'll
throw an alarm up on someone'scomputer somewhere.
Yeah, you could tie thatdirectly into a PLC that'll
throw an alarm up on someone'scomputer somewhere.
I've tied them back into thecompressor controller so that
when the controller sees it itthrows an alarm up on the
controller.
All those kinds of things thatare available now that you know

(21:42):
even five, six years ago weren'tor weren't widely available
anyway, anyway and um so, eveneven something as simple as like
a lowly little condensate drain, you can really, you can really
maximize what's available thereand and make that thing, uh,
save money, yeah save money,downtime and everything yeah,
right, right, because I'll tellyou what I've drained some 4 000
gallon, 10 000 gallon tanks andthat's a lot, that's a lot of

(22:03):
condensate to get rid of,because they weren't thinking
about it.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
They just think air's in there, but water is is in
the air until it's cold enough,and then it's not water, it's
not air anymore but I got tocorrect you on something there,
Allie it's not water.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
What is it?
It's actually classified asoily condensate.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
If, if you have an oil flooded screw compressor,
it's actually it's classified asoily condensate, it's not water
.
Oh, you can't drain that out onthe ground, yeah, you can't
just dump that in the ocean, huh.
So so generally, what happensthere is so customer calls up
and says I've got this.
I got this moisture problem inmy compressed air system right.

(22:42):
I got water shooting out of myprocess valves.
I got my blow guns are nowpower washers.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
Um, you know, I got a problem here and so I've seen
that though, the blow guns beingpower washers.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
That's kind of funny yeah, yeah, it's not a good day
for anybody, and so so you goout there and you go, okay, okay
, the dryer's working.
So next stop is the receivertank and, sure enough, you find
a valve you know drain valvethat's failed or it's plugged up
with rust or whatever.
Well, now this, I mean thismoisture in here, has got to go
somewhere, and so what generallyhappens is the client scrambles

(23:18):
and finds you as many 55-gallondrums as they can find, and you
evacuate all that into 55gallon drums, and then they're
going to call a company likesafety clean or somebody like
that to come and dispose of itexpensive yeah, so ideally you
would just drain this over timeinto smaller like yeah, and just
get ridof the whole containers almost.

(23:40):
Yeah, ideally you would haveall of your condensate drains
running to an oil waterseparator of some kind whether
it's a filtration separator or adwell separator, something like
that that's going to keep theoil there and can dump it right
out on the ground.
If you want to Nice, Put itdown a stormwater drain, floor
drain, whatever you want.
As long as you're keeping upwith the maintenance on that

(24:11):
particular thing, there's noproblem with that whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
So you can assume they have those collection
systems if they have a ton ofcompressed air, if they're doing
it right.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Never assume.

Speaker 4 (24:24):
Never assume.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
I think you just prove that we cannot assume
you're like no, don't assumethat, but like that's what they
should have done okay, that'swhat should be the case.
Yeah, they might be dumping itinto the ground so they could be
dumped.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, I mean, they could be running it right out,
right out the wall onto theground.
They could be running it rightinto a floor drain, which
there's a caveat there, becauseif that particular installation
has an on-site wastewatertreatment plant that treats
specifically oil then they candischarge that and, but if they

(24:58):
into their own drains yeah, yes,into their own drain system.
That's going to go to theirwastewater treatment plant to
have the oil removed.
If that's not the case, ifthey're discharging into a city
drain or right out onto theground, then, yeah, it has to go
through that oil waterseparator first.
Okay, and strangely enough,there are even oil water
separators out there now thatare mod bus capable oh, to tell

(25:22):
you like yeah, either you'releaking or there's a fault or
something's wrong.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
You're overflowing.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, if there's an overflow problem, if a
maintenance timer is expired,something like that, yeah, you
can get a Modbus registry andbring that right into your, into
your DCS system.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
What do those look like?
How big are those likefootprint wise, compared to like
the compressors?

Speaker 2 (25:44):
and like the tanks so , obviously, the more, the more
compressed air you have, thebigger your your uh condensate
removal system is going to be.
It's actually sized by thetotal cfm of your, of your
system.
Um, they range anywhere, um, uh, from something about the size
of a shoebox that hangs on thewall to, you know, something
that's the size of the bed of asmall truck Cool, depending on

(26:09):
how much filtration you need.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
Yeah yeah, depending on the plan, how much?
Yeah, okay, based on CFM.
That's really cool.
So you're not just a controlsengineer, you're a process
engineer.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
That's pretty cool.
I touch all aspects for sure,um, but but I'll tell you this
uh, if I had my druthers, Iwould much rather connect air
compressors and dryers into somekind of an electronic control
and monitoring system thanservice oil water separators,

(26:38):
because that's gross.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
Dirty jobs candidate.
Yeah, and Mike Rowe.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
I don't think Mike Rowe is coming anytime soon.
Not anytime soon, and I willsay this.
As far as oil water separatorsgo, they've gotten better in the
last few years.
Most of them nowadays are tothe point where it's literally
just a couple of filter elements.
You yank out, drop the new onesin and you're done.
Um, I'm from the old schoolwhere you had to had to get the

(27:06):
shop back and suck the uh, the,the oil layer off the top of the
dwell tank and that's the ogway.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
Okay, yeah, what companies are selling those
systems?
It's not the same like atlascapo doesn't have a oil
collection or oil separator, orhow does that work?
Like, which companies areactually producing those?

Speaker 2 (27:25):
okay, so nearly every every compressor oem in the
world has their brand ofcompressed air dryer filters,
oil water separators, all thesethings, but they're all made by
someone else, yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
So so it doesn't matter if you buy, if you mix
match those, because like youcan make them, you can make it
work if you size it right, oryou can just be easy, make it
easy and just get all the samestuff under the same company
right but it probably costs youmore.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
So if your compressed air guy is, for example, a
solar air dealer, like we are,and they're going to come out,
they're going to say, okay, youneed this size air compressor
paired up with this size dryer.
And and they're going to comeout, they're going to say, okay,
you need this size aircompressor paired up with this
size dryer.
And then you're going to needthis size oil water separator to
to deal with the condensate.
Uh, here's the price for thatwhole package.
Awesome, okay, if one so chose,you could break that out and

(28:18):
say, well, I'm going to keep thesolar air compressor, but I
want a I don't know a Parkerdryer.
And then I'm going to use thisBeko oil water separator If for
some reason somebody wanted todo that.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
That seems like a lot of more paperwork where I could
just write you a PO right, andthen I buy all the stuff which I
think people do prefer.
But people do all kinds ofstuff so you never know what
they're going to do.
You'd be like yeah, I can makeit easy for you, or I'll just
sell you one thing if you wantit Right.
But then it's not my fault ifother stuff doesn't work,
because I was trying to give youa functioning solution, but

(28:56):
I'll be there to help at a rateout of rates a number of times.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
People will try to save money on hardware, only to
spend five times as much onlabor making it work.
Uh, is hilarious to me becauseit happens so much before I put
it this way, you would it's not,it's not.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
It's gonna be so much harder this way you would not
be surprised how many times I gointo a place where you know we
came out and quoted a system forthem and thought I could get
this cheaper off the internet.
It ends up being stuff that'sall mismatched and nothing works
together and that's the world'seconomy.

(29:36):
Well.
So the amazing thing about it,though, is, let's say, for
example, you've got a guy likeme comes in and I say okay, you
need a 750 CFM air compressor torun your plant.
Here's a quote for a compressor, dryer and oil water treatment
system.
We're good to go, and you mightlook at it and go well, I like
the air compressor, but I'mgoing to find this dryer cheaper

(29:58):
somewhere else there, but I'mgoing to find this dryer cheaper
somewhere else.
If you don't know how toproperly size a refrigerated air
dryer, how to apply correctionfactors and all that, you're
going to put a 750 CFMrefrigerated air dryer right
next to that 750 CFM compressor,and you're going to have a shit
ton of water in your lines.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
Oh, because they're going to do one-to-one, they're
going to be like oh, that's thesize, the size is the size,
we're good.
Oh, and I bet they do that allthe time.
I've seen where companies andthis is just like, I think this
is just like a company problem,like depending on the company,
but like they will lose theirengineers and their people that

(30:34):
are left.
So like purchasing people, likethey need to fulfill orders, so
they will look at things andjust be like we sold this before
.
It has all the same words,let's just give that to our
customer.
And they do not, and it has tobe an engineered thing.
But because all the words arethe same, they're like let's

(30:55):
just sell them exactly that billof material.
Yeah, and it's so wrong andthere's just and I mean you
can't, how do you catch that?
If you're like the ceos or likeof these companies, how will
you catch that you?
You don't, until you just comedown on your engineers that you
do have left and be like whatthe hell's going on.
But, um, yeah, customers likeyou can receive from companies

(31:18):
stuff that wasn't sized rightand like so there's, that's why
they're supposed to be anengineer to like, talk to, to be
like who did this, who saidthis was good?
And sometimes the company wasjust trying to make the sale and
they sold it, and then it turnsinto an absolute stop them yeah
, and then a guy like me walksin and just goes oh my god, yeah
we can't use.

(31:39):
We literally can't use any ofthis and be like he's just
trying to sell you the somethingmore.
It's like, okay, then just keepshooting water everywhere, like
or whatever.
It's like that's a point thatsomeone gives, but like, yeah,
that's just like a really badsituation to be in and, um, it
happens.
It happens to companies becausethey don't, they can't retain
their engineers or theirtechnicians.

(31:59):
It it's technicians too.
They know how to do a bunch ofstuff.
That if the technicians andyour engineers disappear and you
need someone to check theorders before they go out and
all your people are just tryingto copy it.
It's called copy and pastesales.
Right, I think that's what Iwant to call it.
That, because it's like it'ssomething that's supposed to be
engineered and checked by anengineer.
But they were like we are goodenough without that engineered

(32:21):
and checked by an engineer.
But they were like we are goodenough without that.
We're just gonna look at thewording and like I'm, we're good
to go, and and they're just notgonna ask the right questions,
and then they're gonna sell alot of money's worth of
something and then it doesn'teven.
It won't work.
It's not meant to work in thatsituation because it wasn't like
you just said.
They just went one-to-onebecause it sounded great.
They're like, well, that's whathe did.

(32:42):
He just sized it based on thatcfm.
That's what I'm gonna do.
Um, yeah, that's, that'sterrifying.
So, um, warning, warning toeveryone.
Um, on both ends of this right,like if something's going on
with your equipment that youjust bought, um, it may not, it
could be electrical, it couldnot, it could be electrical, it
could be wiring, it could bemechanical issues or it could be

(33:03):
.
It was not ever sized for theapplication correctly.
So you don't even have theright item.
Because I bought pumps and theywere cavitating, because I put
like elbows in places that theyshouldn't have been.
But, like you can, you can buythe wrong size impeller for a
pump and then you just the onlysolution is going to be a
different impeller or sometimeseven worse, your only solution

(33:25):
is a different pump body.
And that's your problem, likeand that's, and you can throw,
you can replace every, like theplc and the hmi and like all
this shit, and you're like it'snever going to work mechanically
if it wasn't sized properly.
And I think that freaks peopleout that that idea.
Because why would it be thewrong size to begin with.
It's like because you don'tknow how it got sized and how

(33:47):
someone decided to put it there.
Like that's what engineering is.
And so if someone doesn't dothat engineering even if it's
not an engineer that does it,but if someone doesn't do that
engineering that knows how thatengineering works yeah, you're
just going to put stuff inplaces that look like, well,
everyone else has always donethat.
They always put a pump here anda tank here and a thing here,
and it's just, and it doesn'twork and you don't know why.

(34:08):
And it's because, well, there'sparameters that you didn't know
about that went into thatsizing of that stuff.
So everyone like be warned,like you don't even know if the
thing is even right.
So, yeah, you got to callexperts like rob to come in and
be like tell you the bad newsyeah, well, and materials is a
big thing too.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Um, I was, uh, I was at a.
Uh, I was at a fat renderingplant many, many years ago.
Yummy, if you don't have a, youdon't have a strong stomach.

Speaker 4 (34:41):
Don't bother I was gonna say that sounds like it
smelled lovely yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
So, um, I got called in there and their complaint was
our refrigerated dryer keepsfailing.
It lasts.
Our refrigerator dryers willlast about six months and they
fail and been going on for acouple of years now.
And so I go out there to lookat this thing and they've got
the air compressor shoved inthis little room, like they
always do.
But I walked into that room andI turned around and walked back

(35:09):
out, hacking and gagging, and Iasked the guy out there.
I said does that room alwayshave sulfur dioxide in it?
And he says no, but it does getflooded from time to time.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
And I said so you've got a refrigerated dryer in
there that runs all coppertubing in a room that gets
flooded with sulfur dioxide andyou can't figure out why this
dryer is failing wow, wow that'swhere, like you, just that and

(35:43):
and kind of you made this pointbut like that's where you need
somebody that specializes inthat thing and to walk into that
room to have that situationalknowledge, because it's obvious
to you clearly, but just yeah,so people that don't have that,
I don't even know I want to callit expertise, but like just
that experience to be able tocall that out that easily.

(36:04):
This reminds me of a visionapplication that Courtney had
talked about, where there wasdesiccant dryers all around and
the air was so dry that the CCDsof a camera were malfunctioning
.
Oh wow, yeah, yeah, that was aneat thing.
And that's another thing where,like, if you're going to
piecemeal together a bunch ofcomponents that the specs say
they should work together, butmaybe they're from different

(36:26):
manufacturers, those spec sheetsare also you've got to take
them with a grain of salt, right, because they're about
performance under certainconditions.
And one spec sheet is anotherspec sheet as it relates to the
tolerances they went through intheir testing.
What conditions're really, youknow, specking when they're
specking their ranges of things?

(36:46):
Um, so, working with someonethat, like, has is used to and
is familiar with these productlines and has seen them work
together, not just on paper butin practicality, I think is
oftentimes kind of a missed areaof value.
That makes a lot of sense whenyou think about it is just the
fact that this person has putthis stuff together before and
they know that it works it you.

(37:06):
You can save yourself a ton ofcost that way because you can
spec all kinds of stuff togetherthat on paper even says it
might be right.
Um, but at least I've heardenough from my engineers about,
like, what they trust aboutspecs from certain brands versus
others.
Everybody has their own littleflavor of doing things.
Do you find that in thecompressed air world that

(37:28):
everything kind of workstogether between different OEMs,
or are there some kind offinicky things that kind of,
with experience you learn not topair this thing together, or
that?

Speaker 2 (37:37):
No, I mean, you can make about anything, work
together, as far as With moneyand time.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
Yeah, right, and enough fittings.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, as far as this or that brand or whatever,
especially when you're lookingat pairing up like, say, an air
compressor and a dryer orsomething.
I mean that compressor doesn'tcare what brand that dryer is,
the dryer doesn't care whatbrand the air compressor is.
As long as everything is sizedup appropriately, you should be
fine.
Where it gets a little hairysometimes and this is, this is
my niece, this is where I kindof shine is bringing multiple

(38:09):
different oem air compressorsunder one control system oh yeah
, that's where it gets.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
That's where it gets a little hairy sometimes, um
because they might not matchlike cfms, or like they might
not match in certain likeparameters or like.
Why does it get hairy?

Speaker 2 (38:26):
so there's a lot of there.
There's a lot of really good,uh, aftermarket compressor
central controllers and thenthere's a few good ones, and so
if you've got a room full of youknow, if you've got a rainbow
compressor room, basicallythat's got every brand under the

(38:47):
sun in there and you want tobring all these under one
central controller.
Yeah, there's definitely.
There's definitely some somebugs, some glitches, some, some
temperamental things about thoseair compressors that you're
going to be, one-to-one.
Well, I'll give you a primeexample because I just ran into
this not too long ago GardnerDenver compressors.

(39:09):
They use a controller it'scalled the AirSmart controller,
and the particular centralcontroller I was using
communicates with that AirSmartvia Modbus, which makes my job
incredibly easy because I don'thave to deal with a whole lot of
stuff other than just hook upthe Modbus cables and a couple
of little sensors for theinterface and I'm good to go.
But if any fault is present inthat controller, it ceases

(39:35):
Modbus communication.
Okay, so here I've got thiscontroller that I just hooked up
to this system and it's nottalking.
And I'm like, why is this thingnot talking?
I've gone back through all myfriends polarity's good, you
know did a, did an idlingvoltage check on the serial

(39:57):
serial bus.
Everything looks great.
Why is this thing not talking?
And then I realized I had aservice timer that was expired.
Reset the service timer.
She starts talking.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
Oops, okay, little intricacies like that, that
makes sense.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, little things like that.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
You had said earlier or in the beginning that you
were an auto mechanic first.
Correct, in the beginning thatyou start, you were an auto
mechanic first.
Um, my, my little brother is anauto mechanic and I'm trying to
think of all of the ways tosell him on automation.
One of the ones is that I waslike your customers and he works
on BMWs.
And I was like your customers,right, like your high end
customers are like I don't knowwho owns doctors, lawyers,

(40:39):
whatever, like rich ish peopleor people that want to look rich
, um, have those cars, um, so uh, but, like, my customers are
corporations Like what if Icould get you working on like a
business that has a lot moremoney than a surgeon or a lawyer
lawyer?

(41:01):
Um, like you know.
So I was trying to sell him onlike the more money because he's
like well, I want to be, I wantto do racing and I'm like cool,
won't you have more money soyou can do more racing?
Isn't racing really expensive,like, but you got to pay a bunch
of?
So, um, have you seen otherpeople come from mechanic
backgrounds and like, what doyou think helped you as a
mechanic to like, just jump intosome of that and he also also
likes in the BMW world theelectronics.

(41:22):
That's why he was hired by likean old, an old G like BMW
mechanic who doesn't want to dothe electronics.
The new like BMW electronics somy brother's name is David is
into that, and so I thinkthere's probably a lot of like
electronics savvy mechanics outthere that we could just go take
them, um, what do you thinkabout that?

(41:44):
Um, how would you?
How would you entice them?

Speaker 2 (41:47):
yeah, well, for my personal journey, I guess you
could call it um.
I got out of auto mechanicsbecause I got sick of people
okay, okay, that's a good start.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Okay, because that's general, people who want to
complain about their own money.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
So they're gonna they're gonna fight you like
every, every customer, you knowyou don't come in for your car
all the time.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
It's all new people all the time and they're upset
because now they got to pay abunch of money that they weren't
gonna pay before.
They didn't plan it in theirbudget.
That's not in their capexbudget, right?

Speaker 2 (42:20):
but it wasn't even so much that what, what really
kind of soured me on working onon cars was um, again, I'll give
you guys an example of this onecustomer I had that I just was
like he, this guy was actuallythe straw that broke the camel's
back.
This is where I said I'm out um, so this was a.
It was an older gentleman bringshis cadillac in and he says

(42:44):
it's running hot, put athermostat in it.
And I said okay, you know,we'll get to it later on,
probably later on this afternoonand this was I was a shop
foreman at the time.
And so my guy brings it in andparks it and happens to notice
the puddle of antifreeze itleaves on the ground.
So of course he investigatesand he says I can put a

(43:06):
thermostat in this thing, but Idon't think it's going to do
much good because the waterpump's leaking.
And I said OK.
So I called the guy back andsaid you know, hey, we noticed
the water pump's leaking.
That's probably the more likelycause of the problem with this
thing running hot.
Would you like us to take careof that for you?
And he says damn it.

(43:26):
I said put a thermostat in thatcar, Don't you touch nothing
else.
Okay, dude, your car.
We put a thermostat in it, werolled it out the door.
He comes, picks it up, pays hisbill, we're all good.
He comes back the next day andsays you put a thermostat in my
car and it's still running hotno no kidding, they're like,
yeah, man, I know, yeah, yeah,but like, so did they?

Speaker 3 (43:48):
did they try to punish you for that like, or
what happened with that?
Like, because, yeah, my brotherdefinitely tells me that like,
yeah, people try to come all thetime he has to like like, take
their cars from them.
Like, like, cause you could puta mechanics lien on some of
these people, cause yeah, theydidn't pay you.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Oh yeah, so no, I mean, with that guy it pretty
much just ended up being like,well, hey man, you know, we, we
tried to tell you it needed awater pump and you said no.
So if you'd like us to replacethe water pump, here's the
estimate to do that, otherwisego away.
And he eyes go away.
And uh, he decided to leave madand and and it was I mean that.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
ate up that, that one guy right there probably ate up
half my day, that day, and itwas after that sucks, I'm gonna
go find something else to do,yeah because you don't know when
the next guy's gonna come andtake another half of your day or
lady, whatever there's karen'sand there's probably no end to
ways people can abuse their carand then have no accountability
for it.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
It's just yeah, and then, yell at the mechanic.
Yeah, you don't know, like thatguy's prior experience, because
I have gone into um, get mywheels aligned and been told, oh
, do you know anything aboutbrakes?
And then I say no, and they'relike, oh, you need all new
rotors and pads and everythingright.
And then you know I was like,well, let me, let me call my

(45:07):
boyfriend first, and then youknow we don't need any of that,
right, but it was.
I was an easy target and Ididn't know enough to know
whether I was, whether I neededthat or not.
So when I was looking for anauto mechanics shop when I've
lived alone, basically mybenchmark was are they going to
try to sell me something I don'tneed or not?
Uh, and do I feel comfortablewith that?

(45:27):
So I actually found one where Ihad a rather loud noise in my
car and the guy said, well, itsounds terrible, but you don't
actually have to fix it, andthat's.
I was like okay, I think thisis my shop.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah, that's nice so you know, maybe that's the
stereotype, right Like.
The stereotype is that, likemechanics are going to try to
tell, especially if you're not aman, um, they're going to
probably and that's not all ofthem but like there might try to
sell you stuff that you don'tneed, um, and you just say, no,
I don't want to buy that, um, ifit's, if it's, but they're

(46:02):
allowed if it's gonna kill you.
If you're like no, I don't wantyou to fix my wheels and it,
and if it could kill you, theycan just be like you can't have
the car because you're toostupid to not kill yourself we
literally can't let you, you'regonna literally fucking die.
And then it's our fault that youdied because you were stupid
enough to bring us the car.
Have you ever been in thatsituation?
Have you ever seen a?
I literally can't let you takethis car because it will kill

(46:26):
you so laws like that vary fromstate to state.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
When I was a mechanic I was in the, and the state of
nebraska plays it very, veryloose with automobile type stuff
.
I mean, there's no okay, youprobably have the personal
freedom to go kill yourself inyour vehicle no thread on your
tires, no oil, no thread when Ifirst moved to pennsylvania and

(46:52):
they're like, you got to getyour car inspected every year.
I'm like what are you talkingabout?

Speaker 4 (46:58):
and uh, you're in the north son.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
Yeah, no such law existed.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
It was, uh, you know the the front tire could be
sitting like this and customersno, don't fix it, see you later
but whether you're an automechanic or in the automation
world, like in general, if youhave the attitude that you may
have something of value to learnfrom those around you, whether

(47:23):
they're people working for youor you're working for them, I
mean it just seems like commonsense, but I can imagine like
that same feeling or that samething could drive you to quit a
job in any industry really,which is just people being
stubborn and making decisionsagainst their best interests,
even though you did your best totry to help them.

(47:46):
And I think that's a lot of thisshort sightedness.
You know people, if they havebeen taken advantage of or they
don't understand that the valuein being vulnerable enough to
actually just have a dialogueand learn and I see this, I hear
this a lot from the you.
You know the engineers too.
Like engineers feel like theyneed to know everything, so
they're not gonna open up aboutwhatever issue they're having to

(48:07):
their vendor, for instance,because also historically, maybe
the vendor will just use thatto take advantage of you to sell
you more right right and it'slike.
But long term, goodrelationships for business
actually hinge on you being ableto tell the full story to each
other and come up with the bestsolution right right, yeah, and
I mean, unfortunately, you seethat in the compressed air world

(48:28):
as well, where you know nothing.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Nothing is a priority until it's an emergency, and
then it's the only priority andthat might be all of
manufacturing.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
What is the problem like?

Speaker 2 (48:40):
I don't know, but it amazes me how you know people
can uh can neglect thecompressed air system and they
don't care as long as there'sair in the pipes.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
As soon as there's no air in the pipes, that is the
only thing that matters yeah,because downtime right now no
valves work, can't do anything,whole shut down, and now it's
everybody's problem yeah are youseeing a bigger trend in um, as
industry 4.0 and connectedfactories are becoming more of a

(49:10):
thing?
Uh, are you seeing that as atrend?
The places you're going, and isthat making things a little bit
better for the compressed air?
Are they tying that into theirsmart factories or are they
forgetting it all together andmaking everything else smart?

Speaker 2 (49:24):
So again, as we talked about at the top of the
show here, this is where youraudience is going to get to play
a major role in that, becausefor my company I can do that.
You know, if that customerwants their compressed air
system, their dryer, all thatreporting back to their SCADA
system, to their DCS, to theirwhatever, I can do that for them

(49:45):
.
But not a lot of distributorshave a guy like me on staff,
yeah, and that's where youraudience can come in and make
friends and say, okay, we havethis mutual client between the
two of us.
You know they use me for myautomation stuff, they use you
for compressed air stuff.
We need to become friends hereand get these compressors

(50:06):
talking to the system.
Hell yeah, you know, the storythat I always like to tell with
this is if you think of amanufacturing plant where they
could have every bit ofconnectivity in the world, but
if they're blind to thecompressed air system, then what
happens is the operator's doinghis thing, right, he's running
along, he's operating, doingwhatever, and all of a sudden,

(50:30):
say, a sludge pump or somethingstops working.
He doesn't know why it stoppedworking.
All he knows is my sludgetank's filling up and the pump's
not responding.
So now he has to callmaintenance.
They have to send somebody outlook at it.
They go oh, we got lowcompressed air.
Well, now somebody's got to golook at the air compressor.
Figure that out.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
That's a waste of time looking at the sludge pump
at all.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Right, that downtime could be substantial.
Now, on the flip side of that,if that operator gets an error
saying, hey, compressor one justshut down, well we, just how
much time did we just savetroubleshooting?
We don't need to worry aboutlooking at the sludge pump or
anything else, we can send themechanic right to the compressor
room.
Now, if you take that one stepfurther, even because a lot of

(51:16):
these compressors now the modbus registry is extensive and
you can not only monitor forfaults but you can monitor for
specific faults.
So now that compressor shutsdown and it sends an alarm up to
the control room and sayscompressor one down on VS
default heat sink overheated.
Well now not only do we know tosend maintenance to the
compressor room, we know to sendthe electrician to the

(51:37):
compressor room and we can getthis thing solved even faster.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
So yeah, I mean it's a big downtime saver when you
look at connecting all that intothe, into the central control
system, like that yeah, and nowthey do, uh, preventative
maintenance right, so like totry to get, uh, some, some
companies have an mes system andthey're actually sending now

(51:59):
work orders to like to, you know, do maintenance on a like a
compressor, because they knowthat it's now vibrating
different than it was vibratingwhen we first bought it, or it
changed over time and now itsbearings are like something's
wrong.
We got to go look at it, um, orcompare it to the other
compressors that are running ifyou have more than one um.
So, yeah, we're trying to dothat, uh, but yeah, that

(52:21):
definitely our um audience canhelp with.
Like that's industry 4.0.
And now, actually no, industry5.0 is using ai and machine
learning to take in all the datathat is already can be
connected from skata, um andfrom all the instruments and
from all the systems, othermanufacturing systems, not just

(52:41):
like technical systems but likeERP and HR systems, and tying
all that all together so you canknow crazy things about your
company, down to the sensorsthemselves and how much it's
costing, how much a piece ofequipment costs you and how.
I think the yeah people say thatlike when they first put an oee

(53:03):
, which is a overall equipmentefficiency numbers on things,
like people had never seen thosenumbers before.
So just by virtue of having anumber to look at, they can
increase that.
Because they were like oh well,yeah, I guess we could run it.
Uh, we could, we could turn itoff less, we could, you know,
run it longer, like, and thenput better numbers to that.

(53:24):
And what does that do for theyou know bottom line and does
that help?
And, yeah, it is working to tryto get so.
Data is huge and I'm reallyglad that, like that's kind of
the premise of what you wantedto even talk to us about was

(53:47):
yeah, I know all aboutcompressors, I can fix your
compressors, but let me help you, uh, actually like monitor your
compressors so you break themless often, um, and or, you know
, let me sell you thecompressors because I helped you
break less of them, um, just,oh no, yeah, we can't.
Oh no, it was.
It was definitely great to talkto, though, even though you
can't hear us anymore.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
Oh there, you are All right, good.
Well then we have time to askyou our last question I have.
I was about to go in there andsay a whole thing about how
we've been monitoringtemperature, control
temperatures in grocery stores,fridges and freezers for like a

(54:23):
decade and predicting compressorfailure just by looking at the
patterns in the temperature.
But the other thing is, likeyou said, just measuring.
It can be a huge savings justin and of itself, because
oftentimes when people are notmeasuring or they're not
realizing that there aremultiple different like years
and manufacturers of equipmentall of their temperature sensors
are in different states ofcalibration or maybe out of

(54:43):
calibration.
Once you just start to look atit holistically, collect the
information and start seeing thepatterns, you can adjust the
operating conditions and you'llsee right away like some of
these could need to be tuned up.
I mean just basic, small thingsthat you don't.
If you don't have eyes on it,how would you even know?
So you can extend the life ofyour equipment a lot, exactly,

(55:09):
exactly so even just thelow-hanging fruit of before you
even start doing any kind of aipredicting of anything is you
can usually lower your energyusage right off the bat just by
starting to actually take a lookand then you can start to make
those better maintenancedecisions like who do we bring
based on the fault codes andwhat?
What do we bring to fix right?
Um, and we've been able to makethose predictions, like, let's

(55:33):
say, we have a service route ofthe HVAC, you know the
refrigeration technicians justbeing able to bring the right
thing to the service call andnot have to drive two hours back
to get some spare part orwhatever.
I mean that in and of itselfpays for the cost of the
monitoring within the firstcouple of months, and usually

(55:54):
that's not even including theenergy savings that you end up
getting, just being able to runyour equipment slightly more
efficiently.
Um, and I don't know if itwould be the same for, like,
plant compressed air and thosecompressors, but I, I think uh
it's the same idea.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
They're gonna.
They're gonna go to crap overtime.
Yeah, they don't run foreverwith nobody touching them.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
That's impossible and you don't need to go straight
from having no clue and novisibility to AI telling you
what to do.
It's like there's a greatmiddle ground there where you
can get a lot of gains beforeyou can go that far with it.
One more question before myactual last question Can you
upgrade the controllers on oldcompressors, um, to get that

(56:35):
more fun, without actuallyhaving to replace the whole
system?
Is that part of what you do?
Okay, so, like you said, evenif you have like rainbow of a
bunch of different ones, you canunify them under the same
control system and start to getsome of that ballistic
visibility, flexibility.

(57:27):
Nice thinking about the menuscrew and the operators,
something people do enough of aswell yeah, they don't want to
learn six different menus.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
Nope, that's baller, nope, but a Siemens PLC does

(58:05):
care if it's an Allen BradleyHMI and it just won't do it.
Have you ever seen AllenBradley on these systems out
there?
By the way, seen Alan Bradleyon these systems out there?
By the way?
Maybe, like your controllers,talk to Alan Bradley controllers
or something like that, orother way around okay,

(58:40):
interesting, okay, interestingto know, yeah well they have a
deal with.
Yeah, that makes sense for themor their engineers.
It makes sense for theirengineer because most engineers
in the us controls engineersknow how to use alan bradley
like ladder logic studio 5000 orrs logics 5000 or 500 or five
you know you can assume moststuff probably speaks eip in the

(59:03):
us too.

Speaker 4 (59:04):
Yes, like profi net yeah, that one's a little harder
.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
That's that common Okay.
That makes sense, and Modbus isthat easy and people know how
to use it Like, so it won't die.
It's not going to go away.

Speaker 4 (59:35):
Modbus is always like the fallback option.
It's so easy.
Yeah, it won't work.
Okay, I've heard that.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Okay, okay, I've heard that okay, no, it's just
the simplicity and the fact thateverybody knows how to use my
bus and has always used itforever.
And it doesn't need to be fast,um, because they don't care

(01:00:11):
about those speeds like yeah,although if you talk to like it
people, they're like, oh, my god, those are atrocious speeds.
It's like, yeah, but I, ourstuff, doesn't need to talk the
same speed that your guys'sstuff does.
Um, yeah, unless it's likesuper critical.
But yeah, no, we don't.
We don't need milliseconds.
Uh, not always.
Sometimes, sometimes Inmachining, sometimes I'll back

(01:00:34):
off In process control is whenwe don't really need that,
unless it's like a reallytemperature critical thing.
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.
So that's why it makes senseModbus.
We used in, yeah, lots of skidlike process skids that you can
sell to companies that havetheir own controller on it, most

(01:00:55):
likely at least carry that, andthen if you ask or buy, you can
get ethernet.
Um, but it's not justnecessarily like automatically
ethernet but, like you're saying, it probably is automatically
modbus just available.
It's just there because they'vehad the controller forever and
there's like no reason to takethat out.
They could just add Ethernet.
Yep, and it's cheap and youhave the parts.

Speaker 4 (01:01:18):
Yeah, thank you, those are nice fancy interesting

(01:02:30):
and and you can get modbus.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
If your system isn't modbus and you need ethernet,
you can get a gateway and talkall that modbus into another
system and just let the modbussystem talk modbus to itself and
then you start reading some ofit.
Um, if you want to grab thatinformation, and then you don't
have to buy all new everything,so everything is ethernet,
because you could just leaveeverything modbus and gateway
talk to Ethernet and get thatdata anyway, not at the speed

(01:02:57):
you want, but yeah, modbus, tcp,yep, those gateways, and people
want to see that.
They just want everything backto RJ45 for whatever reason for
monitoring, because they havewhatever their central thing is

(01:03:19):
and they want their historian orwhatever is probably Ethernet.
Don't just talk out of the box,but you can get people like Rob
and integrators to program yougateways or your own internal
people and you can have, youknow, rob's help.
But you have to go out thereand, like you know, talk to

(01:03:41):
these people and get the skinny,get the down low and, yeah, be
like what am I up to?

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
I'm going to now move to our final question.
Rob, can you tell us if youhave anything exciting coming up
, anything that we should followyou for?
And then, where can people geta hold of you and follow you?
And I guess, in that sense, ifthey're automation integrators
and they want to learn moreabout how to work with
compressed air, can they come toyou?

(01:04:10):
Or what are your suggestions ontheir next step, if they found
your suggestions todayinteresting like a dust

(01:04:41):
collector oh okay to shake thebags okay

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
hmm, to shake the bags.
Okay, I've seen that where yougreatly oversized something else
like well, we had was on salelike but then you end up
spending that money in theoperation really quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
You don't need that.
Air compressors are a huge cost.
Oh, okay, yeah, so nice you'renot just wasting all that extra

(01:06:07):
air that you're making.
Yeah, yeah, so that's why youneed somebody that just kind of

(01:06:29):
knows what's up with thesethings.
Uh, very cool.
Well, if people want to, uh, youknow, make more friends in your
industry, um, or or connectwith you, uh, where can people
find and follow what you'redoing?
All right, so, action item foreverybody that's listening Find

(01:07:10):
Rob on LinkedIn and there willbe a link to your profile in the
guest profile for this episode.
It should be in the show notesas well.
Go ahead and click connect.
You're open to that, rob, or isit a follow button that you
have?
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly, and Imean I'm all for, you know,

(01:07:45):
keeping your network to peoplethat have make some sense, like,
um, but anybody that's in thisindustry or, you know, in the
industrial controls integration.
You know there's so much tolearn from those adjacent fields
, uh, that I I've not been pickyand like only connecting with
people that do the same kind ofthing, but as long as they're in
the industry and I can tellthat we, like have you know,

(01:08:06):
some things in common to talkabout or discuss, then it's been
a huge, huge value to open upthe network to some people that
I don't know.
As long as we have thatcommonality, right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
Unless we sell you crypto, don't try to sell you
anything.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Don't pitch me, okay, okay yes, yes, agreed, 100%

(01:09:04):
agreed.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
That's not what I wanted.
I want robots, and it's liketotally unnecessary and at the
end of the day, we are going tobe stuck with each other in the
workforce, so there's no reasonto bring that crap up in our job
.
That's stupid, like so, sostupid.
It doesn't matter what youropinion is Like having that like

(01:09:26):
mess with like the job you'redoing is like there's no reason
that should be messing with thejob.
So now you're mad because yourcoworker is gonna vote for the
other guy and now you're notdoing your job and I'm pissed
because I want both of you to doyour damn job and not talk all

(01:10:00):
very interested, like all theposts they've interacted with.

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
You're like huh, and I can imagine that there will be
some folks in your network thatthat see that I have worked
very hard to get both of thosethings off of my feed Me too,
and exactly and the only way todo that is to unfollow people
that bring it to your feed.
Yeah, yeah yeah, most of themare, quote unquote subtle.

(01:10:43):
Although I saw one.
It was like I think it was aand I have mad respect in in
some ways, but I think it was alady farmer, like posing in a
corn pile.

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
That was the one that I like will never forget me
neither.
And I'm like dude, I wanna likeno, she's like in a silo, it's
like, yeah, in lingerie onlinkedin I mean power to you for
being a farmer and getting todo that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
You clearly have control over your own destiny.
Lingerie, like I don't knowwhat to do with that.
I don't know.
No fear there was corn.

Speaker 4 (01:11:16):
everywhere there was corn kernels everywhere it was
so scary.

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
With corn kernels.
With or without corn kernels.

Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
That's just been my answer to everything lately.
I came here for the robots.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
Please leave me out of all the rest of it wait till
they start robot cleavage likeshots, and then what are we
going to do?
Oh is this.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Okay, to show.
I found this.
You know the naughty robotstickers.
Oh yeah, oh my gosh, I'mholding up a robot sticker.
It's the back side of the robotand it says butt tour or no
robot.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
Yeah, robot and it says B-U-T-T and it shows you
have a butt.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
Yes, it's got.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
That's actually pretty tame Fair ask Rob no
thirst traps and don't sell themcrypto.
No, I'm just kidding, nopolitical shit.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
Rob.
Yeah, this was a good one.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
We really enjoyed this conversation.
Thank you for being a part ofour network and being willing to
chat and that's what this isall about and talk about this
stuff.
Yeah, I hope that you have somepeople reaching out to you
after the show airs that alsowant to chat with you about this
stuff, because that's why we'rehere.

Speaker 3 (01:12:35):
Yeah, you should rebrand yourself as a compressed
air guy.
You should rebrand yourself asthe compressed air guy like the
go-to guy.

Speaker 4 (01:12:55):
Well, you'll be the go-to guy in our network, that's
for sure.
Yeah, I was gonna say you're mygo-to guy now.
Yep, so watch compressed air.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Think of rob.
People don't ask rob for freework.
But sometimes you can start arelationship by giving some
great free advice back and forth.
But we've also found this to be, you know, a blessing and a
curse of getting your name out.
There is a lot of people justwill get in your DMs asking you
to work for them for free.
We don't respect that.
We do respect people addingvalue to each other and asking

(01:13:24):
each other for help inrespectful ways, being
respectful of each other's timeand talents.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
Yeah, cool, cool, yep .
Awesome for joining us in themiddle of a hectic day, rob.
We really appreciate it and welook forward to staying in touch
with you.
Thanks for being on the showand have a great rest of your
day.
Bye, guys, thank you, you.
Thanks for being on the showand have a great rest of your

(01:14:17):
day.
Bye, guys.