Episode 126: Jerry Goman

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Welcome to Episode 126 of the Reel Turf Techs Podcast! This week, we're honored to chat with Jerry Goman, Senior Principal Design Engineer at The Toro Company, who recently retired after an impressive 39-year career. Jerry's journey began on a dairy farm, leading to dual degrees in agricultural and mechanical engineering, and ultimately to a pivotal role at Toro. Over the years, Jerry worked on numerous product lines, with a significant focus on greens mowers. In this episode, we dive deep into the design and engineering of cutting units, exploring topics like rifling, blade pass frequency, the development of DPA and EdgeSeries reels, bedknives, and more. If you're into the technical details of turfgrass equipment, this episode is a must-listen! Don't miss out on this insightful conversation with one of the industry's greats.

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Episode Transcript

Trent Manning (00:05):
welcome to the reel turf techs podcast for the
technician that wants to getreel follow along.
As we talk to industryprofessionals and address hot
topics that we all face alongthe way we'll learn tips and
tricks.
I'm your host, Trent.
Manning let's have some Welcometo the real turf tax podcast.

(00:27):
Episode 1 26.
Today, we're talking to JerryGoldman.
Senior principal design engineeror the Toro company.
But just recently retired.
Jerry served two tours of theToro company for a total of 39
years.
He started in March of 83 andretired in March of 2024.
With a two year leave ofabsence.

(00:49):
Jerry worked on many productlines during his tenure at Toro.
Let's spend a lot of time ongreens mowers.
Let's talk to Jerry.
Welcome Jerry to the RealTurfTechs podcast.
How are you doing today, Jerry?

Jerry Goman (01:02):
Just fine.
Thank you.
Trent.
That's nice to be here.

Trent Manning (01:05):
Yeah, yes, sir.
Thank you so much for joining ushere and I'm really excited to
hear your story.
So yeah, tell us how you got tothe Toro company.

Jerry Goman (01:17):
well, you know, I I started at Toro probably like A
lot of people start at most jobsand that I graduated from
college had a dual engineeringdegree, one in agricultural
engineering, one mechanicalengineering.
And I happened to be lucky atthe time when I graduated, there
was a glut of engineers.

(01:38):
They didn't need anybody.
So I had filled out paperwork togo on to grad school to go into
a mechanical engineeringgraduate program and a friend of
my dad worked at Toro in Tomah,Wisconsin, and said that they
were just looking at starting tohire again.
This was shortly after Toro hadtheir financial woes in the.

(02:01):
and they had just started toopen up again.
And so I went and interviewed atToma, which was a manufacturing
facility which is only about 35miles from where I grew up.

Trent Manning (02:15):
Oh, that's awesome.

Jerry Goman (02:16):
And so it was kind of just down the road, if you
will.
And I went and interviewed and Igot the job.
Hired, and I was the firstperson to be hired at Toro and
Toma after they had the, like Isaid, the financial setback.
So.
So I was happy to get into thedoor and my title at that

(02:39):
particular point was I was aquality manufacturing engineer.
So I did quality work and forthe manufacturing facility.
And not, not not an auspiciousstart of, of looking
specifically at Toro it was anavailable job I was fortunate
from the standpoint with mydegrees, I had originally

(03:01):
planned to go into the agindustry and design ag
equipment, farm equipment ofsome sort come to find out that
the equipment that Toro does isis a close cousin.

Trent Manning (03:13):
Yes, it is.

Jerry Goman (03:14):
and so it worked out quite well for me and the
advantage of working at Tomah tostart is you know, I could bring
my knowledge from the farm, youknow, grew up on a dairy farm
and dairy and beef.
And so I had all that abilityit's one of those things where.
Working in the field, youfigured out how to get the unit

(03:35):
running with a screwdriver and apair of pliers or you're walking
home.

Trent Manning (03:39):
Right.
Right.

Jerry Goman (03:40):
I kind of have that, you know, innate ability
and started at the plant and wasinvolved in a lot of problem
solving and got to see themanufacturing side of it.
And when I started, Toma wasbuilding everything from
cordless electric batterypowered trimmers.

(04:00):
Up through the HTM hydraulictransport more and so it was a
huge range of equipment.
built snow blowers, rear engineriders, we built GM 72s, we were
building greens masters, sandpros, super pros, if anyone
remembers any of those.

(04:20):
70 pros from a walk Greensborostandpoint, we were building
both series four and series fivegreens masters.
The series 5 changed over intothe greens master 105.
So, a lot of history there.
So a lot of equipment spent alot of time on the floor spent a
lot of time in welding to tryand understand how the fixtures

(04:43):
work and that sort of thing.
So, I spent seven years at Tomaand Felt that I kind of wanted
to change and there was adesign.
Position that way we'reinterviewing for at Bloomington
in Minnesota at the corporateheadquarters.
So I went up and interviewed forthat and got hired.

(05:08):
That was about 1990 when Itransferred up to Lindale.

Trent Manning (05:13):
Okay.

Jerry Goman (05:14):
And my product responsibility at that point in
time was the old RealMaster 335.
It had just been, just beenintroduced and it was the, the
rough mower, et cetera and soforth and, and it needed some
work.
So I, I got into it feet firston working on some issues on the

(05:36):
pump and some other issues andthis sort of thing and trying to
resolve some issues in thecutting units.
So it was kind of my first foraywith.
Cutting units and off temperingand, and those sorts of things
in terms of the heat treatmentsand, and, and other things and
was then transferred, not reallytransferred, but the group I was

(05:59):
working with got assigned a newproduct.
So, rather than doing productmaintenance.
I was involved in a new productdesign, which was the 455D.

Trent Manning (06:10):
Okay.

Jerry Goman (06:11):
455 was to take the 335 tractor and convert it to a
rotary.
And we were on an extremelyshort timeline.
There was a number of thingsthat I wanted to change that I
was told we didn't have time.

Trent Manning (06:26):
Mm

Jerry Goman (06:26):
there was some frustration on my part in that
there was a lot of things thatWere within our grasp to fix in
my mind, but we weren't giventime to do that.
When that product was completedThe product group was kind of,
disseminated and I basicallytransferred over to Greensmoor's

Trent Manning (06:47):
Okay.

Jerry Goman (06:48):
and started working on Greensmoor's and I had
product responsibility for thecurrent products at that time
would have been the GR 300.
And the the first diesel unitsof this sort of thing was
converted to the 3, 000 ofcourse, as it changed through
there.
And the first product, the newproduct that I worked on there

(07:11):
along with the productresponsibility was the 3, 200.

Trent Manning (07:16):
Okay.
Yep.

Jerry Goman (07:18):
And working on the 3, 200, it was my my section of
it was the suspension.
Cutting unit suspension andcutting units.

Trent Manning (07:28):
Okay.

Jerry Goman (07:29):
was, that was the first time I get a full new
sheet, clean sheet design of thecutting units.
And I was fortunate enough totalk to a lot of people who,
when I got up on Greene's Moors,there was a.
A lot of history people thatwere there for a number of
years.
And so I did my darndest to picktheir brain and say, you know,

(07:54):
what's the right thing?
What do we need to do?
And, and a gentleman that hadbeen working on Greensboro
cutting units, the old singlepoint adjustment and 4 bolt
cutting units that went wayback,

Trent Manning (08:05):
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (08:06):
his comment to me was whatever you do, make the,
overall construction stiffer,make them more robust.

Trent Manning (08:15):
Okay.
Yep.

Jerry Goman (08:16):
So, so when we went in and did the 3200 cutting
unit, we did that.
We made the bed bar pivotslarger.
We made the reel shaft tubularand larger diameter with hollow
so that the, the overall weightof the reel went down, but the
stiffness to bending and torsionwent up just because you had a

(08:37):
larger, larger section.
And bed bars were heavier, wemade everything a little
heavier.
That unit was still a singlepoint adjustment.
But up to that point, we hadalways had problems with single
point adjustments prone torifling.
I'm assuming your, your group isfamiliar with rifling,

Trent Manning (09:01):
well, I don't, well, I don't, let's just in
case let's yeah, let's describethat a little bit for the
listeners.
What, what is

Jerry Goman (09:08):
Yeah.
Well, rifling, the way we defineit from an engineering
standpoint is when the cuttingand it goes into a vibration
mode, and the Bed bar goes intowhat we call first order bending
vibration, which means thatwhere the bed bar is, is

(09:29):
connected to the side plates areyour pivot points and the center
of the bed bar is deflecting upand down.
So it's like, it's a singlenode.
bending.
So it's just up and down.
It's, it's flexing and thecenter is going high and low.
And what happens is obviously asthat starts to get into this

(09:51):
vibration, it begins to increasethe contact with the reel and
the reel starts to move as well.
And so you get excessively highcontact pressures.
Between the reel and thebedknife, and of course where
the reel is the stiffest iswhere the spiders are connected
to the shaft.
And so what it does is the stiffpart of the reel, where those

(10:14):
blades are, erodes the materialout of the bedknife.
And you get this scalloped lookof the bedknife, and if you look
down the end of the bedknife, itlooks like it's a rifling mark
you would see in a barrel.
And that's why it's calledrifling.

Trent Manning (10:27):
Okay.
That's awesome.
That was a great explanation.
I

Jerry Goman (10:31):
So, you know, up to the point of the 3200 Cutting
Unit, we had always haddifficulty maintaining
stability.
And part of that, of course, isthat the, the Toro methodology
is that we recommend runninglight contact.
And we you know, we expect thosereels to run in light contact.

(10:53):
And when we completed the 3200cutting unit, that unit was
stable at all speeds and allcontact with the stiffer reel,
the stiffer bed bar pivots,everything being a little bit
heavier.
I went through the designanalysis of all the components
on that.
To make sure that there was nocomponent that had a natural

(11:15):
frequency in the blade passfrequency.
Let me explain that a littlebit.
What you have is based on thereel RPM.
So let's say the reel is running2000 RPM.
And you have 11 blades.
You have, basically, that unitis hitting, the blades are

(11:40):
hitting the bed knife at thatpoint in time, at 2, 000 times
11 is what, 22, 000 cycles perminute.

Trent Manning (11:47):
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (11:48):
You divide that by 60, you end up with a frequency.
That's called the blade passfrequency.

Trent Manning (11:53):
Okay.

Jerry Goman (11:53):
blade pass frequency changes by virtue of
the number of blades, if it's 8blades versus 11 blades, or 14
versus 11.
And if the real speed changesanywhere from 1200 RPM up to
2200 RPM.
So all those things connect,it's all based on how many times
the bed knife contacts the realblade.

(12:16):
And that's what your frequencyis.
That sets up a vibration mode inthe structure, the frame, the
real, the bed bar, bed knifeassembly, everything gets a
vibration mode based on thatfrequency.
So what I did is during thedesign of the cutting unit, we
went through and calculated.

(12:36):
Natural frequency of all thecomponents, which would be the
bearings, the shaft of thewheel, the bed bar cross section
with the bed knife bolted andunbolted even the adjuster
spring for the SPA adjuster tomake sure that nothing had a
natural frequency where it wouldwant to vibrate.

(12:57):
Or go into a vibration modeanywhere in the range from a
thousand RPM to 2, 500 RPM withall the different real blades.

Trent Manning (13:06):
Wow.
That's a lot to cover.

Jerry Goman (13:09):
Yeah, there was a lot to cover.
There was a lot of, and that wasprior to when we could do it on
the computer.
So that was all hand mass.
So it was a little ugly, but wegot through it.
And there's lots of pages ofmathematics that I still have
stored on.
But but anyway, the the real ranextremely stable.
I mean, all speeds, all contact,and we actually complete a

(13:32):
rifling test at Toro.
It's one of the parameters tomake sure everything passes, and
what we do is we will take areel and bed knife an actual
cutting unit, and we will run itin contact and polish it until
everything is a snug, perfectfit, the light contact is there,

(13:53):
everything's straight, square tothe world, we spend a little
time a couple of hours gettingeverything polished in, And then
what we do is we run it severalclicks past the normal contact

Trent Manning (14:07):
All right.
Can we, can we time out rightthere and you tell me what is
normal contact

Jerry Goman (14:14):
Okay.

Trent Manning (14:15):
Yeah.
A deep.
Yeah.
Let's since I know we're inhistory a little bit, but let's
talk about the DPA for just aminute and tell us what's a
normal contact.
What does Toro like to see?

Jerry Goman (14:26):
yeah, the adjuster, the adjuster right now on the on
the greens mower for each clickmoves the end of the bed knife
toward the reel by seven tenthsor seven ten thousandths of an
inch, a little less than athousandth of an inch point zero
zero zero seven.
And what we have always youknow, Over the years, I've

(14:51):
developed a touch and a feel andan ear for it, but that's, of
course, that's, that's myrequirement, you know, and it's
difficult to explain that tosomeone else.
So what we actually recommend isthat we send with each new
cutting unit, there's a piece ofshim stock in there, and it's a
two thousandths piece ofstainless steel shim.

(15:14):
And what we recommend is thatyou bring the knife and the reel
up to where you have just slightdrag, where as the reel blade
goes over, it just catches andgives a very slight drag on to
that piece of shim stock,

Trent Manning (15:29):
hmm.

Jerry Goman (15:29):
you're basically spacing it like you would with a
feeler gauge.

Trent Manning (15:34):
Right.
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (15:35):
At that point in time, we say three clicks.
It's a two thousandth shim.
You bring it in two thousandthsand one.
Okay, you know what I mean?
And so what you should end upwith is what we consider like
contact where you hear the realblades just contacting the real,

(15:55):
or not the real blade, realblades contacting, I'm sorry,
real

Trent Manning (15:58):
Oh, that's all right.

Jerry Goman (15:59):
the bed knife, and yet you still have a very nice
smooth flow, And as you pull onit, it doesn't tend to restrain
or slow the reel to anysignificant amount.
So we're talking light contactwithin less than half a thou,
for sure.

Trent Manning (16:18):
Okay.
No, that's great.
And I think that's really goodinformation for a lot of people.
And you know, one thing Ilearned from another gentleman,
John Patterson been in theindustry a long time, and he's
been doing this a long time andI've been doing it a long time.
And he's telling me that he usesa filler gauge to set his 2000

(16:42):
clearance.
And then.
He was a PGA national and theyhad a tournament and they had a
bunch of Toro stuff.
So Toro engineers were downthere and they told him just
what you just told us, the twothousands and plus three clicks.
And, but the thing that reallygot to me was as long as John's

(17:03):
been doing this and I look up tohim and you know, he even said,
I thought I was as good asanybody just cutting paper.
But when he started using afiller gauge, he realized he was
off a little bit.

Jerry Goman (17:17):
You know, it can throw you off.
The paper is different.
You know, there's a differentfeel here and there.
The reality is, and thefortunate part of it is, and you
know, we're getting into theweeds a little bit on the
details.
But the cutting units now thenew DPAs and all these new
cutting units are stable enoughthat if you're off a little, You

(17:39):
know, let's say you still usethe paper and you go with that
and, you know, I've heard, youknow, or two, you have two
pieces of paper and, you know,and, and or the paper is either
in line with the knife orperpendicular to the knife.
There's all kinds of differentways.

Trent Manning (17:55):
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (17:56):
The reality is, is the cutting units are stable.
They will mow fine at thatpoint.
And they will even more with nocontact.
I know there are people that,that are prone to that as well.
Even though we, we prefercontact and recommended, but I
know it works for some peopleand, and if the practice works

(18:17):
for them, that's fine.
It's just going to changeoverall.
Anything that deviates from,from maybe I don't want to use
the term perfection or whatever,but now that's not the point.
If your adjustment is slightlyoff and it works for you, it
just may change the requiredamount of maintenance.

(18:41):
Then what you could get out ofit, but it will run fine.
And so that there's, there'sadvantages to that from that
standpoint, that there'sstability there.

Trent Manning (18:50):
Okay.
Yep.
I mean it makes perfect sense tome.
Can you tell us what led to theDPA?

Jerry Goman (18:58):
Well, you know, going back to the history, right
after we had done the the 3, 200the next project at Toro for me
was the flex walk greens mower.
And we went in and did a designon that walker where we had the,
obviously the flexible linksconnecting the reel and, and the

(19:20):
pitch arms connecting the reelto the tractor, allowing the
tractor to flex or move relativeto the cutting unit so the
cutting unit could follow theground.
That cutting unit design isreally the basis for everything
since then, and that was done inthe late 90s, 98, 99.
All the geometry in the flexcutting unit is what is exactly

(19:44):
that geometry is in the DPAcutting unit right now.
The bed bar pivot locations theroller locations, the adjuster
points, everything was done onthat particular cutting unit.
And that was done specificallyto make sure that the cutting
was consistent over time.
And we spent quite a bit of timegoing through, again, the

(20:06):
stability with the tubular reelshaft.
The, you know, all the, all theadjustments were stable.
You know, the dual pointadjustment actually originally
came from the old GR1000 walkgreens mower.

Trent Manning (20:20):
Yep.

Jerry Goman (20:20):
And We adapted we changed it a little bit in terms
of the components, but theconcept was carried from the
GR1000, which was introduced in89.
And we brought that over to astandalone cutting unit for the
Flex because we had seen thestability and the ability To get

(20:42):
rid of the parallel adjustmentof the bed bar to the reel on an
SPA you always ended up havingto go in and have one end of the
bed bar had to be slightlyadjustable up or down in order
to ensure that you had the bedknife parallel to the real.

Trent Manning (21:01):
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (21:02):
So one end was a pivot.
The other end was adjusted upand down.
In the case of the greensmowers, it had a cam that you
would rotate, and that wouldallow you to rotate that point
to get it up and down, just apain.
I mean, let's be honest, it wasa pain, right?
And, and it was a pain.
And so one of the things that wedid on the flex was to take the

(21:25):
change in the approach.
We had always used welded realframes prior to that.
Where you had the center sectionand two side plates that you
bolted on or welded onto thecenter section.
And when you welded those plateson the steel plates, they would
have a tendency to wart.
And so flatness was an issue.
And so one of the things we didon the 3,200 carrying the same

(21:48):
concept forward is we spent.
A specific amount of time to getplates that were much flatter
and stiffer than what we hadpreviously on the old 4 bolt and
the SPAs.
That again helped the overallstability of the cutting unit.
And we changed the bearings fromthe tapered roller bearings to

(22:09):
the self aligning ball bearings.
Again, giving the reel morestability if things were not
aligned.

Trent Manning (22:16):
Mm

Jerry Goman (22:16):
When we went to the Walker we decided to go away
from the weldment and we had abolt together cutting unit,
where the center section on theoriginal flex 21 instead of a
casting like you see on the DPAwas an extrusion.
An aluminum extrusion, and thetwo side plates that were fully

(22:36):
machined before they were boltedon were bolted on and they were
keyed to the extrusion soeverything was aligned when you
started.
So you didn't have to worryabout the frame not being
square.

Trent Manning (22:50):
Okay,

Jerry Goman (22:50):
We also stayed with the ball bearings, but instead
of a self aligning ball bearing,we went to a standard deep
groove ball bearing with aslightly Increased clearance
inside, internally.
There is if you were to order orbuy a deep groove ball bearing

(23:12):
off the shelf, the normalclearance is what's called a CN,
C normal.
That's just the term that's usedin the, in the bearing industry.

Trent Manning (23:21):
okay

Jerry Goman (23:22):
The clearance level that we used was a C3, which a C
normal clearance on a deepgroove ball bearing is somewhere
around 3 to 5 tenths clearancebetween the inner race, the
balls, and the outer race.
Total clearance in that bearing.
In a C3 bearing, that's 8tenths.

Trent Manning (23:42):
Okay.

Jerry Goman (23:43):
that's some difference, it's not a lot.
The reason, the reason we didthat was, we knew even though we
were bolting the frame together,there would still be some
possible misalignment, and wedid not want to pre stress the
bearings too high.
Now, when we went through theinitial testing of that
particular cutting, we foundthat the deep groove ball

(24:06):
bearing we would have stabilityissues where the reel would want
to move slightly because of theclearance in the ball bearing.
Believe it or not, that 8 tenthswas more clearance than what we
wanted.
So what we did is we went in andwe added a wave washer on one
end.

Trent Manning (24:25):
Okay.
Yep.

Jerry Goman (24:27):
By adding the wave washer on one side plate, and
the way it goes through is itloads the outside race to the
inside race on the one bearingthrough the reel shaft to the
inside race.
Back to the outside race on theother bearing.
So all, both bearings areslightly preloaded, which is
what's done on all high speedspindles in the world for these

(24:48):
high speed machining centers, etcetera, and so forth.
That's been up to 10, 000, 12,000 RPM.
It's the same mechanism.
What that does is that forcesthe balls to, to shift and
everything moves so it has asingle path, so they're not
wandering around inside seekinga, a rotating path.

(25:11):
It puts everything on line andeverything rotates in a true
circle.
When we had the tapered rollerbearings, because the welded
frames were never stable theywere never as square as we
wanted them to be, you would endup with the Bearings running on
an oval, they would be at aslight angle.

(25:32):
So what you would end up with iswith a, with a tapered roller
bearing with the roller, youhave one end of the rollers
called the heel and the otherend of the rollers called the
toe.
And you would transfer as itwould go around because it's not
running in the true circle.
It's running at a slight anglethat it would go from the toe to
the heel, back to the toe, backto the heel, and it was running

(25:54):
an oval instead of a circle.
And that's why those cuttingswere never as stable as we
wanted them.

Trent Manning (26:00):
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I mean, all this, you know, ismaking a ton of sense.
You're blowing my mind here.
I love it.
It's

Jerry Goman (26:06):
So the ball bearing, so the ball bearing
with the preload now allows youto run a true circle, and it
preloads everything so it findsa single node.
So what you do is you define.
The strength of the preload ishigh enough to take all the
clearance out of the bearing sothat when you're done you have
a, a bearing setup that's eventighter than the CN, just

(26:30):
because everything's preloadedand it follows a path.
So there is no clearance in thesystem when you're done.
It's very tight, very clean, andthat's why they're stable.
We've run those reels well over2, 500 RPM and they're just as
stable as you, as you want.
So there's no problems.
And

Trent Manning (26:47):
awesome.

Jerry Goman (26:48):
So that was one of the things that we learned.
The other thing that we wentthrough was, again, you know,
you had mentioned some interestin how we got to the bed bar
pivot and, and you know, the bedbar pivot, obviously.
The issue that we had seen withthe older cutting units where
the bed bar pivot was twofold.

(27:09):
One, the bed bar pivot was lowand had a tendency as the reel
would wear that you would adjustthe bed knife up to the reel and
you would start to get contactof the rear of the bed bar down
in the grass.
So it would be riding on thatbed bar.
In fact, a GR1000 gets part ofits support from the bed bar.

(27:32):
And so the problem with theGR1000 was that when you were
mowing and you had a worn reel,you were never sure what height
of cut you were getting becauseyou had, the bed bar was riding
into the grass.
So it, it affected things.
So one of the things that wewanted to do was to get the bed
bar pivot up out of the grass tomake sure that the bed bar was

(27:56):
never a support structure andnever something that you
couldn't quantify.
the other item is we werelooking ahead for this cutting
unit in other usages, but whatwe wanted to ensure that If you
had a mixed fleet, and in thecase of using it on a triplex,
if you had different levels ofgrain, so the reel was a

(28:20):
different diameter, they neededto cut the same.
We, we had learned during the3200 development that the behind
center distance the point wherethe bed knife contacts the reel,
Is a huge contributor to howaggressive the cutting unit is,
the cleanliness of cut, theamount of marking.

(28:43):
We spent months, months andcountless hours in the grass
with, with those cutting unitsin order to learn all these
things where we could change onething and predict what it was
going to do.
Once we had gotten to the pointof predictability, then we felt
we were ready to design.
So, at that point, we wanted tomake sure that the cutting was

(29:04):
stable over its life.
And so we wanted that behindcenter distance to remain
unchanged at the, at a setheight to cut, regardless of the
diameter of the reel.
And what that means is if I'mmowing at an eighth of an inch,
and I have one unit that has areel that is brand new at five

(29:29):
inches, And one that is almostworn out at four and a half
inches.
That behind center distanceneeds to be the same.
So they cut the same.

Trent Manning (29:39):
hmm.

Jerry Goman (29:40):
Historically, what happened is that as the real
war.
That distance would actuallygrow and the unit would become
more aggressive.
And so it would now have acompletely different look in the
grass because it was cuttingmore aggressively, it was
leaving less stragglers, it wasactually cutting a little lower
here and there, it was doing allkinds of things differently.

(30:02):
And it would look entirelydifferent.
And that was where part of theissue that I remember talking to
people with triplexes that ifthey went out and mowed with
their old triplex on a green itmay hit something.
They had to pull that reel togrind, they would grind all
three, to make sure that theyall matched, otherwise it would
look different.

Trent Manning (30:22):
Yep.

Jerry Goman (30:23):
And so with the bed bar pivot, now at a point where
it is higher, to one get thatbed bar up out of the grass, and
rather than just pivot the bedknife upward, it also pushes the
bed knife forward.
Because what happens is you dothe adjustment on the front

(30:43):
roller, That tips the cuttingunit forward, so the reel tends
to move forward.
It's going to pivot around therear roller.
Sorry, I'm getting into theweeds

Trent Manning (30:53):
Oh, no, I love it, man.
This is right up my alley.
I love it.

Jerry Goman (30:57):
So it pivots around the rear roller, and as you
lower the adjustment, becausethe reel is wearing to maintain
that eighth of an inch, let'ssay.
That reel moves forward.
It pivots forward.
Well, the bed bar, as you'readjusting it, if it moves just
upward, it's not keeping pacewith it.
So we actually have it so itswings forward, so that

(31:19):
regardless, like I said, whetherit's 5.
06 brand new or 4.
56 worn out, That behind centerdistance is the same within a
thousand, one one thousandth ofan inch.

Trent Manning (31:31):
Wow.
That's incredible.
That's yeah, that's

Jerry Goman (31:35):
So that, that maintains stability of that
cutting unit.
The after cut appearance staysthe same.
Everything stays the samethroughout the life of the reel.
So it's clean.
And again, that was initiallydesigned into the Flex 21
cutting unit.
At that, at a later point intime there was a project to look

(31:57):
at A design of a new cuttingunit for the triplex.
And I did not have thatparticular product directly.
But I knew the designer that wasworking on that and recommended
to him that he take a look atthe.
Cutting on the flex 21 as apossible answer for that,

(32:21):
because I told him that all thegeometry was there and he had
been spending months looking atall different things and trying
different things and couldn'tget it to work.
And he put a set of flex cuttingunits on the machine and they
were perfect.
They worked right out of thebox.

Trent Manning (32:36):
Hmm.

Jerry Goman (32:37):
So the D so the DPA then when it was first designed,
the reality is the, the changebetween the DPA and a flex was
we used to give him a designeron that project, a little grief
in that he changed seven partsinstead of the extrusion on the

(32:57):
back, he went to a casting.
Instead of sand castings on theside plates, he went to die
castings.
And so, I mean, the reality wasthere was very few changes in
terms of the actual cuttingunit.
Certainly no changes ingeometry, but different changes
in terms of manufacturingbecause of the higher volume of

(33:18):
the cutting.
And therefore, you actually, hedid improvements on that because
the, the processes that hepicked were more stable than
what we were using because hecould afford to go to the higher
cost processing.

Trent Manning (33:32):
Okay.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So when did the Edge series comearound?
And, and what led to that?

Jerry Goman (33:44):
series, you know, we were getting feedback from
customers that we weren'tgetting the edge retention that
they were seeing from some ofthe competition.
We were hearing some things andobviously Baroness was pushing
the, the main part of that, thatvote at this point.
They were doing a number ofthings.

(34:06):
Of course, a bare ass bed knifewas fully machined all the way
around and was a huge amount ofmoney.
But on the other hand, it heldan edge extremely well.
We had one of the tests that wedo there is, we also do a a
destruction test, where we We'llbe spinning the reel, and we
will stick a three quarter inchdiameter steel shaft up into the

(34:28):
reel while it's spinning.

Trent Manning (34:30):
Wow.

Jerry Goman (34:31):
And our intent is that nothing comes off.
Nothing gets broken.
And, and, so we always had safecutting units.
Fact is, we were, you know,doing some things with some of
the materials For the Europeanmarket, on the heavier reels, we
were using lost tempered knives.
So that you could literally goin and you could hammer them

(34:52):
back into shape because theywere using those large reels for
cutting road ditches.
And they always used to talkabout anecdotally that they
would run into a bicycle framebecause someone had lost a
bicycle

Trent Manning (35:05):
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (35:06):
and they didn't want anything broken.
And so I was, it was a big pushon our part to make sure nothing
would break.
Well, when you do that Hardnessbegins to suffer at that point.
You go to more ductility thanhardness.
And we were getting to the pointwhere, yeah, everything held up
really well.
And when you put a baroness reelon our stands, You would have

(35:27):
shrapnel come out, and you know,real blades would break, and bed
knives would break, and, and Itwas our feeling that somewhere
there should be an answer inbetween.
And we knew, and, and thegentleman who was working on
that is still working at Toro isScott Coffin.
So if you see Scott sometime atthe, at the, at the golf show,

(35:48):
say hey,

Trent Manning (35:48):
Okay.
I definitely

Jerry Goman (35:50):
But he he was spearheading that at this point.
He was working on fairway reelswhile I had greensmoor reels,
and of course he was getting alot of feedback on the fairway
reels where they were notlasting, you know, long enough
and, and less so to thegreensmoors, but still an issue
there as well.
And so he started workingdiligently on trying to come up

(36:14):
with different materials anddifferent You know, some of the
knives were big enough that youcould put an insert into them
instead of having the wholeknife, that heavier duty
material.
And there's a tremendous amountof testing done at Toro for
wear, where we developed a testwhere we would actually run
these different knives againstan abrasive panels.

(36:37):
And we were checking that.
And then we also have an impacttest where we had qualified it
rather than having to build up areel.
And run it and insert a statecalculations were done on what
you needed.
And we had a drop hammer testwhere you would bolt a bed knife
in and you would put a drophammer on it and you would, you

(36:57):
know, and you would check allyour materials.
And so I'd be willing to betthat the design team with Scott
probably looked at.
Hundreds of materials

Trent Manning (37:06):
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (37:07):
until he'd gotten to the point where we are today
with the with the material, itseems to be from a durability
point seems to hold up to mostimpacts.
You can still lose a piece nowand then but that's kind of the
trade off for the extended wearand not having to grind as often
or replace as often.

Trent Manning (37:28):
No, I think, I mean, it's great.
And my personal experience withit.
I, I love the age series.
I think it's the best thing outthere.
I hadn't tried the Baroness tobe fair, but versus the other
competition.
It's it's, it's night and daydifferent.

Jerry Goman (37:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and I know there's a numberof companies I, I forget the
name of A company that does alot of bed knives.
They're pretty big into it andthey were pretty solid
competition there for a while,but we've managed to move past
them as well.
So, we're fortunate.
We've always been fortunate inthat the Toro management group
has done the right decisions inthat they go in and even if

(38:07):
times get hard or whatever.
They never cut back on theirengineering budget.

Trent Manning (38:13):
Well, that's something I don't, I don't know,
you know, I hadn't been on yourside of the fence, but what I
see from the othermanufacturers, your competition,
you know, or Toro's competition,I don't see them putting a lot
of R and D and engineering into,I mean, cutting units and that's

(38:35):
kind of our bread and butter.
You know, I mean, at the end ofthe day, that's, that's what
we're doing.
We're trying to mow grass.
Mm

Jerry Goman (38:43):
well, yeah.
And the thing is at this point,you know, the the the cutting
units group and the the greensmore and fairway group, there's,
there's three groups that areinvolved.
Cutting units are mostly foldedunder greens mowers.
But there is a, you know, thereis a group that does fairways as
well, but there are teams,complete teams that are involved

(39:05):
with all this stuff.
And.
You know, there's this constantwork on what can be improved,
what can be made better, youknow, something as simple as the
old grass shields used to begalvanil material, which would
rust and cause problems and thissort of thing.
Now it's stainless, you know, Imean, as, as, as, as small of an

(39:26):
item as that is.
It's still a major item longterm in the durability of the
cutting unit in that I rememberseeing cutting units, the older
cutting units where the grassshields were rusted through and
this sort of thing becausepeople didn't clean them,
whatever.
It's that's life.
That's the way people are.
There's different variations andhow people handle things.
The new grass shields, you don'thear that.

(39:47):
You don't see that, you know, soeven little things like that
make the difference long term,you know, stainless steel
bearings, stainless steel, this,all the castings are stainless
steel now on, on the height tocut adjusters, you know, the
groomers, all that sort ofthing, that long term durability
is a big.
Big issue for us and we'realways looking for a way to try

(40:10):
and do an improvement and andyou know We're not a hundred
percent, but we keep trying.

Trent Manning (40:17):
Yeah.
And I mean, everything that Idon't know, I'm, I'm a big Toro
fan and I own quite a bit, or Iwork on quite a bit of John
Deere and it's a fine product,you know, can it mow grass?
Yes.
But if, you know, if it was leftup to me, I would be buying a
Toro

Jerry Goman (40:35):
Yeah.
Yeah, I find, you know, I Iworked with John Deere equipment
and and they have some neatconcepts and some neat things
and and I I know a lot of thoseguys that designed that
equipment and a good group ofpeople.
But I think Oh When you get tothe bottom line I hope we do a
better job than they do.
Our, our adjustments are moreconvenient.

(40:57):
They're more stable.
The overall geometry is justcleaner and better just because
I think we have a longer historywith it.
And you know, we have people,you know, not, not unlike myself
that have been with cuttingunits for 30 years.
And, and so we understand howall that stuff works.

Trent Manning (41:14):
I think, I mean that has to make a huge
difference in, you know, havinga group with a long tenure
that's been in cutting units.
What I love about task trackeris they're constantly innovating
and listening to their users.
They've added dozens of updatesto make our job easier.
One new feature is the abilityto upload manuals to the

(41:37):
equipment.
All you have to do is scan theequipment.
QR code.
And you have the manual and allother information at the tip of
your fingers.
You can even create links tothose manuals and the work
orders.
And it goes directly to the pagethat you need.
Make your life a lot easier andcheck them out at AASB task.
tracker.com.

(41:58):
Let's get back to the episode.
Let me ask you another questionon, we won't get too far away
from cutting units.
How about bed knives?
So I know Toro has an extendedbed knife and I just found out
last week that you have a shortbed knife.
Yeah.

Jerry Goman (42:15):
Yes, sir.
Yes, we do.
Well, part of that wasspecifically, you know, the last
project that I worked on was thenew walk greens mowers.
And one of the things that wewanted to do, I know there was,
there was a time period where wewere offering different bed bars
for the greens mowers.
And my response to that was,It's just from the standpoint of

(42:41):
you're trying to identify thebed bars, you're, you know,
some, they're supposed to bepainted red, they're supposed to
be painted black.
And honestly, that whole conceptinitiated with the GR 1000.
Back in the late 80s, early 90s,there was a standard bed bar and

(43:01):
what they called a deeppenetration bed bar, which took
the bottom of the bed bar.
And moved it up.
So it wasn't a support structurein the grass.
Well, that particular machine,because of its length and its
weight and this sort of thing,it made a huge difference.
I mean, it would change theheight of the cut by at least

(43:22):
15, if not 20, 25 thousandths.
I mean, it was dramatic.
I mean, it was dangerous is whatit was.
And I think if you were, if youwere mowing at, you know, 140
and you put this deeppenetration bed bar on there.
It got yellow in a hurry.
I mean, it was just it was ugly.

(43:43):
And so, when the original flexcame out, the original flex was
actually set up aggressive as anaggressive, relatively
aggressive mower, and it wasactually did an excellent job
there.
But some people were concerned.
We had there was 1 customer thathad come back with feedback that

(44:05):
he'd had a rainy session for 3weeks and, and all of a sudden
his greens, he was showing somemarking on the greens.
And there was a group that washandling the walkers at that
time.
I was not, I was working on adifferent product.
They decided to go back to a,what we call the standard behind

(44:26):
center distance.
So they made it less aggressive.

Trent Manning (44:29):
Can you elaborate on what the standard behind
center distance is?

Jerry Goman (44:35):
Well, you know, the, the old statement how do I
want to say this?
They always used to talk about.
Hypha cut and behind centerdistances.
There's some relationships thereand that sort of thing.
I guess I can't give you a hard,fast number.
I would tell you, you couldcertainly measure it off of a
cutting unit if you wanted to.
But what we really try tocontrol is.

(44:59):
How far the reel will rotatebelow the bed knife into the
grass as it's trying to pull thegrass in.

Trent Manning (45:08):
Okay.

Jerry Goman (45:09):
So, if you look from the side of the cutting, if
you were to do a section, andyou looked at where the, you had
the unit sitting on a surfaceplate or on the grass or
whatever, and you'd see wherethe knife is, the knife is
behind center.
So that means that the reel isactually slightly lower than
where you're cutting the grass,as it swings through, as it goes

(45:31):
through that arc.
If that arc becomes too large,obviously the unit becomes too
aggressive.
If the unit is if that arc istoo small, the unit does not cut
well.

Trent Manning (45:44):
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (45:45):
And so what we found was that people were
playing with that to somedegree, and the thought process
was to give them specificcomponents, And that's where the
bed bars were supposed to givethem those different points
where if you had a conditionwhere it was giving you marking
because it appeared to be tooaggressive, you could go to this

(46:08):
different bed bar.
Well, the reality is, is it wasmy impression.
That doing the bed knife was acleaner fix than doing the bed
bar.
That way you could have anassembly up on the shelf with a
bed bar and a bed knife, youcould drop it out, drop it back
in.
You could have that change donein just virtually no time,

(46:29):
instead of trying to do a wholebed bar, et cetera, so forth.
And just, and, and the ability,you know, obviously to have the
extended knife, which wasactually a request from believe
it or not, the Swedish in In the90s, they were seeing issues up
there close to the Arctic Circlewhere the grass was not growing

(46:51):
well, that they needed a knifethat was, like, not aggressive
at all.
They needed a, a unit that wouldcut not aggressive, and of
course that was at the time withthe GR1000, so there was an
extended knife that wasrequested by them in order to
resolve that issue.

Trent Manning (47:08):
Okay.

Jerry Goman (47:09):
That, that particular knife was carried
along and that concept has beencarried along specifically in
walkers for years then.
So that extended knife.
And then we went in and we did ashorter knife then at this point
in those conditions where youwant to be quite aggressive.
Part of the design of the lastwalkerine's mower was to make

(47:33):
that a worldwide machine.
What we found was that thewalkers that we were, we were
offering such as the GR 1000 forthe fixed head Walker was not
very popular in the far East.
Because it was not aggressiveenough, it did not cut the way
they wanted, and they were justunhappy with the overall

(47:55):
machine.
It did not fit their, their mindset of what the machine should
be.

Trent Manning (48:02):
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (48:03):
So we went in and we did the design, and of course
we were looking at the GR1000 asgetting gated because it was a
heavy machine, it handled heavyit was obviously that particular
cutting unit was, When it wasdesigned, it was optimized
around a height of cut of 0.
156.
Obviously that height of cut isnot realistic anymore.

Trent Manning (48:24):
right, right.

Jerry Goman (48:24):
Especially for a walker.
When we did the Flex 21 in thelate 90s, we optimized that
around 100.
And so the new, the new walkersare optimized at a hundred or
even lower.
So, I mean, they were built sothat you could cut low, low, low
with them, but the issue was,and of course it was made.
So it was, it, it handledlighter.

(48:46):
It felt lighter and easier atthis sort of thing.
But there was still that concernfrom the far East.
That they wanted to be able tobe very aggressive.
And the reason for that is, istheir practices are slightly
different.
Greens for the most part arerelatively flat.
They are very hard.
And they use a kukui grass orsome other form of that, which

(49:09):
is a very abrasive, verydifficult grass to cut.
So they tend to run veryaggressive.
So behind center distance, thatthey run on a baroness in Japan,
Is like 400, 000.
It

Trent Manning (49:26):
Okay.
That's way back there.

Jerry Goman (49:28):
It is way back there.
So what you look at here in thewalkers right now and the
walkers are set up that with thethree different knives and
you've got the two drumpositions on the fixed Walker.
I don't know if you're familiarwith the new Walker and

Trent Manning (49:44):
No, I hadn't experienced the new walker.
So it has two drum positions.

Jerry Goman (49:50):
That's correct.
Yes.
So you can put, you can put thedrum in the forward position for
lower heights of cut.
And with a standard knife andthe standard drum position,
you're behind center distance atan eighth of an inch is
somewhere, it's in that range.
It's somewhere God, it's goingto be.

(50:10):
150, somewhere in that range.
I would, I, I don't remember.
Obviously, Trent,

Trent Manning (50:14):
Oh, no worries No worries.

Jerry Goman (50:16):
I'm not going to give you a hard number on that
anyway, as to what that is.
But it's, you know, it'ssomething you could measure.
But I do know that the one thatis set up that for these Asian
markets, you can move the drumin the opposite position, put a
short bed knife in there andyou're behind center distance is
375 to 400.

Trent Manning (50:37):
Wow.
Okay.

Jerry Goman (50:38):
you can, you can configure that machine and if
you put an extended knife onthere, the behind center
distance with the drum in oneposition is almost zero.
So you can go from zero to 400behind center distance on that
machine at the same height tocut.

Trent Manning (50:54):
Wow

Jerry Goman (50:55):
so it allows you to get any range of what you need
to do in order to get that grasscut at this point.
The other thing that the walkerdoes with that second drum
position is you can rotate tothe second drum position.
Raise your height to cut to 7eighths of an inch, put a short
knife on it, and it cuts veryeffectively.
Because your behind centerdistance now is back where it

(51:16):
should be, and you've liftedthat whole machine up.
So as you're cutting that wellabove a half an inch to 7
eighths of an inch veryeffectively.
Whereas with the other walkers,as you keep racking them back,
you can't move the rear drum,and you just keep moving that
upper height to cut.
You know, the unit's leaning wayback, and the knife goes
forward, and your behind centerdistance is Not very efficient.

(51:37):
And you have a tendency to flailat the grass rather than the
wood.
So,

Trent Manning (51:40):
hmm.
Yeah, I talked to a friend theother day and he was Trying to,
they were trying to motives atwhatever 800 or something with a
1000.
And, you know, it was notworking and I don't, I guess do
y'all sell a kit or something toyou?
I think he said something abouta clip kit.

Jerry Goman (51:59):
Well, the clip kid has a tendency, all the clip kit
does is throw, show slow thereel down.
And so it doesn't really changethat.
The behind center distance iswhere the real issue comes in,
in terms of how efficiently itcuts as well.
So, it will cut, but not very,not very well at those high
heights.
So,

Trent Manning (52:19):
So what do you call when the real dips below
the bed knife into the turf?
What do you call that?

Jerry Goman (52:30):
oh, I don't know if there's a, there's, there's a
real term for that.

Trent Manning (52:34):
Well, I've heard others call it dip, which kind
of makes sense, but I didn'tknow if there was an industry
term.

Jerry Goman (52:41):
no, there's no industry term.
I did a, I did a presentationyou know, I've done it for a few
people and I, and I demonstratethat that's a calculated number.
The fact is I've got aspreadsheet that you can plug
in, basically the behind centerdistance that you have.
The diameter of the reel and itwill automatically calculate

(53:02):
that distance that it goes belowthat point and and We really you
know, I guess you can call itwhatever you like, you know, but
there's no specific term for itSo,

Trent Manning (53:13):
All right.
Good enough.
I was just, just curious

Jerry Goman (53:16):
yep.
Yep.

Trent Manning (53:17):
was a something out there or not that I hadn't
heard about.
Can you got, how are you doingon time?
I

Jerry Goman (53:27):
don't even know what time it is.
I don't have a clock in front

Trent Manning (53:29):
don't, we've been going almost an hour.
So,

Jerry Goman (53:32):
okay.

Trent Manning (53:34):
but I do have a couple more questions, I think.
So the next thing is bed knifeattitude.
So this is something recentlythat I've been, yeah, looking at
a lot and it doesn't reallymatch up to what I learned in
the book that bed knife attitudeis.

Jerry Goman (53:56):
I'll tell you I'll tell you what attitude is.
Attitude is a misnomer.
It's it's not even a term thatin my mind should be used.
I don't care what the angle ofthe bed knife is.
It doesn't matter.
It makes absolutely nodifference to the performance.
It's the behind center distancethat makes the difference.

Trent Manning (54:17):
That's what, I mean, I'm, I'm with you and that
makes, it makes sense, but Idefinitely think a lot of people
have been taught the wrong wayover the years.

Jerry Goman (54:26):
Well, and, and the reason it was taught that way is
that it had some semblance offact in that when you wanted to
make a unit more aggressive andboth the rear roller and the
front roller were adjustable,right?
You would lower the rear roller,you would, you know, push the,

(54:47):
push the rear of the cuttingunit up and put the front of the
cutting unit down and you canmake the unit more aggressive.
And what that would do is itwould put the cutting unit at a
steeper angle.
And so people would call that anattitude, but, you know, I put
it in an angle.
It's, you know, and then it's,it's got an attitude at this
point.
Well, all they were doing inessence is they were swinging

(55:07):
that real forward, pulling thatcutoff point between where, or
the knife contacts, the realthey're pulling it back further.
So the behind center distancegot larger.
And so, and so the reality is,is that that unsupported real,
where it goes below that point,that cutoff point.
Got larger.
The reel went deeper into thegrass.

(55:29):
The deeper it goes into thegrass, the more it pulls up.
And if the grass is in goodshape, it can handle it.
If it's not in good shape, itdoes not handle it.
And so everyone got stuck onattitude because that was kind
of the general vernacular.
And because the bed knife andthe bed bar didn't work

(55:49):
together, now with the newcutting unit, the DPA, that
point stays the same.
Whether the reel is worn or not,so it doesn't change the
attitude of the cutting unit,even though the cutting unit is
leaning more and more becauseyou're adjusting it down because
the reel is getting smaller.
The fact of the matter is on aDPA cutting unit, when you start

(56:14):
with a brand new cutting unit,the angle of the bed bar to the
grass at, again, using 1 inchheight to cut,

Trent Manning (56:23):
Mm

Jerry Goman (56:24):
is about 7 degrees.
It's seven degrees.
The back is higher than thefront when that real is, excuse
me, nine degrees.
And when it's fully worn out,it's seven degrees.
It doesn't change because ofwhat we do, the way we change
it.
Now you could take a GR 1000 andthat angle would change from

(56:47):
like one or two degrees to sevenor eight degrees.
It would go the oppositedirection.
But the GR1000, as the reel gotsmaller, got much more
aggressive.
But the angle was actually goingthe wrong way.
And so, it, it, it's thatattitude or angle of the bed
bar, people have a tendency tomeasure that because it's easy

(57:10):
to measure.
it really doesn't mean anything.
It's that behind center distancethat's key.
Now, we actually built sometools for that.
If you were to take the old, theold Hythakut bed bars where they
had the adjusting screw inthere, if you take a piece of
angle iron, a thin piece ofangle iron that can reach up to

(57:32):
the real center line, and youbolt that on there.
Now, you put that up to therollers, slide it up through
that piece of, the leg of theangle iron up through the real
blades, And slide it back untilit contacts the face of the reel
shaft.

Trent Manning (57:48):
hmm.

Jerry Goman (57:50):
On the latest DPA cutting units, there are areas
of that reel shaft that aremachined.
And so, and so you touch thoseparticular areas.
And where that comes down, youmeasure that distance from that
angle iron to the front of yourknife.
And then you calculate theradius of the real shaft, and

(58:11):
you can, you know what yourbehind center distance is at
that point.

Trent Manning (58:15):
Gotcha.
So yeah, can you tell us whatthe rate or the diameter of the
shaft is?

Jerry Goman (58:21):
I don't remember that, Trent.
Honestly, I don't remember that.

Trent Manning (58:25):
No worries.
I was thinking, you know, Ithought that shaft was like inch
and three eighths, but where thedatums are, I think it's maybe
20, 000 smaller or somethinglike

Jerry Goman (58:37):
yeah, I don't remember what that is.
I know Mr.
Coffin would know that.
And you know, if you contactJeff, he could get through to
Mr.
Coffin and get you that number.

Trent Manning (58:49):
Yeah.
And, you know, I don't know ifthat's something they won't want
out in the, in the public ornot.

Jerry Goman (58:55):
Well, yeah, and, and I don't know, I don't know
if it's, I don't think that'snecessarily a, a, a, a specific
detail that's that secretive.
It just, it's a turn diameterthat is something that is put in
there specifically.
So, not only can you measure thebehind center distance
accurately, you can measure tomake sure that the reel isn't

(59:19):
cone shaped from that particulararea by simply dropping a, a
caliper.
You know, right through thereand measuring that and make sure
that you don't have a real, it'scone shaped.
I know some people like to usethe pie tape or whatever you
know, but that's anothermethodology that's there and it
was put in there specificallyfor that so people could go in
and do analysis on their own.

Trent Manning (59:39):
Okay.
So it wouldn't, I kind of assumemaybe it was for Foley since
they gauge off the shaft.

Jerry Goman (59:47):
well, I think there's part of that there.
But, you know, once you have thedatum there, there's all kinds
of things you can do with it,right?
And, and so going in with acaliper is a very quick way to
measure them and say, Hey, thisis what we've got and this is
where we're at, you know?
So it gives you some, some quicknumbers there.
And yeah, some people will useit to gauge off of when they go

(01:00:08):
to do a spin grind or whatever.
So the datums there, it's goodfor any information.
You know, I'm a firm believerthat, that every shop should
have a granite surface plate init.
And in order to, to go in andcheck the parallelism of the
reel to the rollers and, andanother methodology there,

(01:00:29):
checking the cone shape to thereel, all those things are, are
critical to me and, and agranite surface plates, a few
hundred dollars and, and itbeats the aluminum plates, or as
some people I've seen, they say,well, gee, there's a steel flat
on their grinder and they put iton that.
I have no idea what that is.
cheap granite surface plate isflat within tenths.

(01:00:52):
You know what I mean?
And it's just, it's such a, it'ssuch a slick way to measure
things then at that point.

Trent Manning (01:00:57):
I agree.
I, and so I'll tell you mystory.
I found, and it was a stare atpink granite and it's four by
three

Jerry Goman (01:01:07):
Yeah.

Trent Manning (01:01:08):
I found it on Facebook marketplace for 600
bucks.

Jerry Goman (01:01:12):
Isn't that

Trent Manning (01:01:13):
Yeah.
Six, you know, six inches thickweighs a thousand

Jerry Goman (01:01:16):
just, And it's just one of those things that once
you get it in the shop, you'reusing it all the time because
it's easy to measure off of andit's easy to, to gauge from and,
and you know, when you putsomething on there, you know,
between a, a granite, a chunk ofgranite, and it wouldn't have to
be that big.
Right.
I mean, you know, it's justgotta be longer than the widest

(01:01:37):
cutting unit you're working on.
And that and a piece of barstock that's ground, ground.
Right.
That you can slide under thereel up against the face of the
bed knife and you can checkparallelism with front rear
rollers right now.
I mean, it's with a sheet ofpaper, you know, or you can even
just look at it.
So

Trent Manning (01:01:53):
Right.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
So, What about, I know Torosells the an eccentric kit for
the rear roller.
What do you think that should bestandard?

Jerry Goman (01:02:05):
no, I've never seen the need for it.
Standard.
Every time I've ever put one ofthose cutting units on a surface
plate.
We, we always check it with asheet of paper, which is less
than 3000 I've never had one beable to slide under a roller
yet.
It's, it's just I, if, if thereare some out there that need it,

(01:02:26):
I'm surprised there, if they arevery few.
And, you know, there are somepeople who get wrapped up and
say, well, it's not zero.
Okay, I get that.
It's but.
You know, how round is round,you know, at what point do you
stop and, and you know, somepeople are getting into the

(01:02:46):
habit where they're turning therollers because the run out in
the roller is, is 10 and theywant it to be zero.
You know, that's all well andgood and I understand your
concerns, but the reality is, iswe are working with grass.
We're working with a surfacethat is not flat and the way

(01:03:10):
those particular dimensions areprojected out over length of the
circumference of the roller orany of those things.
You either the eye can never seeit.

Trent Manning (01:03:23):
Right.
No, I'm, I'm, I'm with youthere.
Yeah.
And I do think people get inthat too deep in that rabbit
hole sometimes on trying to makeeverything perfect to take it
out to a fairway or a grainthat's not perfect.

Jerry Goman (01:03:37):
Well, and the other thing is, you know, this is,
this always surprises peoplewhen you do the math, but, you
know, there's that old statementthat says that the, that the
clip should be equivalent to theheight of cut.
Well, you know, that's, youknow, That's not, I've never
found that to be true, but thatwas always the old numbers,

(01:03:58):
right?
And, and, if you run and justdraw a triangle, okay?
Let's say you have a cuttingunit that is set at an eighth of
an inch height to cut, and yourclip is an eighth of an inch.
So now you're going to have atriangle.
That is basically an eighth ofan inch on the bottom and an

(01:04:22):
eighth of an inch high in thecenter.
Draw a triangle.
So you draw a line straight downthe center of that.
Okay, so you end up with a righttriangle that is 60, 000 on one
side and an eighth of an inch onthe other.
Now, The bed knife pushes thegrass forward, the reel pulls

(01:04:43):
the grass rearward.
The shortest grass is going tobe right where the knife was on
the reel contact.
The longest grass is going to bethe hypotenuse of that triangle
where the knife pushed itforward or the reel blade pushed
it back.
Okay, so you end up with, youend up with a triangle that says

(01:05:03):
it's 125 at the shortest bladeof grass.
It moved 062, and the hypotenuseof that is 17 thousandths longer
than 125.

Trent Manning (01:05:16):
Okay.
Did you, did you just do thatmath on your head or on paper?

Jerry Goman (01:05:22):
I've done it on paper enough that I remember the
number, okay?

Trent Manning (01:05:26):
All right.

Jerry Goman (01:05:27):
But the reality is, is that grass is cut as a
scallop.
And between each cut is 17thousandths variation, okay?
So, and the only reason your eyedoesn't see that is because it's
a helix and it blends out allover, okay?
So your eye cannot see 17thousandths over that distance.

(01:05:50):
If you have a roller that has 20thousandths run out, that means
it's plus or minus 10.
Over their circumference of theroller, which had a two and a
half inch roller is what six orseven inches.
What's the possibility you seen20 thousands over seven inches

(01:06:11):
when you can't see 17 over oneinch.

Trent Manning (01:06:14):
Well, right.
Yeah, no, I mean, that's, that'sa great point.
And I'm so glad you said that.
And I hope anybody that'slistening really lets that soak
in.

Jerry Goman (01:06:25):
You know, the reality is, and I understand
that, you know, Obviously, youdon't want rollers that are all
around, you don't want reelsthat are all around, I get that.
And, and, and I'll be the firstto support that.
But, there's a reason that wegive you the numbers that we do.
Toro has gone through and spenta lot of years designing those

(01:06:46):
things, and if you're within ourprint specification, You're
going to get very effectiveperformance and, and to, to come
back and say, Oh, I just don'tthink that's good enough.
Well, maybe for you it's not,but I think you're going to
struggle to see where it's anyimprovement in the grass.
So

Trent Manning (01:07:06):
Right.
No, I'm, I'm, I'm with you.
Yeah.
You can throw dollars at penniesif you want to,

Jerry Goman (01:07:11):
that's the truth and, and, and, and I know some
people now, does that say thatwe have all the answers?
No, I, I wouldn't even, Iwouldn't even attempt to say
that,

Trent Manning (01:07:20):
Oh, well,

Jerry Goman (01:07:20):
we do,

Trent Manning (01:07:21):
Yeah.

Jerry Goman (01:07:22):
but we do have a lot of years in the grass and we
spend a lot of time with it.
And we you know, we are probablyas close as just about anybody
on getting things where theyneed to be.
Can there be improvements made?
Absolutely.
And, and some people may haveconditions that they've made
improvements by doing things.

(01:07:42):
And I'd go, cool, good for youwouldn't have been my first
response, but I'll be honestwith you, nine times out of ten,
when I go out to look at aquality of cut issue, the first
thing I do to, to diagnosewhat's going on is I put the
machine back to stock.

(01:08:03):
All the adjustments andeverything back to what we
recommend as it comes out of thebox.

Trent Manning (01:08:08):
Mm hmm.

Jerry Goman (01:08:09):
Now, when you go out and mow, you can look at
that grass, and because of theyears that I've had experience,
and, and anybody that's donethat can look at it and say,
okay, if I make this change, Iknow what it's going to do.
I get there and there's beenseven things done.
I don't know what any of thoseare going to do.
So I start at stock and boy, alot of times that's all it needs

(01:08:30):
is it goes back to stock and itlooks really good.
So,

Trent Manning (01:08:33):
One.
Yeah.
Have you ever seen where maybe acustomer makes four changes
because they were having aproblem instead of just one,

Jerry Goman (01:08:43):
oh yeah, that happens all the time.
Yeah.
Where people, the people, theysay, well, you know, let's do
this and this and this and thisand see what it does.
And, and you really don't knowwhat any of those are going to
do.
Whereas you have to kind ofapproach it.
One step at a time.
And, and I was at a particularcustomer that had some issues.

(01:09:04):
We put everything back to stock.
They had changed knives.
They changed this, they changedthat, they changed all kinds of
things.
And what we finally found outwas going out his his turf
conditions were a little bitsensitive and we went from a
Wiley roller to a full rollerwith everything else stocked and
it looked perfect, so it's justa matter sometimes of

(01:09:25):
understanding where you are.
So,

Trent Manning (01:09:26):
Yep.
No, that's that's really, reallygood stuff.
Can I ask you maybe some funquestions?

Jerry Goman (01:09:33):
okay, I guess.

Trent Manning (01:09:34):
So is it true that most brilliant engineers
use pencil and paper instead ofcomputers?

Jerry Goman (01:09:42):
Well, I, I would say there's a combination of
what gets done honestly notthat, not that I put myself into
that, that particular class, butI like to run things on pencil
and paper and then do it on thecomputer and see if the numbers
come out at least similar.

Trent Manning (01:10:03):
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, no, it makes totalsense.

Jerry Goman (01:10:06):
I don't like to just expect the computer to give
me an answer and just take thatanswer for granted that without
understanding the problem.
So I have a tendency to do somesignificant mathematics by hand
and then say, Hey, I should bein the ballpark.
There are some things, forinstance, You cannot do cleanly

(01:10:31):
on a piece of paper.
You know, I talked about doingthe, the natural frequency of
all the components.
You know, that took me weeks todo that.
Now you can do that on thecomputer.
You know what I mean?
But you should at least have anidea, but I look at it a lot of
times in terms of, of strengthof, of components.
Where I'll run a beamcalculation, strength of the

(01:10:53):
beam or whatever, where I'll puta simplified section in there,
where I make it like a rectangleor a circle or whatever, and run
a quick number and say, hey, I'mputting, This many pounds on the
end of that shaft, is it goingto bend, or is it not going to
bend, or is the stress too high,or is the bearing stress too
high, or whatever.

(01:11:16):
And I have those numbers in myhead, and then we go over and we
do the actual computer work, andwe run the FEA analysis, and the
FEA analysis Usually agrees withwhat I have and I go, yep, I
feel good about that.
Then, you know, I've got that inmy head

Trent Manning (01:11:31):
Right, right.
No, that, that makes sense.
Hmm.

Jerry Goman (01:11:35):
course, that's that's really prevalent more
prevalent.
I would say for people that aredoing more new product design if
you're doing more stuff whereyou're doing product support of
material that's out there.
Maybe less so of that isrequired because you're working
on a problem that you've got aknown set of parameters on as

(01:11:56):
opposed to extending thetechnology.
So there's, so for me to tellyou that, that the good
engineers use only pencils, I, Ican't say that.
I think the conditions are, youknow, it depends on the set of
circumstances that they're in.
And it depends on the, on theperson.
I'm old school.
You know, I've done this for alot of years.

(01:12:18):
And, you know, when I startedthe technology was we still, we
had just retired the slide rulesand we're using electronic
calculators and we the CADsystems were so expensive that
they were More people to runthem than there were available.
So they had to do it on atimeshare basis and and the

(01:12:40):
technology to transferinformation from one person to
another electronically was byfax machine.
So, You basically off of thatyou learn how to run dividers
and compasses and circletemplates and and sketches.
So that's kind of what I grew upwith.
So,

Trent Manning (01:13:01):
No.
And so one reason I asked thatquestion when I saw you at the
show and Phoenix and I asked aquestion, you pulled out your
notepad and your

Jerry Goman (01:13:10):
yeah, yeah,

Trent Manning (01:13:11):
So, and I loved it.
I mean, I think it's awesome.

Jerry Goman (01:13:14):
my notepad is still when, when the big one hits, you
know, when, when it's stillgoing to be functional at that
point.
So as long as I am functional,it is

Trent Manning (01:13:22):
I gotcha.
Yeah.
Well I have a really goodfriend.
He's, I don't know, midseventies I guess.
And he's the same way.
He has his notepad in his shirtpocket and a pencil no matter
where he goes or what he does.
As soon as he gets out of bedand puts his shirt on, that's
going in his pocket.
So, what was the other one?
Do you know who said to invent,you must need a good imagination

(01:13:46):
and a pile of junk.

Jerry Goman (01:13:48):
no, I'm not aware who made that statement.

Trent Manning (01:13:50):
I'm not either.
So that was one of the questionsI had though.
Somebody, somebody sent me.

Jerry Goman (01:13:56):
I do know that that what was his name?
God, I'm losing my mind herenow.
Invented the light bulb.

Trent Manning (01:14:04):
Edison?

Jerry Goman (01:14:05):
Yeah, he made the comment that that most people
miss opportunities because itlooks like hard work.
You know what I mean?
So it's just, so, there's some,there's some statements there
that he made were, which werekind of interesting.
So.

Trent Manning (01:14:21):
Well, you, you got the answer correct.
I just looked it up.
It's Thomas Edison

Jerry Goman (01:14:26):
Okay.

Trent Manning (01:14:26):
the one that said that.
So very good.
Very good.
Got it by default.
What about some rapid firequestions?
This is this is kind of the funpart.

Jerry Goman (01:14:40):
Okay.

Trent Manning (01:14:42):
What's your favorite movie?

Jerry Goman (01:14:43):
Oh, wow.
I'd supposed to kill amockingbird.

Trent Manning (01:14:46):
Ah, great.
Yeah.
What would be your last meal?

Jerry Goman (01:14:50):
Oh probably grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato
soups.

Trent Manning (01:14:53):
Oh man.
Yes.
I love it.
That's good.
What are you most proud of?

Jerry Goman (01:14:59):
Oh, wow.
Well, you know, obviously, youknow, that's a pretty all
encompassing question.
And I don't mean to dither, butyou know, you got your family
and your accomplishments overthe years.
I've got pushing 30 patents,which worked with a good group
of people, but I think probablythe most things that I'm, I'm

(01:15:21):
proud of is over all the yearsof working on cutting unit
suspensions and differentpeoples and different groups and
all this sort of thing is that Alot of people I worked with have
always said that I was the bestperson they ever worked with,

Trent Manning (01:15:34):
Oh, that is awesome.
Yeah.
How great is that?
And how rewarding is that tohear from your colleagues?
I would think that's prettygreat to hear.

Jerry Goman (01:15:43):
Well, yeah, it's you know, it's, it certainly
makes you pleased that, that youhit that point, and, and it's
not something that you weretrying to do, it just, it just
comes by virtue of, of the wayit is, so that, that was good.

Trent Manning (01:15:58):
No, that's awesome.
So out of 30 patents, do youhave a favorite?

Jerry Goman (01:16:04):
Oh, gosh.
I, I don't know.
There's you know, so many, noneof those patents come alone.
You know what I mean?

Trent Manning (01:16:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jerry Goman (01:16:12):
alone.
There's, there's a groupinvolved and you look back at
all the work that was donethrough the group, you know, all
the people that were involvedand all the people that brought
pieces to it.
And I was fortunate enough to bethere at the time and be party
to that and, and help when, whenI could.
And so those things were allgreat.

(01:16:33):
And I would say probably some ofthe most technical stuff that,
that people don't realize isthe, the Triflex suspension.
There's so many aspects to thatthat there's so much detail to
that in terms of how we push thecutting unit and the angles and
the lift and the, you know, the,the changes here and there.

(01:16:56):
And, and so maybe that's themost, most satisfying to some
degree, I guess, but just byvirtue of.
of the technical aspect of it.
I guess I, I, beyond that, Idon't know if I could say
there's a, there's a favorite onany of those.

Trent Manning (01:17:10):
Gotcha.
No, I mean that, yeah, it makestotally makes a lot of sense.
And the tri flex is trulyamazing.
And I remember helmet coming outto a local course and kind of
doing presentation on it, youknow, and inside, and then we
went outside and looked at itright after it'd come out and I
remember the geometry and howeverything.

(01:17:34):
Goes down to a V basically inthe center of the cutting unit
and I

Jerry Goman (01:17:38):
Yeah, there's all, you know, there's all kinds of
things that you do to try andnot to put an external force on
a cutting unit that's not, notrequired.
I mean, and it, you know, that,that affects it in the graphs.
And so you try to push close tothe CG of the cutting unit.
You're trying to allow thecutting unit to move freely.
You know, you lift on theoutside edge when you make a

(01:17:59):
turn so that it compensates forthe tendency to push the cutting
unit over as you're doing thatturn, there's so many details,
you know, the, the caster angleat seven degrees and all those
things that are added in therethat make that stuff work.
So it was one of those thingswhere we were kind of allowed to
do.
What we felt was the bestoptimization for that

(01:18:20):
suspension, for that usage.
And we went in and we kind ofdid what we, we felt was the
right thing.
And I think results kind of showthemselves so

Trent Manning (01:18:30):
Yeah, I've not heard anybody complain with Any
anything really on the on theTriflex?
I think it's a really great unitsolid unit Well, I think I've
taken up enough of your time andI really appreciate you talking
to us and going so in depth oncutting units.

(01:18:51):
We might've got in the weeds.
Some people might turn us off,but that's okay.
It really is good.
It was super interesting to meand other nerds in the cutting
unit world.
I think we'll really, reallyenjoy this.
So I can't thank you enough,Jerry.
I really appreciate you comingon.

Jerry Goman (01:19:10):
well, I appreciate the opportunity, Trent.
It's not, you know, I mean, it'snot one of those things where.
You know, now that I'm out ofthe industry, if you will, per
se, it's kind of like, you know,who wants to talk to that
codger?
You know what I mean?
So it was fun.
You know, there's a, there's alot of people that I owe my
success to both that arecurrently still at Toro or that

(01:19:32):
retired from Toro and, and Ican't minimize that because we
all build off of what comes infront of us.
So.

Trent Manning (01:19:39):
Very well said.
thank you so much for listeningto the Reel turf techs podcast.
I hope you learned somethingtoday.
Don't forget to subscribe.
If you have any topics you'dlike to discuss, or you'd like
to be a guest, find us onTwitter at Reel turf techs.