TE-CO Workholding Factory Tour, Union, Ohio
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- While at IMTS we stopped by the Te-Co workholding booth and spent some time looking over all of the products they offer. While visiting with them they invited us by their shop in Union, Ohio to visit the shop and see how many of their products are manufactured. Since that was on our way home from Michigan we took them up on that opportunity. What a great place to see! Good group of folks there at Te-Co!
www.te-co.com/
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Omg have you outgrown the new shop already!?
"Stuff expands to fill the available space." It's like a rule or something!
It's really great to see tools that's still made here in the USA
Your videos make me proud to be an American. Thank you.
Thank you for highlighting a few of our businesses here in the Dayton area on your channel. TE-CO and Gerstner. Great to see people still using there hands to make great American made products. To much has left this area to go over seas. Great to see TE-CO expand from their very small shop in Union to their new facility and be doing so well.
That was a cool tour.
In my line of work, I've had the opportunity to tour a few high end machine shops. Two that stand out are one that has the capability of machining cannon bores up to 30' long with an end to end deviation of 5 thou and a 5' deviation of less than half a thou with a bore ranging from 20 thou up to 32 inches. They also had a full range of manual machines, wire and electrode EDM, and conventional 4,5, and 7 axis CNC machines. Last I saw, they just installed one and there assembling a second 12 axis machine. These were HUGE. They could hold material up to a full 30' bar, 24" in diameter. The cutting head had so many points of movement, it was nuts. Each axis had a lock on it if it was not moving, which removed any backlash and vibration/movement from that axis. These were bought to chew through complex shaped p550 and Inconel. Oh, and their QC department was just amazing. You had the normal stations where they measure critical dimensions as per the drawing, but they also had a couple different probe arms. One was autonomous, so the inspector would mount the part in the machine, hit go, and the probe would come in and measure every hole, face, bore, chamfer, slot, ect.. As needed to get into different geometries, the machine would change probes and recalibrate itself. It was amazing to watch. It did no less than 5 probe changes to measure a tapered trapezoidal thread with sealing surfaces both inside and outside the thread. They also had a manual version so the inspectors could hit the necessary dimensions, faces, and holes. The computer would then print out the exact measurements as probed as well as create a 3D model to send to the customer.
The second shop is a premiere high performance technical composites company. They specialize in oil well drilling equipment, but can do just about anything. Their machine shop was a very nice selection of manual and CNC equipment in their standard shop. Nothing huge, but a very large number of machines. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 machines. The really cool part was the equipment in the composite shop. They use a proprietary blend of fiber and custom resin. I'm still under an NDA with them on exactly how they do what they do, but think 20 axis winding CNC machines. It's wild to watch.
"You always have enough work holding and clamps." - Said No One, Ever.
What a fascinating look behind the little bits and bobs some of us use everyday!
Cheers, Adam!
Adam, the reason why they do not do the entire process for the T-nuts on the Flex is due to quality control of that product. Yes, they can drill and tap every hole on the Flex, but then they cannot gang cut the material on the band saw or guarantee that each hole is center of the T-nut. A little loss from a bunch of milled blanks is more acceptable than the time wasted on an uneven cut on drilled and tapped material. You also have to consider that the Flex only has one spindle compared to a 4 position drill, tap and chamfer machine that can do all three and allow the operator to load/unload a new blank.
Big respect to any man who doesn’t let his “experience” stop him from learning new and different ways of the trades.
Adam, from that opening angle you look like a dang factory boss! Cinematically, it's an interesting shot but it also shows off what a complete and modern shop you're running. You should be proud of yourself all around.
Amazing shot at 30:40. Adam has indicated the new vice perfectly and it was manufactured to the tolerances claimed. Wonderful.
Nice shop tour visit to Te-Co... And a special thanks to Abby for helping to video the tour.... Your a lucky man.... Adam Booth!!!
Cool! I did some coating work for Te-Co, when I worked at a local plating shop. Believe it was black oxide, maybe some anodizing.
Awesome trip Adam, always interesting so see manufacturing facilities and processes.
Thanks for sharing.
Love seeing product manufacturing and machining facilities. Thank you.
I'm kinda amazed they make everything. That has pros but also many cons. Also did not expect all of the manual labor which could easily be automated at those volumes. Interesting!
Very educationl video.I hope they know what they are doing.Thank you Adam and ( Abby) for your effort and to TE-CO for let us see what they are doing.Nice gifts.Congratulations.
I'm very Familiar with Union, Ohio I know where this place is It's on Main st rt 48 (Well technically main street ends somewhere inside Union proper but easier to say main than miami). It always gives a good feeling to see things that are made in my area of the world. The Dayton area doesn't get as much love as I think it should.
I really enjoy your videos Adam. They are calm and quiet with a focus on the essentials. The visit to TE-CO did not miss any photo equipment because you showed us the factory, the people and some very nice parts.
Your new vise is a work of art.
Agreed. I thought it was very interesting.
Have always been so impressed on how durable the rolled threads are on there products using them day in and out way above standard torque values and still look like the day you bought them a true testimony there quality and consistency
Rolling forces the grain of the metal in and out of the threads. Using a die or single-pointing cuts through the grain, weakening it.
My dad used to live in Englewood before he passed away and you're not going to believe this but I also used to deliver steel there as well, but on a rare occasion
How cool 😎 to see how the tools we use that are made.
Excellent video Adam and Abby, I love seeing how stuff is made. "How It's Made" TV show is my favorite.😄
Right down the street for me. My dad worked there back in the late 90s. Great American company!
Gooood evening from central Florida! Hope everyone has a great night!
You got that one dialed in dead nuts. Great 👍 job 👌 Ken NC
Nice to see you in my home state of Ohio.
Also how ever they are doing their process is fine by me because they are keeping Americans employed!
Having worked on an assembly line, and also done "station" work, it would have been fascinating to see this in person.
I really enjoyed the tour. I respect everyone who does any job. It takes a lot of fortitude to do this everyday! America at work! Blessings to all! Election day 2022.
Great video. Awesome machinery. Nice work holding gifts. Thank you for sharing.
I've run into TE-CO through the years and was always impressed.
Very good visit to the factory, thanks for sharing,,greetings!!
The drilling is most likely done on a much cheaper machine to do less critical processes instead of tying up an expensive milling machine to drill and tap holes. Same reason you wouldn't use an expensive five axis machine to do simple three axis work. Very cool tour of the TE-CO facility. I have a cheap set but would love to have a TE-CO. Maybe some day. Thanks very much for sharing.
On both this tour and the Reelcraft tour, I'm astonished how much work is being done by hand. I would have expected much more automated part loading, at least. And isn't that FlexCNC cutting those T-slot profiles awfully slowly for production work? Yes, Reelcraft and Te-Co both have better quality than their Chinese knock-offs, but I'm beginning to think some of the price difference may be due to plain inefficiency.
Both of these places mentioned are highly inefficient. I worked for one of the worlds largest Auto manufacturing plants for 15+ years and efficiency to ensure safety and quality was top priority. One example where they could save a ton of time with little to no investment and ensure quality and proper quantity to the customer is the spot where they load the finished parts into the boxes for shipment. Create a jig at each station where the worker literally just loads the jig full of the proper quantity of parts. They don't have to count. They don't have to pick individually. They literally just fill the jig that has cut-outs for the parts. Once its full, pull the tray and slide it into the box. It would be a much quicker and more reliable process.
Love the factory tours Adam. Boy, I wouldn't want those jobs of hand feeding parts into a machine all day long, or even for a few minutes.
I'd get confused and drop them on the floor fairly frequently. There is something to be said for mindless tasks. They keep you from worrying about this and that.
T-Nuts milled on the long mill would require indexing and to length cutting pretty accurately. Cutting on that machine would be slow and require a right angle head for the slitting saw. Nightmare to keep going and drilling and tapping would be the same because of workholding issues. Gang sawing the blanks makes more sense. Saws can be very repeatable. Hydra Mech saws are dead accurate for indexing. They really need to add the "Made in America" to their packaging and logos. Definitely deserved a good long visit. :D
I was just thinking how soul destroying it must be to hand feed the thread rolling machine. You are a blessed man Adam , Abbey is also excited by machinery and wants to visit all these special places with you.
I was thinking that the job will be done by a robot soon. Surprised it is still a manual process.
I goes without saying, but there are worse things that a person could be doing. Personally, desk work is the most soul crushing I can think of. Not so much like working on CAD or editing a video, but rather just raw input of data into a spread sheet.
nowhere near as mind-numbing as working in a call centre or big-box retailer
The craving on the ways of that thread rolling machine looks amazing. Lots of work done just to that area.
Thanks for the video.
That is a nice vise, did not know about these. Will have to get one for my next machine.
Thank's Adam & Abby for the Te-Co tour, very interesting. Big score on the vise and work holding kit. Sure sounds like a Great American Company ! ! !
Wow, that's a hell of a gift that vice. Sweet!
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Man, I'm twitching seeing all the shavings that need to be cleaned off that Flex CNC machine.
Ocd kicking in?
Those grinders were looking pretty rough too..
@@demonknight7965 You know it!
Adam vacation time is over! When are we going to see you start using all that equipment you got in that new shop.
It all looks great but we need to see it in action!!!
He literally posted a cnc vid 3 days ago?
@@JohnWCH No doubt. And no comment to tell Adam he appreciated it. Typical
THANKS ADAM , I LIVE RIGHT DOWN THE ROAD FROM THEM, NEVER BUT IT TOGATHER
I've gone deaf now.
Love your factory tours! Not to knock plastic clamp organizers - they are adequate for my smaller sets. Once I got into 1/2" & 5/8" sets, I really, really love the metal versions. Curious to see Te Co's version of vise chip cover installed. Please show the steps involved, briefly, in one of your upcoming videos. Thanks for all you do Professor Booth!
I bet that hex broacher grunts...
It's cool to see how the stuff we're so familiar w/ is made & how the production machines are automated.
I would have liked to see the inner workings of the thread roller.
Guess you'll have make another trip to Te-Co for a 'proper' tour.
Thanks, Adam
Great American made! way to go Tico!
Very kool video. I worked for a electrical component shop in the summer time school brake. I can remember the cadence of working with a machines for a shift. Thanks for sharing.
Adam, this video didn’t satisfy my specific video needs, I need you to only post videos that I like even though I contribute absolutely nothing whatsoever except trash RUclips comments. 👶🏻
For real though, I really enjoy your factory videos.
I need hold down fixturing for my mill. I had searched all over the net and all i found was chinesium. I dont want chinesium in my shop if I can help it. I found a set on ebay that was supposedly in great condition and when it showed up it was no where near in any good condition. I will for sure buy a hold down set from Te Co for my mill and keep them bookmarked for the future when I need other hold down stuff.
You should plan on another trip to the factory it would make good content i would love to see the other products being made.
Most bolts are threaded and "hexed" in the same way. (Bolt-making was my family's business.)
How great to have products made in my state. Glad I seen your video. I use Te-Co in my little Mom n Pop fab shop.....Fabit in Brighton Twp Ohio.
Thanks for sharing
Hold the train ! That is one nice 6" vise, love the dark blue color too and as you showed, it's on the money flat and plumb. Sweet hold down station too...better in metal and painted ! Like the good old days. Have much fun with those gifts Adam. Very sweet.
Love your videos and the tribute to your dad and your pop at the end
Great to see quality products made in the USA and still using the same old machines yes they could get robotics and new machines but that would take millions of dollars and 12 months plus to implement and you will still need just as many people to keep the new machines running not to mention the high cost of maintaining that stuff why when the old machines work perfectly don't break down much and if they do it's easier faster and cheaper to repair I think they are doing a great job with good solid machine's thanks again Adam for showing us this great company and the great group of people who work there
Check out a Tesla factory.
Nice to see some Finnish clamps and fixtures! Our machine shop also uses those OK-VISE clamps seen at 19:53
That Te-Co stuff looks hyper attractive!
can't believe still done by hand
I think it's awsome they are keeping people employed instead of trading them out for machines.
@@eric63377 not against keeping employed just better faster ways of doing same .
@@davidellenbaum1229 I'm just curious what you would have them doing if you were their boss and implemented your 'better and faster' ways?
@@musicbro8225 easy automation. Key to automation is quality checks that man power the human touch . Eye ,feel and knowledgeable professional machine operators . Just look at Adam he installed new machines all computer control but the machines are idiots without human interpretation
@@davidellenbaum1229 I see the faster part, maybe, but to me that path will lead to cost cutting by using cheaper materials and looser tolerances. No more pride in the product, just glee about the numbers making the mind numbing bells ring at the analytics department.
By having a human doing the work, the quality control is already getting done. If people would stop pitying these workers and telling them they are doing mind numbing work, they would realize that these are skilled workers doing a top quality job that makes them proud and happy and making the company proud and happy and, yep, making the consumer proud and happy. Where is the problem???
Fun fact: I'm an engineer at a contract manufacturer in Cincinnati and I have one of the metal Te-Co tool organizers on my desk to hold my pens and calipers and tapes and whatnot, I had the pleasure of being project manager on getting those made for Te-Co and had some samples at my desk ibwas able to repurpose, great multipurpose tool haha
Superb video. Thanks Abom! Love it!
Can never have enough hold downs.
Old-school American manufacturing. I want to be the metrology guy walking around in my white coat, screaming at the workers for their Scheisse Werke, and playing air hockey on my granite table.
Awesome vid Adam really cool 👊👊
More of these behind the scenes of manufacturing. I had electronic equipment at General Dynamics when they were making F 16s. I would schedule lunch there so I could watch the large CNC machines. They would not let me film. Carswell AFB would not let me film in the strategic air command operations room. The base shared the runway with General Dynamics.
Looks like the kinda place I worked in 35 years ago, which was also my very first full time job. Loved it there. Worked there 17 years.
The threading machine reminds of a shaper in action.
Time to get back to work.
The reason they're not doing the whole cycle on the CNC mill is it's probably the bottleneck in the production process and not the drilling/threading in the other machine. Increasing efficiency outside of the bottleneck makes the process as a whole less efficient. Getting the cycle done in the CNC machine as soon as they can so they can load it up again and run it again makes more parts, even if it's slower to load up the parts in another machine. There's a cool book you can read about this stuff called The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt.
I really like your channel. BUT when you do CNC work could you explain what your doing on the DRO screen. It would help us other newbies. Thankyou.
Adam sorry to say it but that threading machine has you beat hands down.😅🤣😂
Thanks for the tour
Very interesting equipment. Definitely on my wish list.
Looks like a lot of fun to make all of those parts yourself (if you have too much time on your hands). Really hard to make them to their quality, though :)
Darn, didn't know you were in GH. Glad you enjoyed the little slice of Heaven on the Big Lake.
These factory tours are really cool! I've never heard of rolling threads before! Looks much faster if you know the exact diameter, thread pitch, and length. I wish you got better video on how they work so you could explain how they're able to get good accuracy. Are they done progressively? Is that what the machine was after the one with you talking? Or is that built in to how they roll them where it pinches closer until the threads are full depth? It's awesome that they sent you home with a brand new vise and hold down kit! That's worth a lot of money and you've been needing stuff like that for the new shop! I was wondering if maybe you could get a factory tour with maybe Precision Matthews for their mills and lathes or maybe your new buddies at milltronics for their CNC stuff. It'd be cool to see how precision machines are made to make the things to make precision machines 😄 shapers would be cool too but I guess they don't make them anymore, but maybe you can see another museum type place again that shows how the insides work and how they're made. It's all really fascinating to me and I wish I had money for even a mini mill or lathe for hobby stuff. Great videos! Even on a smartphone 😂
Right down the road from me!
It's neat to see how this stuff is made, but I do feel bad for a lot of these workers. I can't even imagine spending 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, just dropping a steel rod into a hole over and over.
Especially when so much of it can be automated too
Seems like the industrial engineering dept needs to up their game.
Don’t be sad. They have a job in American manufacturing. I’m sure they rotate around to different stations. I’ve worked around people running production like this and they are proud of the quality and quantity of product.
Well we don't know are set up and operator..and trouble shoot..I do all set up runs reapair make gind tooling...be surprised today's people can't handle well as you say and see simple things
@@vanguard6937 A lot of stuff can be automated in America, but companies don't want to invest in automation because it's just cheaper to hire low wage. Our agriculture industry is a great example... instead of expensive harvesting methods, just lobby you need more H2-A visa workers...
Interesting to see that they are machining the T-nut profile on a FlexCNC. When John Saunders toured TE-CO four years ago, they were still machining them Abom-style, on a shaper.
Correction: Saunders calls it a "shaper," but I think it's actually a "planer."
30 Waterbury thread roller and what looked like maybe a Saspi 40? I couldn't see any markings in the casting on the first one. Also, I'm surprised they mill and then trim the flange nuts instead of running nut formers and doing a shave op to do the undercut. Single station trimmers are a rare find nowadays. Just my two cents as a guy that works in fastener manufacturing, also in Ohio. lol
Ayyy that's awesome, I live in a town called Sawyer, Michigan it's around 30 miles from Grand Rapids and all that 🤙🏽😉
Definitely if I have a need will go with te-co equip.
I don’t know why but I just love the sound of that 100T press thumping away in the background.
Relationship is everything.
Great tour thanks
very nice stuff
Very cool, I got a feeling Adam is going to mass produce something or one of his designs at his new shop.
Couple of comments: 1) how do they get the shinny black finish on the parts. It would have been cool to see how that's done. 2) I could never work a mind numbing job like you showed in that factory loading the machines. 20 minutes of that and I'd blow my brains out. This sort of reminds me of Channellock, which has a very old and manual factory in Meadville, PA with Knipex which is very automated in Germany. I asked my German cousin why Knipex was so highly automated (he sells automated machines) and he said no German would work that boring of a job if it wasn't.
Hopefully that chip shield works better than Kurts, those things end up getting so bent up that they become a problem. Ended up taking them off all my vices and cleaning on a more regular schedule. And thanks for another great video, love the shop tours
This is really great video under the circumstances.
What circumstances?
@@caseysmith1718 Probably the ones Adam talked about, not expecting to spend that much time inside TE-CO and not bringing their normal recording gear and just using their phones.
Great content
I'm surprised that they haven't automated dang near all of the machines. If they have someone that knows project management and a bit of mechanical engineering, there are a few methods to calculate the efficiency of your shop and there are methods to calculate the the best setup for your product manufacturing.
My opinion.Thank you.
Sleeping Bear Dunes……we used to go up there when I was a kid!…..you were a little late for the cherries……too bad!
New learn to me thanks
See I knew there were machines. The guy at Home Depot tried to tell me washers were hand turned in the backroom which explained why they were soooo expensive.
LOL Speaking of... I had to bolt two 2x4's side by side. I used fender washers (from HD) to help distribute the load and as I tightened the bolts I noticed the washers were caving in. They were softer than the wood.
@@dkupy100 Chineseium.
I'm surprised they don't have a bespoke feed-through milling machine to make the t-slot nut blank bars. being just one long continuous cut on 2 sides...2+ spindles and a feed system could have a bar feeder and just keep choochin.
John Saunders did a full tour there and if I remember correctly they were using a planer to do the t-nut blanks, I'd guess doing both sides at once.
The issue with two spindles doing both cuts at the same time is one side would be climb milling and the other conventional milling.
@@robertlees2065 Perhaps if one spindle spun clockwise and the other anti-clockwise, they could both go conventional, but with machines of that heft they could most likely handle climb milling especially as the cutting forces would largely cancel each other
I'm very familiar with all those parts. If i had a nickel for every time I setup and tore down a project i'd be rich. haha!! JKJK
Very interesting. I've never seen rolled threads before. I wonder how they compare in strength to threads cut with a die.
Rolled threads are considerably stronger than a cut thread.
The Flex is probably set up for single head only. So multiple operations are more time consuming. A second gantry with drill and tap capacity could follow, were it available. Eventual parting off/sawing the individual parts from the long piece can be done in several ways but every one has to allow for thickness of cut so that the finished part ends up being the right size.
As TE-CO already have other (paid for) machines set up for those tasks along with tooling, rolling all the operations may not make financial sense.
If the Flex contributes to more than one product, then tying it up to one can impair production of other products.
Were the old machines not available, then building out the Flex may be viable. Depending on product mix and investment in CNC programming.
Tooling will always be more expensive than for traditional machines.
John Saunders toured this same shop four years ago. At that time, they were doing the same operation on a planer with a long table. Looks like they just swapped out the planer for a CNC to do exactly the same operation, without reworking the process to consolidate other operations which the CNC can do and the planer could not.
Nice!! 🙂
👍👍👍👍👌 nice workshop..