OnAire Episode 1 Transcript:

Hey, everybody. Thanks for watching the OnAire Podcast. This is our first episode. We’ve got a new studio, new lights, new cameras, new action, new signage, and we’re here today to educate you and provide just some general information and discussion around the topics of dust, combustible dust, fugitive dust, that dust that escapes your process and gets out into your facility and goes wherever it wants, and that’s what we’re all about and what we’re talking about here today. I’m Jordan with SonicAire and let’s get rolling. So today our guest is Taylor Andrews. Taylor, welcome to the podcast.

How’s it going?

Thanks for coming in.

Excited to be here. Made a long walk from upstairs.

That’s right. Alright. So, tell everybody about what you do here at SonicAire as the Director of Operations.

So, Director of Operations at SonicAire includes pretty much everything that happens between the time a fan is ordered and a fan leaves our building. So, under operations we have production, supply chain, and engineering. And so, what happens in those departments is engineering, they start with the sales guys and they work on getting layouts and new fans designed, prepped, certified, ready to get out the door. Supply chain, they get all the parts, pieces, and otherwise into our building, sent over to the production line where our guys build the fans and then we close it out, ship it out the door to everywhere but Antarctica.

That’s a broad span.

It’s a lot. We do our best. There’s a lot of times where there are problems, but I think that’s one of the cool things about operations is we’re a process driven part of the business. So, we get to make a lot of updates. We get to try new things, make it better, faster, safer, stronger, more efficient.

Love it. So, let’s talk about your journey here at SonicAire. So, you’ve been here how many years now?

It’ll be seven in June. So, we’re coming up quick.

Seven glorious years here. And so, where did you start when you came in the door and let’s talk about your journey and experience here.

Sure. So, in 2001, I came in as a mechanical engineer. So, I was doing fan design. I think when I started, we were just getting into the quiet fan. I think that was the first project that was kind of a big thing. I did some odds and ends leading up to that, but that was the first big project we tackled.

So, let’s talk about that for a minute. Let’s go into the quiet fan and what was involved in that and what, why a quiet fan and what’s behind that?

A quiet fan because our fans were loud and annoying. They had this really high pitch hum. There wasn’t a lot of what we distinguish between tonal noise and actual, what you would measure DBA noise.

But with the tonal noise, it was kind of this just overarching hum that would get in between your ears and just drive you insane. And it could, and we had a lot of customers that would reach out and say, you got to do something about this. You’re not doing anything for hearing protection, but this, this, this goes in between the little earbuds that we put in so that you can hear it at all times.

So, what we were really trying to do is eliminate that more than anything. But we also did a few other things at the same time. We had this big overhaul where we had to do a ton of testing to figure out first of all, what was causing the noise. And there were little slats that were inside of the fan and we eliminated those and changed up a few other things. We can’t give away all of the secret sauce, but we figured it out. And so, we eliminated that tonal noise. Um, and eventually even came up with a kit where we could retrofit them, but we also upgraded our gear motors, our controls. We rebranded during that time. So, it was a lot of change, but the impetus was really a lot of customers struggling with that annoying screaming that the fan would do.

And so that’s gone. Gone. So, it sounds more like white noise, right?

Like white noise. Um, or yeah, anything that you would play to put yourself to sleep at night. Yeah.

It could be dangerous cause some dangerous side effects while I sleep in the production area.

We try to, we try to, uh, make sure all of the employees out there facilities are nice and comfortable so they can do their jobs well. That’s right.

All right. So mechanical engineer, the 2020 sound project.

Yep. So, we, we did that. Um, and then we, we kind of had a lot of shakeups through COVID. Um, I got into engineering management and then we worked on a few different projects, hired an engineer, moved around some departments. We introduced services. We pulled the service department out of operations and gave that its own pathway because it needed it. Right. You were talking about, there’s already a lot in operations. We had to pull that out so it could do its own thing and be more successful. And it’s really taken off since we’ve split it up.

And um, after doing engineering management, moved into director of operations, so that we could really focus on these things. And we, in engineering, one of the things that we also work on is the certifications. And I think that was one of the big pushes why we needed somebody heading up engineering, but then also operations because the certifications require something going on in supply chain because we got to find the parts. We got to source them, get a good price on them, and then we got to be able to build it, too. So that’s kind of the neat bow around how we moved around.

So now we’re talking certifications and there’s been a history with SonicAire in certification. So, we started with an electrical certification when I came on 15 years ago and getting the fans just certified as an appliance. And then we saw a need for more certifications and that led us into class two types of certifications. So, can you talk a little bit about class two, class one, why, what the need for class two was and then, how did we make it so far without a certification for dust? Because it, it would seem like a fan for dust control would always have to be certified for dust. But you know, we evaded that let’s, let’s maybe unpack that a little bit.

Yeah. So, everything going on with the certifications, it’s a really interesting process. All of our equipment is certified with UL. UL is not the only certifying body, but they’re the big one here in the United States. They have a lot of authority and say in what goes on. And so, starting with the electrical, um, that really just says, Hey, this piece of, uh, metal that you’re hanging from the ceiling that has electrical wires coming out of it is safe to use. Right. So, we have an appliance certification and there is kind of a broad brush that’s put around that. And it’s really just looking at the construction, wires coming in, wires coming out, and how it gets power. And so there’s not a lot that has to do specifically with dust outside of that’s just our area. When you get into the hazardous locations is where things really start to amp up as far as the boundaries that they put on the fans or whatever the piece of equipment is. But in our case, the fans and then also, how they’re tested.

So, if you look at the class, the classifications of, um, combustible hazards, that’s a NFPA listing, it’s handled with NEC. And then you have, in our case, NFPA 652, which is the fundamentals of combustible dust, which has gone to 660 at this point. So when you get into hazardous locations, they break it down into three major categories and they’re distinguished by class. So, you have class one, class two and class three, class one being gases, class two being dust, which is our area. And then class three is fibers.

And class three, typically the easiest way that we can think about it is, it’s going to be grouped under class two. So, we don’t have anything specific listed for class three. And they also work kind of as a pyramid. If you’re ranked in one, you’re also covered in two and three, and then two, you’re also covered in three.

So when I started, actually one of my first weeks here, we had just gotten the class two division two certification. And so never having seen a fan before, I was trying to create work instructions and a process and a manual for this fan that’s going to go into, uh, what I was figuring out as like a highly combustible explosive area. Right. And I think it was wood that we were trying to get into. Yeah.

So that was where you have to figure out what’s below those things, right? So, you have divisions after the class. So, for us and dust, we’ve got, um, class two division one and division two. Division two separates itself from division one as sometimes if there’s an odd event going on, if there’s something maintenance wise or an unusual process, there can be a dust cloud in the area. And in class two division one, it says that there is usually, or in the process, it’s expected that there’s going to be a dust cloud.

So how did we get that far without it? Well, I think that goes into where you have the appliance stuff and then you have the hazardous location things. So, most of our customers that we’ve worked with in the past aren’t necessarily classified, right? They have dust, they’ve probably done a DHA and they understand what their risks are, and they’re just needing to get the dust out of their ceiling and then keep it out of there. That helps with their insurance or safety, keeps them doing what they’re good at and not having to worry about going to clean. But when you get into the hazardous location side of things, that’s where it’s more of a proactive risk management piece because that’s where you’re really going to get in trouble with your insurance or, you know, employees just being a little more worried because it’s not only present, but it’s also been solidified as a risk. So as far as how we got that far, I’m not really sure c`ause that was way before me as far as doing normal sales and whatnot, but it became a question from our customers because they said, “Hey, our AHJ or our fire marshal has come in and they’ve said, you can’t put that fan here because it’s not certified.” And so, I think that’s where we really had to dive into the standards and figure out one, what they were talking about, and then two, how can we solve this problem?

So it’s been an interesting journey to see the fans and see the adaptation of them from our customers, because it seems like a lot of times when you’re up in the ceiling and overhead spaces, you’re not close enough to the action to where the dust is being generated to actually be a considered part of the hazardous location environment, even if the stuff on the floor is. And so I think we were able to kind of slide under the radar for a while being non-classified equipment, but then, the more industries we’ve operated in, the more we’ve seen, like you said, that call for, “Hey, the fans are closer to the action and we actually need something that’s rated and certified for these hazardous areas.”

Yeah, and you also start working with a different process areas. Because in facilities you can have one area of the plant that is one classification rating, and then you move into another area and it’s a different one. And I think if you go total by the book, by the law kind of thing, it’s a radius, a distance from the equipment where you get into those things. And so, I think one of the things that we found out through the entire process is, North American manufacturers as a whole do more of a broad sweep approach where if we have that going on in this room, we’re going to classify the entire room, not just 15 feet away from it.

Lowers the liability and the risk. You just treat it all with the highest level of compliance. So, let’s talk about the journey, the process. So, we moved into div two and then div one, what was that like to go through that process with UL?

To say it was fun would be a lie.

So, this was almost, it was just shy of three years to get to that point. And it all started with, like we were talking about, like a call to action from, a bigger customer or bigger potential customer. They reached out, they said, “Hey, we’re on OSHA’s watch list, basically. And we’ve seen your equipment and we’ve seen it in similar applications for lower-rated environments, but we need class two, div one.” And we said, “Sign me up.” Right. That sounds like a big opportunity. I think one of our sales guys actually classified it as bazillions or gazillions, whatever it was, of opportunity.

So we started there, they had a contact at UL and what we were going to do was reach out to them and basically say, Hey, we’ve had this call to action because UL, even though they are kind of an authority in these things, they also want customers to be able to produce equipment. And so, they have to follow the standards and kind of hold us accountable to the standards, but they also want us to be able to push out equipment. And so, we had a call with them and the customer and basically said, “Hey, we’re going to swap out our motor. We’ve already got a class to div two certification. We’ll put a div one motor on it and we’ll be good to go. Let us know how much it’s going to be.” And they kind of laughed at us. And so we backed up and they said that they were going to have to do this design review and then, “Hey, here’s this whole new book of standards. You’re going to have to follow all of these things so that you can get a certification. And we said, “No, thanks.”

So, we went to another certifying body and reached out to them because we had done a training with them for one of our sales weeks. And what we found out from them was we were kind of locked into UL. They could do the certification. They didn’t have the means to do the motor testing right then. So what we had to do was go back to UL and say, “Alright, how’s, how’s this going to work?”

So, what we did was we submitted our class two div two fan. We put a different motor on it, and we sent it out and we said, “Let us know what we have to fix.” They have a fancy name for it., but basically it’s just an engineering design review where they take a look at the standards, write you up a big, long report and say, these are all the things you got to fix. They won’t tell you how to fix it, but they say you got to fix these things. So that took like six months. And it was way longer than we thought it was going to be. And we get the report back and it was very detailed. It seemed like it was pretty easy. There were some joint things that we had to fix. It zooms in focus each level up you go in the certifications. And so there were lots of joints. Any type of equipment that’s on the exterior of a product has to be rated for the environment. That’s one of the easiest things to recognize with class two div one areas is they all have a marking on it. And then they also mentioned that we would have to make a few other minor tweaks to things like gasketing, or we would have to do dust penetration testing because we were getting a new certification.

Then they had this little blanket statement that I think made everyone at our company pretty upset. It said, we did this design review. You didn’t pass, which we knew. And these are the standards you’re going to have to work out. But if we get to the end of the testing, and we find another standard that we need to implement, we’re going to do it. And so, you just have to keep going at that point. Incredibly frustrating.

Moving the goal first. Right. Yeah. And what’s funny is at the bottom of that, it also says, if you want us to look into these things, contact, da, da, da, da, da, da for a quote. And I’m like, well, I just paid you several thousand dollars and six months of my time to figure out what these things are. And you’re coming back and saying like, “Oh, pay us again and we’ll do more research on it.” Didn’t make any sense.

So that began a very tumultuous back and forth of, Hey, here we made these changes. And they’re like, well, it’s not good enough. Change it again. But the challenge with our equipment is, you can tell people what we do and you can show them the fan and even like on the little OnAire logo over here where we have the fan moving up and down. You can explain that, and you can show them a video, but they don’t get it until they see it. And so, trying to explain this to somebody who’s never seen our equipment, is only looking at standards and trying to explain to them, “Hey, we’re going to move this dust around.” It doesn’t really fly.

And make it even safer in the process.

Yeah. “We’re, we’re introducing a fan into a dusty environment and it’s going to be good. Trust me.” Yeah. So, we even had to go, it was kind of an uphill battle because I think at first before we even got the design review, they said they weren’t going to do it. And so we had to go back and forth, and we had to get somebody’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, and even call in some contacts we had at UL to say, “Hey, I’ve seen this equipment before. You need to work with them.” We worked with our electrical design review guy at UL. And then we also contacted someone who actually used to work for us that works there just to say like, “Hey, take a second glance, not trying to pull any favors, but just trying to explain what exactly we do. We offered to go to Chicago to the Northbrook location and take them to a facility, show them how the fan works, proving out the concept and everything. But they didn’t buy it. And eventually after many back and forths, we eventually got them to okay the project.

So, I mentioned all the little changes that we had to make. And then we got to the testing phase. So, this is, I don’t know, 18 months in, and we get to the testing phase. There’s a dust penetration test, and I was very concerned that they were going to start pulling apart our fan and saying like, “I have to put this in this big box. I’m going to spray dust at it, but I also need the fan to be on and blow around that dust.” Which is not how the fans operate, right? We prevent the accumulation. It’s not going to be in that environment. So, they didn’t want to test it. So, we’re 18 months into this project, several thousand dollars. And they’re like, we’re not going to do the test. And I think I came back from vacation. Um, and you called me on a Sunday night, and you were like, “Can you go to Chicago tomorrow and show them how to set this up and fix it?” Because I’d send them videos. We have, I mean, our YAWA series or whatever, we explained it. And I told them, “Do not tell me that you can’t test this in this chamber.” And that’s what they did. So, I flew out there, spent a day with them trying to explain to them how it gets set up, like why we need to do these things. And they basically neutered the fan.

They had to stop the oscillation. They had to stop the rotation. They had to turn off the fan blades. They had to do all of these things, which they’re saying is the worst-case environment. And I’m saying that’s a no case environment because the fan wouldn’t be a danger at that point because it’s completely inert. So, we got that figured out. We passed the dust penetration tests and then we get into gasketing and man, that is something I never thought, I mean, dust, first of all, not something I imagined myself working in, but then trying to figure out gaskets and what that means and what they do and how they fit into our equipment. But that was probably the most frustrating thing about this. We had to do what’s called an accelerated aging test. And what that does is basically says if your fan or your piece of equipment was in a facility for, I don’t know, 500, 5,000, 5 million years, and it was operational under these conditions, this is what your gaskets would be like. And at the end of that time, it still has to prevent ingress. which I get, but I don’t think the fan is going to last that long. So, it didn’t really make sense to me. So anyways, we start doing these dust penetration tests, and we failed like four of them in a row because, the first time, we were using our same gaskets and they stuck and they ripped off the second time, they didn’t have the right piece of equipment to pull it up. The standard allowed for a hundred pounds of force to pull it off. They only had a machine that would go to 65, a whole lot of frustrating stuff. And this was not a short test. This was three weeks.

And so it wasn’t that the dust was getting in the equipment, it was just they couldn’t get the covers off.

Couldn’t get the covers off, which seemed like a kind of a good thing. But they couldn’t allow it because the standard said they couldn’t, which I get. But we eventually got to the point where it was very frustrating for all of us because each one of these tests was very expensive and every time we took it, they would send us a cost update. And so, you know, I’m kind of sweating because I’ve been promising that we’re going to be done with this project for several quarters now. And it almost became a little bit of a joke, but we were running into so many roadblocks. And eventually what we ended up doing was taking measures into our own hands. And this is one of the things I’m really thankful for about Brad, our owner, the fan king, the CEO of SonicAire, which is his continuous drive for innovation and his common mantra of fail fast, fail cheap.

So, we got some gasket samples in. We met with our gasket supplier and figured out that two of the materials in the gasket and our powder coating were bonding together. And so, we figured out a solution and we threw it in a smoker to just try and figure out if it was going to work. And I think that was one of the more exciting days I’ve ever had here was you brought it in from the weekend. We increased the temperature to speed up the test. We got a full result, and it worked, and it did not tear apart. So that was a big win. We knew the dust wasn’t getting in, send it off, get it tested.

I mean, we sent probably four very angry letters about their testing procedure to get them to test it again. But anyways, they did it. We passed. And so, we’re like, all right, awesome. You’re going to send us a certification in a week.

And a week passed and they said, Hey, we have a new reviewer and I know you passed all the tests, which are the important part. But, you actually have to go back to the design phase and change up some of the designs because you pass the test, but you don’t pass the design, which was insane.

Yeah, quite frustrating.

Because basically we were outperforming the standard. We were passing the tests without having to meet all the design criteria. Which, you know, shout out to our engineering department.

But anyways, we had to do that. And I remember kind of hollering down the hallway saying like, “Hey, Mike, can you update this?” And the final update that we had to do to meet the standard was 0.002 millimeters. So that’s 2000th of a millimeter and millimeters are kind of hard to visualize anyways. And so, when you get that far, you know, it’s kind of silly, but you have to do that because one, we want our customers to be safe. And then two, UL has to meet the standard. But that’s how we did it. It was a three-year process. We went out and celebrated at lunch. Once we got it, we had a big deal. The production guys put one down the line. We all took a photo with it.

And then that was when we finally got to go back to our customer who was calling you right about every three or four weeks. Just saying like, “Hey, where’s this at?”

So where do you see it going? What’s next?

Gazillions of fans, I believe, is the correct answer. No, where it’s going…So, we’re continually having to work with the standard. We’ve already had questions about, “Oh, can you add group E or metals?” But there are a few things that we can do. Number one, we’re continuing to work with that customer and just trying to penetrate that market. Because this is really a big deal in the grain and feed industry because they have those conveying systems and there’s a lot of turnover points where there’s dumping or bins moving. And so that’s why the dust clouds are there.

So, we want to get an introduction there and become basically the standard operating procedure for these facilities. There’s so many of these grain facilities and Brad’s from Kansas, and he talks about all the time, like every summer you would hear about one blowing up. That’s not necessarily the case anymore, but we do want to provide them with a piece of equipment. So from there, I would say after that, we’ve also already started talking to them about a few design changes that we can make to get some more difficult places to reach. They want some kind of fancy fan that goes into a very tight knit corner of their facility. But we were like, let’s pump the brakes on that. Let’s buy some of these normal ones that we spent so much time on first.

And then, I mean, it’s just a continued rollout for there. Our biggest challenge I think is customer education because, like I was mentioning earlier, it doesn’t really make sense. It’s kind of counterintuitive, the equipment. we’re We’re gonna blow a lot of air through this fan, but we’re going to create a curtain so that we’re going to air barrier, so that the dust can’t get into these hard to reach areas. So, also, we’re working through controls with them, and how do we get these things from point A to point B? Because their facilities can be incredibly long in one direction, and not necessarily as wide. And so like, okay, so if we can control it, how can we convey it at that point? So, there’s a lot of opportunity to move in that same space, and not just be, you know, the dust control fan in the ceiling.

Yeah, I think education and adaptation are going to be the keys there because we’re talking about industries that have been doing the same thing the same way for hundreds of years. And so, to change that mindset of, “Hey, there’s a new technology and maybe a better way to do this” is going to be a hurdle.

Right. Yeah. One of our sales team mentioned during their presentation that, uh, the grain industry was incredibly slow to even introduce a lawnmower or a John Deere tractor. They were okay with using a plow for 70 plus years to adopt the technology. So, somebody has to be the pioneer. We were that in the space. And that’s why we had such a struggle to get through the certification process. But then also, now that we’ve got it, it’s still, we’re pioneering now with our customers. They all have told us they have the problem, but nobody is sure about it yet.

Hey, thanks for all you do. Thanks for what you’re doing for the industry in keeping people safe out there in the workplace. It really has a big impact and a lot of impact to come in those industries.

Oh yeah. It’s been a fun process, not all the UL stuff, but a fun process nonetheless. Yeah.

Hey, thanks for watching. I hope this has given you some good information and some background details in the inside story on class two division one fans here at SonicAire. So, if you enjoyed what we’re doing here, like, and subscribe wherever you’re watching us. We’ll see you next time on the OnAire podcast.