EPISODE 11 - JIM RORICK

Welcome to the Impulse Spotlight where we meet with product development professionals and shine a light on the products they are most proud of.

In this episode we speak with the Founder of WJ Titan, an ISO17025 accredited inspection lab focused strictly on the inspection needs within manufacturing. He was born and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana and graduated from the then called, IPFW in Fort Wayne with a Marketing degree. When he's not taking micron level measurements he enjoys golfing and spending time with his wife Emily and their 3 children.

Jim Rorick began his career in the calibration and inspection industry with little prior knowledge but quickly realized it was the perfect fit for his skills and passion. After gaining professional experience and navigating a couple of acquisitions, he and a partner decided to take the leap and started WJ Titan has become a trusted name, helping manufacturers across various industries ensure their parts and specialty gauges are correctly made.

In today's discussion we discuss the multitude of tools in Jim's inspection lab used to take highly accurate and detailed measurements. We talk about communicating with clients, understanding their requirements and finding a healthy balance between working fast and performing good, precise work. We learn how each part comes with its own unique challenges and get a strong understanding of how a part moves through the quality assurance process. Join us as we develop a new understanding of an often overlooked process and gain some sympathy for the teams of people working hard to help us hit our deadlines.

Show Notes:

Click here to learn more about WJ Titan.

Podcast Transcript:

Hey, Jim, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me, Troy. I appreciate it.

Yeah, so I started impulse a little over 25 years ago, kind of saw the writing on the wall that the company I was working for that had all passes the product development under 1 roof, I saw it riding on the wall. They were not going to be around much longer, so I started impulse and, you know, we help people design products. How did you get your company started?

Jeez, so it is kind of a weird long story. It is kind of accidentally getting in the industry. So 20 years ago, I was in just like random sales positions, like copier sales , things like that did not really think it was for me. And so I was at a crossroads and I stumbled upon a couple guys who owned a calibration inspection lab and they needed a sales guy, and I went and worked for them, and I had no industry knowledge at all about calibration or part inspection or any of that kind of stuff. So, yeah, 20 years ago started there working for them and through some acquisitions and other companies getting bought and buying like they sold their company, got under a big company, was part of starting another smaller company, another inspection lab, it got bought by a big, big company also. And then through all of that, I have always just kind of felt a need to to not really work for someone else. I kind of have. My wife would tell you that I do not like listening to people and I do not like being told what to do, so I thought I had better ideas. And so it is been like for w j Titan, we started it. About 8 years ago, me a business partner, 1 of the brothers from that original company, we kind of came back together and said, there is still a need for this. And so, yeah, about 8 years ago we started W. J. Titan and here we are.

Cool. Cool. And what services does w j Titan provide?

Yeah, sure. So we are a is so 1,725 accredited inspection lab. So we help customers with really any kind of part inspection. So people send us medical implants or automotive parts or engine parts for tanks or just a whole array of different types of parts, and then we tell them dimensionally whether or not they are good or bad and we tell customers a lot that we do not care if they are good or bad, and you do not want me to. So we are we are they will come to us for like as an independent 3rd party. So maybe company A made parts for company B. A. Company B says they are no good and company A says they are good, they will send them to us as a just an independent expert and then whatever we tell them kind of goes or the majority of our customers have a lab like ours in house and and they are just so busy like it is it is hard to find people who are really good at this. So, um, maybe they do not have the bandwidth to do it themselves so they will contact us and we will help them get parts inspected faster, either PPP parts usually or fal parts first articles , things like that, so that they can ship parts.

Interesting is do you literally that is what you do you like they send you parts, you measure parts and say they are within spec or out of spec, are there other ancillary services that you guys offer as well?

Yeah. So that is the core of what we do. We have we have a 3D lab that we do very small volume of 3D printing. We have done a couple prototype projects for customers that we already did other work for nothing crazy, nothing special . Um, the majority of what we use that for is 3D printing fixturing, so we will get some very convoluted parts or have very interesting shapes to them and surfaces that are really hard to hold just with like a vice or a clamp or something like that, so we will 3D print. A fixture that maybe has a curvature that matches the bottom of a part so it will fit flat because if we are measuring parts down to, you know, accuracies of in the microns or tens of microns about any kind of movement when we touch it, can throw that data. Wonky, right. And at the end of the day, the only product we have our numbers on a piece of paper, right? So it is it is a little frustrating at times that that is what we are like here is what we have. But we have to make sure that that data that we hand over to customer A is the best data it can be. So we will do 3D printed fixturing. A lot of we do a lot of that other than that, you know. I have always wanted this company to stand alone as the expert in inspection. So we will do we do a part inspection and we do specialty gauge inspection also. So it is the same type of thing. It is still linear dimensions on a chunk of metal or plastic. It is just the gauges somebody would pass or fail their Parts with so it is not calibration per se, it is inspection. And we always 1 of those to be the course. People are always like, can you make gauges, can you design gauges for us? Can you do reverse engineering, can do these things. And I have always just felt like it was important to have. A company that just specialized in a niche service that did not have a ton of competition because AI and and stand alone because if I start making gauges for somebody or design gauges, now I am competing with other customers that I have who make gauges, and so I wanted to always wanted to be like a Silo. That just did this, to be honest, I feel like it kind of held some credibility for us and kind of made sure that we were so like I never wanted to be if we are made if we are expecting gauges for a company and we fail 1 . Right . I do not want that to ever be thought of as they failed it so they can make us a new 1 and sell us a new 1. Is that probably overthinking it a little bit probably, I mean , to be honest probably, but I have never you know, a lot of times people do not have to use us right. They could a company who has an internal lab could choose to pay bill 10 h overtime to finish this project. Instead they trust us and they say, Hey, we know you are doing it the right way, you know, we know you are doing it right. Instead of keeping in house, we are going to send to you for speed and accuracy and we know what we are going to get, so I never really wanted that like a gray area, so, you know, gauges parts, mostly just linear inspections and some 3D print.

Okay. Is there so in my little knowledge of inspection, is it all linear or are there other types of inspection that you could be doing?

Yeah. So what we do we call it linear, right? And it is more than just a length from here. From this point to that point. We get into some very specific GDT callouts , right? So if there is people watching this, you do not understand that this is Jim. Geometrical dimension and tolerancing. And so we get into surface profiles and lines of profiles and run outs and total run outs. All of those things are under the umbrella of linear dimensions , but they get they can get very complicated and a little ridiculous at times, to be honest.

Sure , so it is not just, hey, the distance from a hole to a hole or what is a diameter of a hole, it can be way more complicated than that.

Right . More than that, it is position of holes, profiles of surfaces , positions and profiles. We see a lot of a lot and then, you know, a whole size and things like that that just go with any, you know, all kinds of parts have holes, so yeah.

Cool. Tell us about your team. What are the you know, what kind of team do you have and what are their different roles?

Oh, yeah, we have a great team. That is something I am super fortunate to have. There are not a lot of really skilled people who can run C Mms and can run vision systems and can understand GDT at the level. My guys do we have a small team there is. 5 of them here who work for us now we have I have been up to, I think 7 or 8 and I think this is about the the smallest team we have had, but it is the best team we have had. And so I have a lab manager who is ridiculously averse in how to do this. He is super talented. I am super fortunate to have him. Um, you know, being a small company it is hard to compete with big companies who splash 400 1K matches and great insurance and all of these benefits that, you know, it is a real struggle for small companies in 2024, right? Like insurance is expensive and all that stuff costs money and so we are really fortunate to have the team we have, so we have a lab manager, Ryan pu if you watch our if you go to our Youtube page or Linkedin page, we have in the lab video so you can see him on there giving videos about surface profile versus line profile and just all kinds of issues that we have customers ask us questions about. So we have him and then we have 2CMM programmers below him. They are great, there are a couple of young guys who, you know, it is very rare to find young guys in this and then we have a vision division, I have 1 guy who runs we have 2 vision systems , LGP vision systems that are pretty, really accurate and and so he does all of that and then I have A guy who is I do not know how to explain what he does. The crux of his job is to make sure our reports are right because like we said, our reports are our product right and there is a point where we were doing a very big project for medical device company. And our reports were 80 % wrong, like there would be something wrong with 80 % of them. And so he is actually a really good friend of mine. We have been friends since we were 16 and you can tell that I am much older than 16 and so we have been friends for a long time and he is very detail oriented and he is great, and so every report goes through him, he makes sure he goes through him with a fine tooth comb, make sure that they are right, gives them back to the guys, they give him back to him, and we have a big process . And we are down under 5 % having issues , just making that yeah. So here is a great investment . Yeah, so that is our team. Like I said, it is small , but they are mighty as they say and.

Yeah. No, that is awesome . I think a lot of companies , especially big companies , underestimate what just a few people can get done. You know, we are real small too but we can crank out so much work that you. So you mentioned I meant to ask this earlier, but you mentioned C, M, M and vision systems . And can you share a little bit about how those things work and what they are and how they enable you to measure and validate parts?

Yeah, sure, so we have 5 C Mms here and 2 vision systems , so AC M M is a coordinate measure machine , it measures it uses a cheese, it uses a probe with a with an actual Ruby on the end of it, a ruby ball that is milled out of an actual ruby, which is very weird. And so it is touch inspection. So it we program the c m m in a x y z coordinate system , like we used to learn with the I mean , I am at the age where they taught us in school with a little triangle, like, go to and all that kind of stuff and so it is like half computer programming Half math. Um, and so the machines go around and they touch the part and measure it in their 3D system x, y, z coordinates , and that is that is a contact inspection and then our vision systems are non contact inspection. They have probes and lasers on them, but we do not we do not use them because we have so many c Mms and right and I tell people it is wrong, there is going to be people who are vision. Gurus who say what he is saying is not true. I look at it as a microscope , it is not a microscope , I understand , but they can zoom in. I think our most accurate 1 goes to like 400 times Zoom accurate under a micron, you know, very accurate can zoom in to see things you do not want to see like we can we show customers , hey, it looks like this in the can you zoom out a little bit? So we do not see all that chatter. And then can we measure their circle? Sure , it is your circle right? We have yeah, we have 2 of those and we use those for more accurate things, smaller parts. As you know, I am sure you have seen a lot of medical device parts and whatnot to have like super small etching on them and all that stuff is called out on prints. So we are measuring depths and heights and widths of letters and numbers with that, and we zoom in to where it is. I mean , it looks like the whole screen. And so they are very powerful, they do a lot. And it we have so we have 5 C Mms . Our biggest C mm is 10 ft by 6 ft by 6 ft measuring envelope.

Oh, wow. Why ?

Yeah, so less accurate because it is so big but, you know, we have all machines all the way that big down to, you know, a vision system that is accurate just under a micron, so we have a whole array.

Awesome. When you get a part that big, do you have have cranes and stuff to bring it in and lift it in or how does that work?

Uh, so that the big C M MS in a different area of the lab, right, it is its own little area, and so we have a 4 cliff back there that is 400 pound forklift. And so it handles it. Usually there is there is been a couple times where we have had to rent like an 8,000 pound fork lift, but that is big hunks of steel, it is big hunks of steel.

Right . Wow. Yeah, that is pretty cool,

I think it regularly we get 600 pound part like castings or 1,000 pound castings and we we just we just move those around like they are nothing but yeah, we have had a couple times where we have had to get some big boys.

yeah. Sure . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool, so you also you mentioned the Ruby, why do they use Ruby ? Is it a hardness thing? Is it they are able to machine it to a certain accuracy. What what is the reason for a Ruby ?

That is a great question. I I have no idea. I have no idea.

Okay.

We have them, you know, we get them down to 0.3 mm diameter on. We give them that small to get into nooks and crannies and, you know, we have they have 6 mm ones and 10 they have just a whole right. A array cheese easy for me to say, cylinder probes, just all kinds. And it is it is very interesting and I have no idea they make so many of them, there is.

Interesting .

Yeah, that is interesting.

yeah.

So, you know, kind of you are a little neck of the product development world. What do you see the the biggest challenges that product development professionals struggle with?

Okay.

Understanding , understanding like I think it is, and this is just from my very limited knowledge right, from an outsider's view, I think the easiest part is envisioning what kind of part you want to have. Right . You let us you want to design a knee that fits this size person, okay, how does that work? And so this is what the knee looks like, trying to design a knee or a hip or a screwdriver or anything. And having manufactured the manufacturing process in your thoughts of how how are we going to make this and how are we going to hold these tolerances and how are we you know, I have seen surface profiles on injection molding surfaces that are a millimeter by a millimeter with a 0.4 surface profile to right. 0.4 mm, like from the inspection side, I want to be 4 times as accurate as what I am measuring , right, so that I know I am more accurate than I am getting good data. 4 times tighter than 0.4 is 0.1 mm. You know, like you are you are getting down in some crazy things and, you know, you get down in the microns and 10 microns . I got to be 4 times better than that. So from my limited view, I think it is designing with manufacturing in mind and the worst part for us is they never have inspection in mind. Right there is there is not I do not think there is ever a conversation of how are people going to inspect these so we know they are good and right, like I think that is a they can figure it out right, that is a they can figure it out deal. And so we get stuck sometimes at the end figuring it out, which we do a really good job of being creative, especially with the 3D printing. Like I said, we get really creative with fixturing and we have all the tools to be able to do things. But, man, sometimes it is. It is tough.

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. Do you think it is? Ignorance on maybe a little bit of ignorance on their part. Yeah, we want the the + or -0.4 mm because they do not understand like what that really takes or is it really they need that and you are like, wow, this I do not know why they need this, but this is crazy.

Sure , sure, I think it is. I just think, you know, you have a designer or you have an engineer or whoever who goes to college to learn how to design and engineer parts. They do not I do not think they ever learn how to inspect parts. Right . And they do not learn what they probably do not learn a lot about what kind of manufacturing is going to be entailed in this and what those processes look like and then they get into the workforce and they are thrown into it is time to start designing like let us get to work on designing and, you know, I I do not know, I do not think there is a great understanding of the entire process from design day 1 , design to implementation and use in the field, right, no matter no matter what the product is, whether it is a set of rims on car or it is. A spark plug or it is a lug nut, whatever it is right there is so much emphasis on how it looks, which I get right, but there is I do not feel like from again, from an outsider's view, I do not think there is enough emphasis on. How it is made, how we are going to make it, who can make it this good, are there machines that can machine it this good, what is it cost to machine something to this level? Right . And then, okay, let us some we found something in machine it. Who in the world is going to inspect it right and how do we know it is good? And so just again from outsiders view, that is what I would that is what I think is probably the biggest thing we see, I mean , we see these videos we do are a lot about interactions we have with customers who do not understand GDT and that is even in like a lab situation in a quality lab situation who do not understand it and are asking us to do something 1 way and. We are like that is not exactly right. So I guess it is kind of passive aggressive . We make these videos about them, but it is it is to educate people. It is to help people understand more of how these things work and how we are inspecting parts and, you know, at the end of the day, the fundamentals of inspection and the importance of it because you want to know if these parts are good or not, right, like. You know? So, yeah, that is what I that is what I kind of think.

Yeah, some extra.

Not that not that we are frustrated about it at all, right? Not that I get frustrated about it clearly I do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it makes total sense . I mean , heck, when I was in school, I think we may have spent 2 weeks on GDT and thinking about stuff like that. So, yeah, and it is. G D and t is like unless you are practicing it like you every day that it is a tough nut to to do correctly, so.

Well. so G D and T fundamentals have changed since somebody hand wrote. Fractions on a print, right, like they change those things all the time. Unilateral profiling is 1 of those things that just did not the 20 years I have been involved in this, I have seen at least 3 iterations of how to draw unilateral taling on profiles and so people. People do not usually understand what they are looking at. So a big thing in our part of the product development world is time to market, like everything, you know, it is like how fast can we do this and get get the product to market. When you are helping product development teams , I mean , is that a factor and do you guys help time to market? If so, how and. Yeah. So, you know, we are always on the back end. We are the where are the last or the last ones right in that timeline, which means as the people in the middle of the timelines time takes longer, our time gets shorter, right, so? We I run this lab as it is just like a job shop. It is first in first out and, you know, 1 of the advantages we have is we have multiple machine we have more machines than we have programmers , right, so we do not. Our turn times are faster than a lot of people's because even though we do not have a huge team, we have a good team, right? We we have systems in place that people follow to cut down on time to cut down on questions like and we also live by this mantra . I have always lived for the last 20 years . I may ask awkward conversations at the beginning to keep us from having really awkward conversations at the end of the process , right, so yeah, you know, we get involved at man less than 5 times people have gotten us involved. Before it is PPP or fall time, right? Hey, this is coming. We have this weird feature. Can you help us how we are going to draw this so that you can inspect it? 5, maybe less than 5 times, you know, users here you go, good luck, here you go.

Yeah, so that is the 11th hour, so.

So all for sure, you know, we have a really good core customer base that does not treat us like that. But there are you know, there is a lot of time like we I like it when customers say things like, man, I know we are asking a lot. We need this in this time frame. I appreciate they at least see that, but we are always like it is the world we live in but. I have over the 20 years there is been multiple times where I have been in a Christmas party for work, gotten calls from customers all like Christmas Eve . Hey, can you have these done by the first? Okay, sure. Drop them off. Right , like it is just it is just a reputation that over the years the people I have worked with, the other companies I work for, it is just been ingrained in me. That that is how we do it. You know, it is it is a it is a burden and a gift. I guess that that is how, you know, it is an expectation that we set that we get things done quickly, but we get them done right, you know, that is kind of the world we live in and so we do ask a lot of questions up front, but it is to keep us from missing something or. You know, and the the worst thing is to be at the end of a 50 part inspection project and have missed something right and how to go back to 50 parts or, you know, something in the field already. And so we we try to cover everything at the beginning with, you know, policies and procedures that we have.

Yeah, yeah. Can you give us kind of share a specific specific e.g. of, you know, how somebody used your service and you know that it was a successful outcome?

Oh, boy. So, yeah, you know, we were we do a lot of work for a couple of major medical device companies and this will I mean , I guess this is I do not we do not tute our own horn very much, but this is a good 1 so they can 1 of the major ones came to us. And said, hey, we have this huge project. It is the biggest project. It is a 190 Skus for implants , right? So the actual parts FAS and then another 400 Skus for instruments . All right, so any instrument that will go into those surgeries , can you do all these fails in the next 6 months ? No, right. No, right. So we are on this upfront. No, we can not do that. So I said, just give us implants . Those are the most important. We will knock all these implants out and then if we have time right, we will tackle chew up whatever else you can to hit your date. So we knocked out all the implants and we ended up doing half of the instruments that the the people, the competitor they had to go to could not even do. And so, yeah, in the same amount of period got them, you know, where they needed to go. We worked a lot of hours. We did a lot of stuff. You know, for them and you know, that it is just the people would say, wow, they really went above and beyond and like, it is just how we do it, you know, it is just how it is ingrained in our team. And it is just the mentality we have to try. I do not ever want to be the reason that a project does not hit the market on time, right? Like, I I do not I do not ever want somebody in an office that I am not in in a meeting that I am not in. Like, hey, what happened here? And somebody be able to say, w j Titan dropped the ball, right? And so that is just been part of our DNA here. Companies that I have been a part of before. It just it is just something that is ingrained in us and our team and it was it is what makes us successful that, you know, we I mean , we have had a we had an automotive project where we were running 50 machine hours a day, 6 days a week for 18 weeks, yeah. Yeah, I mean , that is it is a lot, right? It is like we we have 5cm comes right and so 50 machine hours a day and then so we had to balance . Hey, we have other customers too, right? We can not not do their work. So we we were running 3 shifts, I think we ran 20, 21 h a day. Yeah, and they were on full containment and it was killer. It was a killer project, but we did it and we helped them find their issues and help them.

And that is almost sorting on AC, M, M, which is a lot, right? That is a lot of work.

Yeah. That is awesome . Did I know you will not be able to give me an exact time, but is it how long does it take to measure a part? I know that is going to be dependent on measurements and all that. But is it manually measured and, you know, does each measurement have to be done by hand, etc. And.

Yeah, that is a that is a great question and I get that question on almost every project. How long how long is your normal turn time, right? And I tell people all the time, I have had a 10 ft long by 6 ft piece on our big machine that had 5 features on it. And I had pictures, it took 2 h, 2 h dumb, right? I have had a part this big. They had a thousand pictures on it, a thousand features , no exaggeration that is probably less than was actually on it. That took 2 weeks, right, just for 1 part just to program 1 part, so. That is the the advantage and the downfall of using C Mms is you are programming every feature, right, every feature they have, it is a person. Sitting at a computer, headphones on, nerding out, telling the Ruby where to go. That is it is good because every feature has that person's hands on it, right? So they know the vectors they have going into it, they know that it is done, right? The downfall is you have time in every single feature. So, you know, on average , I think a normal dimensional feature probably takes about 10 min to program by the time you are doing everything through it. So if you have a thousand features , you have 10,000 min, right, like that is. It is a long time and then then you have to run that program to make sure you are not shaking out, not shaking out, not miss hitting, making sure you are getting good data, making sure it repeats, right, like we get into all of that kind of science of, you know, gauge r ours and you know, does our data Repeat and is it good data? Are we hitting the right features , are we hitting that is where, you know, programming to CAD files is huge, right, like when our customers have CAD files, we can zoom in on surfaces and we are doing most of the programming on the computer and then we are telling then we tell it all. Go get it right. That is a huge advantage over the old days where you did not have cat files and you are doing everything literally manually , you know. That is a it is almost I mean , the whole time I have been last 20 years for sure. We have been able to program the CAD files, but I am sure I can assure you there is a time before that that they could not and I mean , I have the first lab I worked for. We had a manual machine , all right, we had a manual C M M where you did not have a joystick. You grabbed it and you took it down to hit it like it was a it is a big micrometer at that point, right? It is a big micrometer that can go 4 ft by a Foot and a half and it was very interesting to see, you know, now, you know, you go into full programming and CAD files and, you know, you have small probes and different size shafts on those probes and different lengths and these guys can do all kinds of things and it is it is really fascinating to watch. I can not do it. I do not program. C Mms . I do not do any of the inspections . My background is marketing and sales , so I leave that to my expert guys and sometimes watching them go to work. It is just it is like art and science , right? And that is the other thing. Everybody does it different. It is it is all about the end is not the means . So people do it all different and sometimes that is a, you know, a difficult conversation with customers . Hey, we have a program. Can we just send you the program and you just run our program? So for me, that is a gray area because being when I push that data out, I am saying that is the right data, right? And we are saying we believe in that data. So I have a hard time sometimes saying , yeah, like I do not know who wrote your program, right? I do not know how great it is or how not great it is. So we will use it as a barometer and like a roadmap and then write our own programs . And make sure that it is to our standards . So that is a long, long answer for probably much easier question, but

No, no, no, that was interesting.

It kind of leads into another question. You know, when we work with our clients, like we do everything we can to like adapt to their process . We do not have our own internal you know, this is the way things are going to work. We are like we are going to do the thing things the way you want to do it, but it sounds like it is kind of the opposite for you guys.

It is and it is not anything to do with your customers . It has to do with the output that you are delivering. Yeah. So, you know, being a 3rd party lab, it is it is it is really based on customer needs and wants, right? So generally that is here is a print and a cat file and here is a tolerance that goes with these features . Those conversations also morph into. Hey, just open up those tolerances , right? So it is + or -1 , make it + or -2, that is fine is what the customer wants. Like I do not care like I do not care what we are checking, I do not care what the challenges are. We put on our reports customer requested + or -2 instead of + -1 for features 4, 506. So what we do how how it is though for us is we kind of hold our own flag right as we are really good at this. And so there are times where we will come up with data that does not really maybe mesh or match what a manufacturer like a supplier has done in house, right, so they will check it in house, make sure they have good parts and then send it to us to do like an F or a PPP inspection on it. There is lots of times where our numbers are not the same . So what we do there is we get into we have, you know, meetings hopefully on site if they are close and and we really say, hey, watch how we are inspecting this, bring your programmer, let us talk about it, let us look at how what our standards look like our inspection standards because you know, it is important for me that our whole team is writing programs as close in the same standard as we can, so that it is. We are getting the best data possible. And so there is been times we did a big project and are part of that real big project were some parts that are super convoluted surface profile on very small surfaces and and we were getting different data than the supplier and so we had them come over and we went through it, we spent a couple hours really diving into the program. And we we ended up liking the way they were doing it better than the way we were doing it. And so we say, hey, it does not go against any rules of GDT or any inspection rules. It is just another way for somebody to do it. Art and science , right? So, yeah, we are cool with that and then so we program the way they did and it is it is a you know, it is a way for us to, you know, we build relationships like that. There is it could be very easy for somebody to have a lab like this and just say, hey, that is the way it is, it is bad, it is bad, it is on you figure out how to make it better, but like that is not the kind of communication that we believe in and I mean , there are times where we say, well, you did that wrong here. Is why. That that is wrong to the standard to how the rules of G, D and T. That is not right here is why let us look at this and people like, okay, that makes sense . So it is all about, you know, getting together and being open minded and realizing again it is art and science and it is all about the end is not the means . And Troy can program 1 way and Jim can program another way. And as long as we end up with a goo program that gives us repeatable data, then everybody's happy.

Interesting . So if somebody wanted to work with you, what is the process look like, you know, for them to come in the door and then get a project moving?

Yeah, it is super easy. I try to make it as easy as possible, right? So the lead up to the project is all different ways . It is Zoom calls these days. It is in person meetings, it is just phone calls , it is whatever. When people want quotes from us, all they have to do is send us balloon prints, not even balloon prints, just prints, they they will send us a print or a package of prints and say, this is a 100 % inspection, or we only need these features checked or we need this many parts. And then we quote it, and then if they say go, that is when we get into the meat of it, we start looking at what the features really are, what the datum structures look like. How easy they are to get to do they make sense , do they follow 6 degrees of separation , is it alignment , all those kind of things that could throw off data? Um, hopefully we will get a cat file at that point and we get parts and we go to town. We have an internal scheduling system that gets everything in and out. I mean , I hear about places giving 246 week turn times on small easy projects and I do not think in the last 5 years anybody's waited longer than a week to get parts started. So it is kind of, you know, we we are we are we are moving through we are moving through projects as fast as we can. While giving the best data we can. And so yeah, we we are trying to make it as easy as possible to do business with us because again, people do not want to right like. It is not a lot of is not a lot of people saying , man, I really hope we can send these 100 parts out to a 3rd party and it cost us a 100 thousand dollars to get this project done. There is not a lot of people sitting around having those conversations , right? They are like, wow, how do we hit our dates? Can we do it in the house? No, we can not do it in the house great. Who can we use and how fast can they get it done? And then that is that is when we get involved.

Yeah, that is awesome . That is that is the same way we try to operate what are some of the best practices that people should know about you? I mean , you kind of mentioned the G D and T and things like that, but. For somebody that is looking to do this, like what are some things that some big highlights of, hey, you need to work in this fashion to make things flow smooth.

Yeah, you know, again, we try to make it super simple. CAD files and transfer files is usually the hardest part. Like, we have people ship us parts all over the country. Uh, we have done parts from Costa Rica . Like, we we get parts. We have parts coming from Oregon this week. We have parts from everywhere, California , East Coast , so You know? The 1 thing that I think I have touched on a little bit is communication is the most important thing when it comes to doing business with us, right, like just being open about what is needed and when it is needed. The worst thing is when we schedule something and we get parts and they say, hey, you have 7 days to get this done, just get it back to me in 7 days and then that turns into 3 days on the second day, right?

So, like, communication is the best. You know, my wife would tell you, I am not a amazing communicator , but I do all of it here, like so, you know, so. We do. We overcommunicate at times and we prepare customers for that. Hey, this is the first time you have done work with us. You might get annoyed by how much you hear from us. But it is for the greater good it is for. A real reason to why you are here doing business with us and why we get a lot of repeat business , why we get you know, we have it is something I am really proud of and that we have seen happen in our business is, you know, especially in medical device they are they may tell their suppliers , Hey. Send your fails to w j Titan and the first the first time they are like, who are these people?

Like, what is happening, why would we do that? Who is going to pay for that whole deal? And I tell people like, Look, I I understand where how you feel, but I promise you it is going to work out. And the majority of time it works out and then those suppliers say, hey, we have parts for this other medical supplier. Can you do FAS for us for them to right, so? That is that is when I get proud of how good our team is and how well we do, you know, from the programmers down to be making reports and you know, we are getting things in timely. We are following the standards we have set for ourselves and and as a business owner and make that is that is when I get the most proud when I can tell these guys, hey, X Y Z company who did not want to use us because they were forced just called us about 2 other projects so that are not for that company and so, you know, it is all about communication and it is all about being open and it is about being honest and sometimes you have to have tough conversations that, you know, customers do not want to hear and you know of. I do not like the way this is drawn, the way this is drawn. You are not going to get good parts the way you this is the way these datums are set up. It is not going to work for you. You know? And so again that we just we focus on communication , it is annoying at times, I am sure, but at the end of the story, it works out,

Right , yeah, yeah, totally. Understand where you are coming from there as we start.

right? Yeah, I am sure it works for you too, right?

If we do not if we do not bug our customers , which I hate doing, but if we do not bother them early, like you said, it is just going to create a mass later, so. Yeah, it is. They are going to be a lot of with a new client, especially where you are trying to learn how they do business and what they need and yeah, it is it gets a little tedious up front, so.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it is true. I mean , we try to make it as simple as possible. We try to make it as streamlined as possible. We try to make it as easy as possible, but there is bumps in the road all the time. You know, there is there is things that do not make sense . Sometimes there is a process that. You know, a new customer does not understand why, right? Why why do I have to do this? Why do I have to send you this? Well, so that I know what it is, I do not so I am not walk around in the dark. I need a flashlight sometimes . Right , yeah, but it is all communication .

Yeah, yeah. So as we start to wrap up, just a few more questions , kind of shift gears just a little bit, what is the biggest change you have seen in your business over the years ?

Man, if I go back 20 years to now, from when I first started that first day I walked in and it was October of O 4 so my daughter was born a month later. My first kid was born in Monthly. That is the only reason I know how long I have always been in this business . Because it is just longer than my daughter's been around, you know, if I if I say from walking in that day and seeing how the inspection lab was, you know, technology has come a long way. The way the software's interact with CAD files and the way they interact with the machines , the whole like the C m m to cat file to programming that whole process is much better. There are some not to nerd out on this too much, but there are some heads for these c Mms that are just doing ridiculous things to where if you if you were the pro the rubies in the end, then the probe then the head and they index in certain angles to be able to measure , right? And so but they only go at certain degrees traditionally or they are fixed even, and so we have 1 here that is infinite, so it goes down and instead of the head moving the probe just moves by itself and goes to the around the diameter and you are done. And so they even have a new 1 . Rennert has a new 1 called a Revo that is like, it just swoops like that, like, out of a bore. It would just swoop and just pick it all. It is it is wild, like. From a manual machine that I saw the first time right to what I am seeing these people, these systems doing is fascinating , right? And we are trying to stay caught up with that so that we have I have a project in here right now that. We are trying to interpret some dimensions and I am like I have 1cmm that can check this and you guys have no C m m that can check this because I have this ph 20 head, and you guys do not have these rotations. And so it is that is probably the biggest the software, you know, software are much better. They are much more user friendly. It is instead of like traditional computer programming , go to and all that kind of stuff, we are doing it by pictures almost like we are doing. You want to get a diameter clip diameter, right, you do not have to say, hey, hey, computer, we are going to make a diameter now and we are going to do it like this, right? It is diameter, how many points let us go do it so. I think the ease of use and that is good because we need more programmers coming into this industry and the easier it is, the more people who are going to be able to handle it and we are going to be able to grow and be better programmers in the long run, I think.

Yeah, that is cool. Next question is kind of similar or maybe just to the next step down the line, what are some of the emerging trends in your corner of of the product development world, whether it be AI or other technology?

Yeah. So, I think from the inspection side it is pretty soup and nuts, right? It is pretty boring, like from our side, I think. White light scanning and blue light scanning and shape grabbers and x ray machines and all these machines that I mean , this also is this last question to a little bit all these systems where you can just put a product in and reverse engineer into a model that you can manipulate and change into what you want it to be is fascinating , right, like it almost right, I want to stop short of saying it is easy to steal other people's products and design them, right, but we know there is people in other countries doing that right, like, you know, and that is how they are doing it. They are scanning these things and then of a sudden you have a model like it is it is fascinating to me, especially as not being an engineer that, you know, those scanners are getting more and more accurate and they are getting really good. And, you know, for surface they are great, they are they are great and you can man some of these x ray machines , you can just you can put a cell phone in there and it gets everything in the phone, like it reverse engineers, the whole thing. You have a model for everything that you can just start pulling out it is. For people who know what they are doing with those, it is amazing between that and 3D printing, right, 3 printing we are seeing we are seeing parts show up that are 3D printing right like. Absolutely. 3 printed and then a little machining done to them. We are inspecting parts like that. I mean , that is a that is going to be that is a big deal for manufacturing , right, like.

Sure , plastic and metal.

Plastic and and metal, I mean , a lot of we are seeing more metal than plastic, which I mean that is a that is a whole nother ball of worms, right? Like the expense of 3D metal, 3 printers is insane . But like we have we have some 3D printed titanium medical implants in here right now. And they are wild, like the surfaces you can put on them and like for the tissue to bind to and all of this and then the machine just a little bit off of it and you are getting away from needing, you know? Real manufacturing expertise right now, you have you just need some real design expertise and a really expensive metal 3D printer and all of a sudden you have. Parts , right, like you do not you do not have the guys from manufacturing coming to me like, Hey, Troy, we can not make this part. What are you doing? All right, these so complex, we can not mill this, we can not machine this. Like I just push a button and it will be out in 2 h and it will be right over there and I just need to machine the the mating surface. I mean , that is that is wild, right? Like I am sure, especially from your point of view, that is super wild, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is. It is very interesting to see what is happening in that in that area of of our world.

Yeah, yeah, next is the 3D printing tissue , right, human tissue , like you are going to see valves and all of that kind of stuff, 3 printed and that is that is going to be scary. Scary , but cool, cool.

right, right. Yeah, like you said, you are no longer met limited by manufacturing processes or I guess the 3D printer is the manufacturing process .

I mean , you design it, you can build you design it, you can prototype it, right, like there is not much these 3 printers can not do, you know, they may not have the surface you want and they may not have the accuracy you want. But you can take a look at it and you can hand it to somebody on the manufacturing floor. They make this right and they look at the no go buy that million dollar titanium printer, right? That you can print out 10 of them at a time if you want, you know, like it is fast. That is fascinating to me. Like, I would love to have 1 of those. So if you want to get me 1 for Christmas , that would be awesome .

All right, I will put you on the list.

Okay, cool. Cool.

So anything else you want to mention before we finish up?

Man, no, I mean , I feel like I talked a lot people tell me I do not know when to stop sometimes . No, I mean , I think we covered most of what this industry looks like. You know, it is very niche, like there is not a ton of labs like us around. And we take that pretty serious , you know, that there is not, you know, if there is not a ton of places to go to get something you need that place to take it serious and be fully invested in it and, um, so we do that, yeah, I think. You know, it is it is something I believe in, it is something that my team believes in the importance of good data, especially for the end user. You know, when you talk a medical device, you are talking about a patient at the end of the day, you are talking about a human being with. A piece of metal or a piece of plastic inside of them, hopefully metal that needs to be right. You know, I have some friends who are getting older and have knee replacements and hip replacements and, you know, I would feel I would have AI would feel a certain way if something I inspected went arrive for them, you know, so we take it serious and we know there is a lot of people out there that do and so we are good we are good partners for those kind of people.

Awesome where and folks learn about your company and where can they find out about the what was it in the shop videos or?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the easiest place is w w w w j titan t NC. There is links in there for a lot of what we do. There is a link in there to our Youtube page, our w Titan Youtube page has . Uh, at least 50 videos now called the in the lab series , it talks about all kinds of GDT and 3 printing and, you know, we do not have a huge product that we do, but there is a lot of intricacies of what we do. So, I guess I think there is at least 50 videos up there more to every every 2 weeks. There is at least 2 videos rolling out so people can find us there. Websites always the best, um, great way to contact us if you need anything. Linkedin page, Instagram page, that is, they all say the same thing. So, uh, websites use the best.

All right. Awesome. I will make sure I put that in the show notes. So I really appreciate you doing it. I really appreciate you doing this, Jim.

No, I appreciate you having me.

I will always remember the first podcast I was on. It is this it is this 1 right now.

I appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate you doing it.

You bet. Thank you.