MTDCNC meet Wolfram Manufacturing at the Shot Show, a fantastic event that supports innovative products for industries such as sporting, law enforcement, and military. Tony of MTDCNC and Nathan of Wolfram Manufacturing discuss technology that targets machine monitoring, production management, and automation as well as key partnerships with companies like Caron Engineering. For more on technology and software that can benefit your manufacturing operations and keep those machines running, visit www.wolframmfg.com.

Full Video Transcript

Tony:  Well, my friends, we are at Shot Show and if you’ve not heard of it well nobody’s not heard of it right? I mean this is the creation of pretty much all of the Arsenal Weaponry guns, sporting equipment, Hunting, Fishing… I mean I actually saw a dog walking around with Kevlar and night vision goggles last time I was here, so it’s one of those kinds of shows. So, if you haven’t heard about SHOT show that’s kind of a summary of it. But if you have heard about Shot Show then yes let’s get excited, and I’m with my buddy Nathan. Nathan is by far my favorite self-proclaimed introvert, yet he keeps hopping on camera with me. Nathan is an incredible, clever guy that just constantly creates new things within his company, Wolfram Manufacturing, out in Austin, Texas, and today I get to share a little bit of that technology with you while we’re at the show. So, Nathan thank you again for being on camera with me, and let’s talk about what we have going on here. 

Nathan:  All right well so this is a great show you’ve got a lot of like made in America manufacturing that’s something we believe in I mean it’s we’ve got to keep this going here and you’ve got some great companies that are doing great work to just really level up. They’re trying to figure out how to provide great jobs, they’re trying to work with the workforce that we’ve got which is changing every day. I’m not going to say, “Better or Worse”, personally I love what we’ve got and we’re working with, but what we find is they do better with terrific tools. So, we have all kinds of tools that bring the information out from these manufacturing operations and really let people use it to excel. So, you know, this show in particular is great, we’ve got people supporting sporting and law enforcement and Military – a lot of good things. But also, it’s building another generation of manufacturing so people who do things here, they do everything they might be you know doing firearms and things like that here, they might be making Kevlar jackets for dogs, but they’re also making metal quilt medical equipment. They’re also making airplanes. So, it’s kind of focused here, but it’s a great way to reach people who really want to make things better and that’s what we’re here to do. 

Tony:  That’s a really great summary. So, let’s move into a little bit of Wolfram. We’re standing obviously in front of your sign here. It says smart manufacturing solutions, well for manufacturing machine monitoring and production management. Can we talk about how this can help some of the audience watching right now as well? 

Nathan:  Absolutely. So, you know in large part machines kind of work in a vacuum. Each machine alone doing its own thing. So, one of the first tools we have is software that lets you see all the machines, what they’re doing, and we don’t just pull in you know is the machine running or not running? We pull in all the information. If there are measurements coming off the machine, we pull those in we pull in other systems: whether it’s coolant, whether it’s horsepower, things like that, we’re monitoring all of it and we don’t want somebody to have to go out and ask if the machine is running. If the machine has a problem, it raises its hand, it calls for help and it lets you know what happened and gives you the information to solve the problem. So that’s the kind of thing that we’re working with. We want people to do the fun stuff, you know designing things, making the world better, recognizing patterns, just doing awesome stuff. Repetitive stuff, staring at a machine, staring at a boiling pot of water – that’s not cool, so we’re trying to get rid of that and then it just gets better and better. 

Tony:  Yeah, you’re right and I know your technology well which is why I want to ask the questions to help the audience understand that, so I’m going to ask a remedial question. We’re all moving into automation, right? How effective is this type of Technology when we’re thinking about 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year that profitability the way we can keep machines going how does that all communicate together? Man, this is the way to get there I mean.

Nathan:  Oh yeah if you’re automating the idea of just like taking a process that you’ve got and hitting go, and you’re used to watching it every day, but now I’m going to hit go and I’m just going to close my eyes… is terrifying. I mean I don’t know how people do that. Well, I do know because they slow everything down.  So, when you come in with the tools, we’ve got I mean you don’t slow everything down you speed everything up I mean we just we let people crank it up so you can see it you have data to work with. We’ve got like horsepower monitoring controlling the machine. So, if something goes wrong you know in, I want to say the old days but most places you have somebody close enough to run over and hit the e-stop button and save it. You know you’re running hot, you’re running fast, you’re running lights out, you don’t have that. These are the tools that get you there. So, Caron engineering, TMAC, all that data brought together with the with the OnTakt product. It is it is what we need to keep on automating and keep on making stuff happen here. 

Tony:  Might I add for Nathan as well I’ve actually been into his machine shop so the discussion, we’re having uh with Automation and the software and the way everything combines together, and I want to get back into Caron Engineering in just a second. I’ve been to the machine shop. This is working effectively. You have a shop that is constantly flowing and constantly being watched. I sat with you in your office while we were monitoring the entire shop out on the floor just to talk about it. So, we have that video as well, but let’s just briefly since uh we have our Caron Engineering guys here, but I got you on camera today because you were the brave one to hop on. Let’s talk about your relationship with Caron Engineering. 

Nathan:  So, we have a great relationship, actually started as a customer across several different companies. When I started Wolfram, it was one of the key Technologies I believed in. I was like if we’re going to change this game entirely this is something that’s important to do it. As we move forward over time, we partnered with Caron, they asked us to be an integrator. That territory has grown and grown and grown now we cover almost the whole Western half of the US, which is just a blast. I love going out and meeting and seeing all the different industries and companies just making things happen. But then, more than that, last year we opened a Production Technology Center. So, you know we were already just passionate believers and users in the product and using it for our own good. Then we started sharing that good and then we went the next level with that and this Production Technology Center – we partnered with Caron, so we do training at our facility. We bring people in who just you know they hear it, but they don’t quite believe it, or they just want to see it in action. So, we bring people in. We let them talk to you know me, our Engineers, our ops manager, any of our manufacturing Specialists and just you know get to see it in action. So great relationship. We just came off a great meeting where all the integrators from around the world were in Austin at our facility sharing ideas and you know looking out for how we’re going to make manufacturing better.

Tony:  Well, if you’re one of the audiences out there who would like to see it in person because sometimes, I was just talking about it isn’t enough you know there’s always going to be a question right and you want to hang out with Nathan as often as I do, because he’s that kind of guy. Where can we find you as far as your website how can they look you up and how can they reach out to you all?

Nathan:  Right, so our website is wolframmfg.com. We’ve got a good landing page that walks you through all these products and you’re right they’re complicated it’s a different way of thinking, so we found just the best way is, if possible, come and see us it’s a lot of fun. You’ll take something away even if you don’t end up deploying any of the products. 

Tony:  And if you’ve been inspired by this conversation like I have with Nathan and you happen to live outside of the U.S because well MTD is a global Channel as well you can also look up Blum Novatest that’s another partner of Caron Engineering, and reach out to them because between what we’re talking about here with Wolfram and the Caron engineering product you really can take that next step, the next level of automation that all of us kind of need to do and if we’re not already thinking about it or implementing it, let’s say it’s a conversation that needs to be had and videos like this conversations like this they really help. Nathan, so thank you so much for being brave enough as an introvert to jump on camera with me one more time. 

Nathan: Yeah, all right it’s always a pleasure. It’s good for me you’re talking me into get out here anyway. It’s fun.

Tony: I like this guy.