- So you said that customers run a panel of 300 feet long,
what kind of structure takes a panel like that?
- A great big one.
(rock music)
- Welcome back to another Q&A Monday here
on the Metal Roofing Channel,
as always I'm Thad Barnette with Sheffield Metals.
I've got Tom Southerland from Sheffield
back on the show with me.
And calling in,
I've got Tom Laird and Ron Schell
from New Tech Machinery because today we
are talking all about portable roll forming.
So thanks for being on the show with me today guys,
I really appreciate it.
- Great, great to be here.
- Good to be here.
- So how about we start,
Ron and Tom,
since this is your first time being on the show,
I want to have you start by telling us a little bit
about your personal experience in the industry.
- Sure, I'll go first.
This is Tom Laird,
I'm the national sales manager at New Tech Machinery.
I've been with the company since October of 2005,
so I've been in the portable roll forming business now
for about 12 and a half years.
And I've watched the industry
have ups and downs with our economy,
and the ups and downs in the industry
over the last 12 and a half years.
Right now, it's kind of a golden time for us so,
very busy.
- Okay, Ron?
- Ron Schell here, Service Manager.
Been here 25 years,
was involved in all of the machinery that's here,
design work.
Also worked prior to this
for about 20 years in this industry,
so I probably have 40 plus years in this industry alone.
Stuck with New Tech,
it's been a great journey here.
I think we make some of the finest equipment out there.
- Great, so,
as I mentioned today we're talking about
roll forming and especially portable roll forming.
So first tell me about the process used
to create panels for metal roofing,
metal siding,
gutters,
what is that process like?
How does it work?
- Actually it's a portable,
like we said,
we make portable equipment
that you can actually drive right to the job site.
You would actually have coil with you.
Set up the machine,
for setting up the machine it takes about 15 20 minutes,
maybe a half hour maximum
to set up the machine itself,
the raw tables,
get the coil fed into the machine and produce materials.
You're actually able to use a computer program,
linked and control computer where you can actually
plug in lengths and run out the panels for the roof.
Now in some cases,
they'll actually hoist the machine
right up to roof eave so they
can shoot panels onto the roof.
It's one of the big advantages of our equipment.
- And just to add to that,
the advantages of that portable roll forming,
is that you're going to be able to
get that metal roofing on that roof
when you're ready to do it,
as opposed to waiting for a factory panel supplier.
- So what is that in factory roll forming,
like your in plants roll forming?
- Well typically in plant roll formers
are going to be much larger roll formers.
It wouldn't be economical,
or it wouldn't be feasible
to take any of those types of machines
to a job site.
They're typically gonna be much faster machines
when they're running in the factory.
And they'll be versatile as well.
They'll have multiple profiles that they
can run through those machines.
However, the set up time,
maintenance time,
is gonna be much longer,
much longer process with the in plant machine
than with the portable machine.
- And just to elaborate on that just a bit more,
if you were to do a change over from one profile
to another in our machine,
which is the portable style,
you'd spend about 45 minutes panel to panel.
If you do it on in plant machine,
you're probably half a day at least
minimum to do a change over.
Because they are very large machines,
they're actually inside these machines
changing out rollers and stuff,
so they're very large most of them.
- Do portable roll formers,
and in plant roll formers,
do they create the same types of panels,
or are there some panels that are specific to either type?
- There are some that are specific to either type.
But for the most part,
all the panels that we can produce in our machine,
you can also produce in a factory machine
or an in plant machine.
They also make some panels that are very large,
for like silos and stuff like that.
So they do use some big stuff.
- So I'm gonna go up to Tom Southerland here.
So Tom,
tell me a little bit about how New Tech's Machines,
and specifically portable roll formers
fit in with Sheffield?
- That's what our whole business is based on.
We supply the coil that goes into the machine.
We'll take the large coils and have them coded
at various pipelines around the country,
and bring them into our facility and slow them down.
Typically on a portable roll former,
you can't handle more than a 2,000 pound coil.
Most of our coils range anywhere
from 1,500 to 3,000 pounds.
And typically when you take these,
if you're going to take this out on a job site,
the New Tech's have two pay offs on them,
or two rollers,
so you can carry two coils
out to the job site with you
already on the spools.
Then run them from there.
Then in the same material
is typically a more narrow
coil than what they use for the
bigger role formers like 5B and 7.2 really
and traditional panels like that.
It's more architectural.
- Okay, so you said that some of the
portable roll forming machines can have two coils,
what's the advantage of having two coils on a machine?
- Well you don't have as much set up time on it.
If you get two it's easy to change over.
You don't have to go in and
raise spool another coil.
It's set and ready to go.
You could also,
it kind of allows you to carry
more to the job site.
The thing about having a portable roll former
is you control your whole own destiny.
You can buy from various,
hopefully you would buy from Sheffield,
but you can buy from various coil suppliers
and vendors out there and your not locked in
on any particular color or manufacturer.
- I think one of the things that really sticks out
with the portable versus in plant,
you can drive our machine on the side of a mountain
and produce panels with it.
If your buying from a factory they are actually
trying to run your jobs,
schedule it into their system,
run your job put it on a truck and ship it to you.
And hopefully it doesn't get damaged
by the time it gets there,
and hopefully every piece you need is there,
if it isn't
now you're waiting for them to do another setup
and there's probably another fee for that,
to get the rest of the panels you need.
The problem with that is you can't
bill that job out until it's finished,
so they actually hold your destiny
in their hands by doing that.
- And another factor that
hasn't been mentioned yet either is that,
what Ron had just mentioned about the
being able to produce a panel anywhere that
you can take our machine is the fact that
as long as you've got coil on that machine
you can run a panel as long as you want,
whereas with a factory produced panel
they're going to be limited to a,
say a 48 50 foot panel that they can ship,
otherwise your going to be lapping over the panels.
Where we've had customers run panels 300 feet long.
- What kind of structure takes a panel like that?
- A great big one.
(everyone laughing)
- Usually large industrial warehouses,
we've seen it more than once
down in Central and South America
where they do super long runs of panels.
- It would be impossible to do that with anything but
a portable roll former because the only way to run
a panel that length and be able to handle it is
your going to have to shoot it up on the roof.
- Exactly.
- There's no way to lift a panel like that
and get it up there.
- Right. - Exactly.
- And when you do that also,
if your not overlapping you also
just eliminate the risk of having a leak
at the point where you have to overlap it.
- Exactly. - Yep.
- Fewer seams.
- And I think another consideration
that we haven't mentioned yet is transportation wise
you can fit way more material in a truck that's
in a coil rather than pre manufactured panels.
- Absolutely, that's a very good point.
- And ship a lot of air with the panels.
- Yep. - Yeah.
And besides the fact of the freight damage that
we talked about earlier,
what happens if the panel manufacturer
shorted you by an inch on each panel.
You know we've heard of that before.
One of the main driving forces that puts
people into looking at portable roll formers
is the fact that they've been screwed by the
in factory panel suppliers,
the fact that they've had to wait,
they didn't get what they wanted,
they got the wrong color,
the wrong length,
so there are a number of advantages to having
your own portable roll former for sure.
- And a lot of times plans change on a building too.
The building plans might call for this,
you get out there to the building
and they've added to the plan or
shrunk a run or something like that.
If you would have ordered that from a building
manufacturer you'd have panels out there that didn't
fit your project,
this way you can just shorten your length.
- What are some other things
that we haven't talked about yet?
- Well I think the fact that that portable machine of ours,
that SSQ machine is capable of doing
15 different profiles.
And you could actually do that in a day.
You'd darn near do all of those in one day.
- All 15 profiles.
- If you wanted to run a panel of each one.
Try to get that out of a factory panel
it's never going to happen,
I mean, so whatever you need,
if you have the tooling,
or even if you don't,
you have the ability to change that in a days time
and be on a different job
and running that profile.
If you don't have the profile you can always purchase it,
because it's available.
So I think that's a huge advantage over
being locked into a single panel
and single lengths,
I mean 53 foot long panels,
you'd be locked into the maximum.
So I think it opens up a whole new world
plus the fact that you can actually
shoot those panels up on a roof is huge.
When you get factory delivered panels in a crate,
now you have to get them up to the roof,
so you have that problem as well.
- You've also got the advantage,
I know we're distinguishing between in plant
and portable roll formers,
but a lot of people use the portable roll formers
at their shop to just run their panels,
and they'll run panels for other people
without taking it out to the job site.
- Right.
- With the New Tech you have the advantage of
having two different sources for your power,
you can either use electric or gas.
So if you're running in house you can use electric
and if your running out in the field
then you can use your gas.
- So we've talked a lot about the advantages
of portable roll forming,
what kind of advantages are there with in plant?
When is that a good choice?
- Basically an in plant machine you don't have to
adjust it quite as much as you may
on a portable roll former that just
bats across the road.
The New Tech is one of the best one's out there
for holding their squareness and all when
you get it out on the road.
Still got to watch the adjustments on it,
if you keep it in house and don't jostle it around
then you don't have as much to fool with,
as far as adjustments and all to the machinery.
Also in house you have,
like I say, the weather.
You don't have to worry about it
being raining or cold or anything like that.
- In plant machines will typically be much faster
than portable machines.
They're designed that way.
Ron, correct me if I'm wrong,
but I believe most in plant machines are going to be a
precut type of machine,
so you're going to have cleaner edges probably
on a factory panel machine versus a portable roll former.
But again it's a choice for the contractor to make
on how they want to control their destiny
as a contractor.
- And I think that's the big difference,
you know if you don't want to worry about
having a crew to run panels and having a machine
that your going to do maintenance on,
you give up control if you
switch over to buying panels.
You don't have the control that you do
when you have a portable machine.
And I'm sure that, you know,
the in plant machine works for some people
because they do not want to do the portable one,
but they all have their advantages and disadvantages.
- Well one of the beauties of portable roll forming
that we've certainly heard a lot about
in the last several years,
is chop and drop,
where folks that purchase a portable machine
will supply panels to their competitors,
because their competitors will know about the equipment
and will have jobs that they'll require panels for
and in leu of buying a factory produced panel
they'll go to a,
a lot of these competitive contractors that have machines
and ask them to roll the projects for them.
- Right on the job site.
- So let's talk about that maintenance of
a portable roll forming machine.
What does that maintenance entail?
- Well you know you have chains
that you have keep tensioned,
about once a year you probably have to go through a machine
and just re tension everything
and just make sure everything is tight,
all the nuts and bolts are tight,
lubrication is important.
Changing hydraulic fluid and filter once a year
and probably maintaining the gasoline engine,
which is changing spark plugs,
oil filter, oil, that type of thing.
So there is a certain amount of maintenance to be done,
however I would say on average you could do it
in three or four hours and be done with it.
I'd say three or four hours is not a bad deal.
- Right.
- I think the main thing that we typically hear back,
from a sales standpoint,
is keeping your shear blades properly lubricated.
Half of the calls that we get from people
is their cuts are getting a little more jagged,
their shear blades aren't working properly,
a lot of the times it's due to the fact they're
not keeping those blades properly lubricated.
- The thing about it is,
I've seen a lot of portable roll formers out there,
and just amazes me when I walk upon a job site
or walk into a customer,
they'll have this machine out under a shed,
a lot of times it's not even under a shed,
it's sitting out there in the elements and
I mean it could be a 25 or 30 year old machine,
and they fire that thing up and start running panels.
There's rust all over this thing,
the tires are flat on it,
but it's still running out good panels
and it's just amazing.
- Yeah they do have some longevity that's for sure,
and I've seen that here as well.
Sometimes I wonder if these guys weren't
dragging the machine off the trailer behind their truck
because that's what it looks like,
just beat up you know.
So maintenance is a huge part of these machines
but there's not a lot of that
that's done out there for a lot of these folks.
- You know I believe that there's a certain
level of responsibility
if you do decide to go the portable route,
either you're going to be mechanically inclined yourself,
or you're going to have someone on your crew that is,
because if you're buying a machine and
you're not mechanically inclined and you don't have anyone
on your staff that is then you're going to struggle.
You're going to have more problems
than the typical roll former.
- And that's just due to your own typical maintenance
that you have to accomplish.
- Yeah maintenance and also along with that
are the changeovers,
I mean you got to know the difference
between a screw driver and a crescent wrench
to be able to do that.
So if you don't know that,
and there are people out there that
don't know those type of things,
they did like Tom said,
they just struggle with that.
- You know at Sheffield if you
buy one of the New Tech Machines through us
we offer free training on the machines.
We have someone go out to your shop
and train all your people how to use the machine,
how to set it up,
how to change the tooling,
and also be there for follow up maintenance and anything,
and I know with Ron,
I mean I have customers all day that talk about
calling in to New Tech to get advice on this and that
and what's running so your not left out there
to fend for yourself.
(audio garbling) we back it up,
we're just a phone call away. - That's very true.
- And I think that would give someone a lot of
peace of mind who might be concerned about that,
that consideration.
- Yeah we have a staff here,
now we've increased,
we have probably four techs here now
that can actually answer calls
and help people over the phone.
We do that everyday. - Okay.
- The portable roll formers now have
advanced so much since their inception
that you can get a quality,
just as good a quality if not better in a lot of cases,
of a profile or a panel
and consistencies you can for from any in house,
in plant roll former.
Let's say a lot of the competition,
the big roll names out there
are using New Tech equipment in their warehouses
to produce these panels.
- I was just going to say that.
(everyone laughing)
That's absolutely true,
I was just going to interject that as well.
We often see specifications where they
mention a factory supplied panel,
yet it's funny that a lot of those factory suppliers
use our equipment in their factory as well.
- Yep.
- Probably do the easier changeovers,
being able to fill in on quick jobs
that they need to take care of a customer where there,
maybe they had a missed shipment or something.
- And produce panels that are as good as their
in plant machines do.
- It's a whole lot more economical to buy
a New Tech Machine than it is
one of these 30 foot behemoth to roll--
- Absolutely, a fraction of the price.
- Well this has been a really great conversation
and I appreciate everyone jumping in.
Big thanks to Ron Schell and
Tom Laird from New Tech Machinery,
as well as Tom Southerland from Sheffield Metals.
Subscribe to the Metal Roofing Channel to stay up to date,
we post every Monday and Wednesday.
Comment with any questions that you'd like answered
on future Q&A Mondays,
anything else check us out at
sheffieldmetals.com and I will catch you next time.
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