How It's Made. Touring a 100 YEAR OLD Marine Factory! | E042

[Music] hello and welcome to the boat shed not a lot of things last for a 100 years in the marine environment but some do and stick around and I'll show you what I mean now my name is John and this boat here is antidote I'm an engineer and a sailor with the dream of fixing up this old boat to go sailing around the world but we have a lot of work to do first Unfortunately today I'm recovering from a little minor surgery but don't worry I'm going to be just fine so I thought I'd take you all on a little field trip let's Saddle Up [Music] welcome to YVR Airport we are on our way today to DC we're going to try to meet up with Bridget well we're going to meet up with Bridget and we got Nico here with us I love coming to this airport it's a really cool beautiful airport as much as they can be you know we're on our [Music] way know my never know and just like that it's a fresh day here in Washington DC we have a free day here today while Bridget is in law school class and I thought that it would be really fun to check out some of the rich Maritime things in the area what I want to do today is go and visit a company that's been operating Marine space for over 100 years and I bet you that if you have a boat you've got some of their products on your boat already and I'm really excited to go see them see what they do and how their facility operates I enjoy the opportunity to get a behind the scenes Peak when I can and to share it with you guys is really fun for me so I hope that you enjoy this we're going to drop in on groko Gross mechanical Labs they've been in the Maryland area for over a hundred years so we're going to meet with Dan who's their VP and he's going to show us around the facility show us what they do and really excited about that so here we go it's always really fun for me to visit a new area you know it's like everything is the same but different you know like the roads are really similar but everything is a little odd and you're not really sure where you are it's always a fun little adventure and my first impressions of the DC area have been that uh there's a lot of really amazing sites to see I've just sort of driven by things and sort of seen them from the road I haven't visited anything yet I've only been here for a couple of hours uh I have to say that I've had a lot of encounters with really poor driving so far in the area I don't know is that is that a thing you guys are is are Washington DC drivers notoriously difficult to get along with there's a lot of driving in between lanes and just sort of going wherever and whenever you want and not stopping and all kinds of fun stuff [Music] so hi yeah I'm John I'm here to see Dan right he's in the conference room if you'd like to go in awesome thanks that's just yes sir right through here okay great hey I'm looking for Dan H that'd be me hey good to meet you good to meet you D failing gr on thanks for having me grab seat gross mechanical Labs that's it so so how did we get from gross mechanical to groko is it like gross Co I believe 100 years ago that was kind of the trend you had groko perco you get into PepsiCo that was just kind of how it was done kind of so 1918 was when they found the 1918 they opened the doors they spent the first couple of decades getting involved in a huge variety of different things right I think the original owner had a patent on what the time was considered to be the first automobile tail light the predecessor to a snowball machine you're grinding ice and making snow cones really they had the original original patents on that back then and the owner was a huge Marine guy huge marine guy pleasure Bo pleasure boat racing things like that which really wasn't common at the time so you had these guys in the 20s that would get into racing and that's what he did so that was his passion so he got into that we made some Marine heads we made different types of vows and strainers and then it kind of hit World War II when the US government said well you know we like what everybody's doing but we're going to need you to do this instead like a lot of Industries you were sort of brought into manufacturer of certain products exactly what happened we have some products we still make today we had we made some predecessors to products that have that we still make today evoled correct the first two major things that we did we got into duplex strainers which allowed the landing crafts like the Higgins boats and the in Normandy and in the South Pacific to be able to land get everybody off the boat and then hight tail it back out of there without clogging the strainers full of sand and stall this is like your rore dual filter exactly what it is except it's for raw water exactly what it is so you can plug it up and then you can flip it get the heck out that's exactly what it was so those Hagen ships were pretty basic at the time I mean it was basically a tub with a motor and a steering wheel replacing that single strainer with a duplex saved a lot of lives I mean it's something as basic and simple as that right and we made oil coolers that were used in tanks and I believe in Marine also which we still make today for the industrial Market it's the original design original patterns original castings original processes everything so I'm here we have sort of a the original founder a real Innovative guy obviously he was a tinkerer for by trade like that's what he did he like to invent and he's got how many Pat do we know how many patents he has I don't know how many but we've got prints all over the walls as far as the ones that he's done the ones in that are in this room are a little more modern but we've still got his original patents many that we could find hanging from the early 19s before the official founding wow what an engineer he did it in the basement of a row house in Baltimore and it kind of Grew From There into a real facility prior to World War I wow that real industrious spirit was it and he happened to really like pleasure boat so it was a good fit correct there was a passion there built in and then the company has grown from there I think those trophies over there were his from racing in the 20s right that's cool because I mean I see in a lot of your products like let's for example do you know when the BV valve was first introduced I want to say that one was introduced in the80s I'm not positive the day off the top of my head so that would have been early in the ball valve technolog but that valve hasn't really changed much hasn't changed hasn't changed so um you know dabble in materials by way of seals um different processes for making the seats for Machining and molding aside from that you're looking at solid bronze components you're looking at 316 stainless ball 316 driver so I think a lot of your products speak to that longevity that's the goal you know cuz they they haven't really changed much in 40 years or even longer probably some you know and except for little maybe some Modern Chang manufacturing process manfacturing processes you know it's bulletproof and it lasts forever so there's not many things you really need to change right we've always stried to make the best product you can make and not really focused on the cost so much which will limit your Market when you do that we found ways over the last 10 to 15 to 20 years to be able to do both to be able to make a high-end product at a now more of a reasonable price or a competitive price that gets you involved in more aspects of the market so we're certainly a major player in in all aspects of the industry if you're not really interested in offering the cheapest of anything you you you have a sort of a standard that you want to hit you always lose a race to the bottom so that's something that we just don't do some of the products we make are relatively simple mechanically at the end of the day a valve or a fitting is a valve or a fitting but our design work that goes into it it's not treated like it's a commodity we're not buying somebody else's thing we have something designed we're considering materials considering thicknesses and we build because if the owner is going to put it on his boat it better be right and so now if I understand correctly you've been working with foundaries in the area since the company was pretty much started yeah we've been with our core Foundry which is in Pennsylvania for a good 80 years at this point so a lot of your products are they're cast in Pennsylvania they come over here and then we run them through a full manufacturing process here could be as simple as needing to just grind something down to pretty complicated machine operations on on others ranging from you know a tenth of a pound up to close to 100 pounds if not more in some cases per casting right but a lot of your products are 100% americanmade 100% American made that is really cool a lot of our products are you know there still there are some items that we'll have made for us it's our design it's our tooling it's our spec they get 100% qced here a lot of times there's value added that's done to it inh house the US made items are 100% done inhouse wow start finish pack start finished from bringing in raw materials from raw castings full machine work full QC work assembly work testing work secondary QC work packaging shipping start life in this building and they leave that's right cool yep you know there are areas in in the in this industry for sure where you've got some very expensive assets that you you purchas and you're using regularly that you need to protect products that we make at the first line to keep them off the bottom of the ocean so right I can appreciate that I mean like you know someone that has a a 20-year-old jet ski that they just run around their Lake they might not need the heaviest Duty valve absolutely with my 46t monoh hall that I want to be cruising all around the world on I need to be able to rely on those components and trust them and be able to rebuild them if needed and so that's where maybe something absolutely right and that's what it's built for so um you know like I said the pedigree of the company from the owner all the way back that's the exact lifestyle that they've lived being on boats going places on boats living their life on the water you've experienced some good things and you experienced some bad things and if you can build a product to hedge off some of those bad things it's the way to do it you know we make a few different tiers of items all of which are high-ends but there are some that are closer to a price point than others again they're not built to a price point they're built to a standard that we want from a design that we created and we find out out how much it's going to cost after we develop it there's not a pipe fitting that we sell that's not Hands-On inspected reviewed in some cases pressure tested for even a pipe fitting to make sure that it's going to hit the the have periodic QC that you do to verify not even periodic it's 100% 100% if we buy 10,000 pieces of one fitting 10,000 pieces have hands on% so you are fully trust but verify correct well I'm really excited to take a look at what you've got in the shop yeah I think uh some eye opening things back there before we get to it I see some really interesting machines in here can you tell me about what's going on here yeah currently that's a conference room showpiece but about five or six years ago that was in full operation 5 days a week eight hours a day and has been so since the early 1920s I believe the manufacturer date on that machine is 1921 I'm not positive it's in that range what we were doing with that most recently was drilling tapping and counter syncing the inlet and the outlet holes and all of our different strainers that we make okay and it would run non-stop so we would do between 3/4 of an inch up to 3 in with that machine and another machine that was similar to it wow that machine is still the best machine in this building despite all the most technological advances we have back there you hear the term they don't make them like they used to right that's a prime example I mean it's all cast iron gearings I mean these gears back there are huge it's been running for 100 years 100 years almost Non-Stop and it and the gears are looking pretty good we can't buy Replacements so I mean that's this machine still runs if you could get a power source in here to run that machine you could turn on right now and make parts that's pretty cool yep despite being manual is a very very fast manufacturing process on that you were just however limited to one machine yeah per size and as you're growing and you need to be able to increase capacity you just simply can't do it with a machine like that wow so while it worked great and still works great it became not the right tool for the job okay well can we see the facility if you've got a couple minutes that'd be great I've got more than a couple minutes I'm really excited to check it out fantastic let's take a walk all right sounds great starting off every week we get in deliveries of castings from our local Foundry which is about 2 hours away in Pennsylvania um they deliver a variety of shapes and sizes of castings we have about 500 or so different castings that we'll use which we will run through the machines in a variety of different capacities and Fashions depending on the parts so this one is a large twin spin or twin turret single spindle machine so we're able to run both sides of a part uh within one setup oh I see so you got you got your one guy there yep so this will reach over grab the component bring it back over and then this side of the spindle will machine that so you can essentially Run Two at one really cool this machine over here is identical except instead of a single um a twin turret as a single turret and a tail stock so you can run larger pieces to require support on the back so if you have something like plug like this and we make something that are much larger you would hold it in the Chuck here and then or vice versa and then hold it on the tail stock this way so when you spin it you don't risk this it stays completely straight wow so those machines are intended for that really cool this machine is from the mid1 1990s and we keep it for one purpose um and it's only run one part because it still works for that and there's no real reason to get rid of it the Mills generally are from work for simpler jobs now we used to make you know quite a variety of things in there but we've been moving parts from our older equipment to some of the new modern machinery which have um lights out capabilities so run 24/7 um and they do that in different you know different capacities you guys are keeping this Foundry in Pennsylvania really busy we are we actually picked up another Foundry in New Jersey because they weren't able to keep up with the work over the last few years the industry as a whole really um really started skyrocketing um since Co and you know we all know the supply chain hassles that came as a result um we in order to continue to grow the way we were growing had to change our supply chain and and which is not you know something you don't take lightly when it comes to something like a casting it's easy to make a shape with a pattern but to really do it right get the get the pork temperatures right the drying times right since you get a quality casting is something that's not always easy to do it's something we take very very seriously especially since some of our castings are large um you can run into issues where even after you machine everything you could get it up and you have a horrible leaking issues as a result of voids paracity things like that so how many pounds of bronze do you go through in a week here what's the output on about 10,000 10,000 lb of bronze just from the Machining yes and what's the current price of bronze per pound right now that I don't know yeah these are the last of the old school types of machines that we have this one is a small live tool machine you know I mean it's it's a no frills type machine but it it kind of gets the job done for easy things in 2016 we purchased these two machines and what we the intent there was to take if I can find one let me back up a little bit sure we would buy our strainer heads from our Foundry have them trucked down we would run them in six different CNC Lads that would that did not have live tooling that would simply thread and do the Machining operations on two of the sides of this product it would then go to a manual drill press department where they would drill tap and counters this is a scrap piece by the way but they would drill tap and counter SN all of these holes it would then go to a grinding Department where they would manually grind the the faces on these it would then go to the spindle Department which I showed you that example up there where they would drill and tap and counter sync this so it would take a significant amount of time from the time we got the raw castings in and started to be machined to get them from Department to Department yeah um very very slow we weren't able to keep up with any level of growth as a result so what we did is we brought these two machines in which started to take a significant workload away from how we used to do it and allow the parts to come off these machines complete we still would run some of the other styles the old way because we still needed to make more but a machine like this would allow us to run both sides of that part and all of the other subsequent work without any other steps so it wasn't the fastest machine run in the world it still might take 12 minutes a piece yeah um or 20 minutes depending on the size but it would come off complete so instead of waiting months or weeks depending on what it was to get an entire batch out we were getting finished product every single day up to assembly so we went from taking a couple of months to get a batch done to 40 a day he's running the second side here so it's a two-stage operation for this and the reason they don't just flip it over is that the setup's different to hold it so they'll do one side second side and then it's done so you still have the same benefit of it being finished so the BV valves are all broadcast and you do all the Machining and building here yep every single bit so that's a 100% American made 100% American made and then all assembled and tested upstairs and the testing will range from a few minutes up to an hour of full pressure test depending on what it is we then switched to this machine a twin spindle twin turret lathe we've got a robot arm above it that's sitting up here what'll happen is it's got two sets of Jaws on it it'll come down grab this completed part cuz this side will be totally finished move up this arm will come out grab this slide it over to prepare for the second operation the arm will then come down load a new raw casting here and then they'll both shoot off and start running by bringing this machine in and doing the exact same process as we did there we went from being able to run 40 a day to 220 a day so you gone from 40 a day to 220 a day and what kind of appreciable differences in quality or uh the quality is about the same cuz it's extremely repeatable we know the amount of time needed in order to change tooling to change inserts to make sure that we are repeating the same you know the same exact runs so that's been fine one thing that's worth noting about automation is people often consider to be a job killer for us increase our capacity to the point that we're able to make enough to continue with demand and develop new products to create demand we've been able to shift the employment from higher end people to run these types of machines and then also being able to take the staff that we would have otherwise had as an operator and have them work in the assembly departments or different areas in the building so we've grown as a result of automation which has resulted in higher employment versus what's often considered to be ways to remove people so as you've moved to more automation you really haven't had to let a lot of Staff go you've been able to we've grown we've added gr because now instead of 40 pieces a day we have 20 220 pieces a day and being able and and that's just for one part it's true for more than that we've added employment from our other local injection molded manufacturers because now we need more opponents we've got more people upstairs putting things together and it's been growth across the board as a result and from a Foundry we're able to add more foundaries because we need to be able to get parts made so Gro making jobs here and the making jobs that's right this machine it's a fully Automated machine and it is the best machine in the building so using this as an example this is a duplex strainer that requires five operations the first way we used to do it is we would turn this down in a lathe to give us straight mounting pads yeah from there it would go to a mill this would get milled off in one run it would get flipped over this side would get Mill in a second run it would then go back to the lathe where we would then do the boore so actually for this case it's four different operations and it would take it would have to go in line into four different machines so in order to get one batch of castings you might be 6 weeks before you could get it through all the different machines right for the same result we're able to take this part mount it into one of what we call tombstones on on the horizontal Mill this will be done complete in 45 minutes the tombstone itself has fixtures that are created to hold whatever casting you're calling a tomstone right the entire unit the whole like yep the entire fixture set we bolt these castings to them in the way we see fit in order to fixture them we have to make your own fixtures in order to do it sure the machine knows what's on that Tombstone is part number a and it knows that it's section number one you can see the number on it you tell the machine part number a is on section number one and it needs program number 83 right it will grab the parts shove it into the machine and knows what part it is what fixture it is and what program it needs and we'll machine it so the machine itself has no breakdown of fixturing no breakdown of tooling it will run for months on end without interruption if you can feed it long enough right so I see like there are like you said there's lots of different types of fixtures in here on these tombstones like these batches so it does it read what is on the the fix or do you have to program and tell it do it ever happened when you're Shing it the wrong thankfully no um because you will you'll you'll break something you you'll hit the hard steel exactly and you'll hit it at a speed that you don't want to hit you don't want cuz you're thinking you're coming at bronze thinks you have two more inches to go coming in harden steel the car against the wall cuz there's looks like four or five different fixtures in there just I see some valves I see some pump housings yep all we do is put it in tell the machine and it runs them it's a single tool Mill with the tool the tool change system is on the other side of the wall it'll rotate tooling out as needed based off what the program calls for and the turn table will rotate a one Dee increments in order to allow the machine to access all the parts that it needs to access the tool changer for this machine is incredible these are all the tools that that machine uses there's plann duplication of Tooling in there so certain levels of wear per tool it knows I use station 4 517 times and then it will move to station 5 the next time it calls for that tool one of the most notable things that are run there I don't have a casting here to show you there's some in the warehouse but we'll do the 6-in strainer heads which are 95 lb castings that that will do again in one operation wow that's incredible 95 lb 95 lb casting it'll do it in one operation as opposed to 2 months which is what we used to have to do the old way that we were go about it what's this old guy here to a bit sharpener um oh sharp so they'll they'll do different types of Tool Sharpening and grinding with it and that's still used every day this is probably an ancient piece old brown and sharp yeah it doesn't have anything on that I guess I'm just struck by the amount these all represent a boat somewhere it's just incredible to me that there's this much every one of those is actually sold um that those are these 500 if these were if we had these up in assembly now and out the door they'd be already on their way to a building wow amazing um so the inventory levels although it seems somewhat significant they're almost all spoken for so the efficiencies that we've got and one other thing by way just general employment the guys that come in here and women actually to come here to work in the Machine Shop get to work with the latest and greatest equipment we've got heavy investment in the Machinery um they've got a gentleman who runs the engineering department who has significant background and a variety of avenues on of the manufacturing field so they've got somebody to learn from they've got somebody to train them they've got equipment to learn and grow with um so from that aspect it's a really great place for some of these guys that do have a goal of getting into manufacturing you know they can grow get learn on a job correct and you can grow that's very cool and have you finding that these machines are coming down in price no no not really well to be fair I don't have anything to compare it to cuz some of these larger um automated machines that's the first time we've ever dabbled the cost I would imagine is continuing to be relatively similar when it comes to some of these lays but what you get for the money is changing yeah we're easily into this machine for a million doll SL um that machine probably higher than that because there's multiple things that go into it there's unbelievable fixturing cost there's an excessive amount of tooling that goes into it um there's more involved with that so it's a significant investment but it from day one has proved worthwhile yeah so we were looking at the drawing downstairs of you know the one that Don happens to have of these so the headers used to be manually drilled and the header being this piece here now we get them in the mill and when I was in my 20s I would and we'd be behind on production I was out here helping the drill press guys drill them it's an absolute nightmare because there's in some cases hund lar one so every one of these had to be manually drilled and counter sync from both sides manually manually I would imagine you'd blow through these holes occasionally that's the problem now this is MIL which took a significant amount of Labor out they'll go down hand cut every single one of these hands you know debur them hand Hammer with a little you know hammer and a ping every one of these through two sides yeah which is 1800 yeah so 1,800 and then you got to flare out both sides of it they'll take these they'll solder dip them flare okay they'll pressure test them to 200 PSI these have been tested these haven't been dipped very cool to do it so it's an and there is nothing that's changed about this since the 30s these were like on a lot World War II bus and in tanks yeah yeah so the gasket material to be fair has changed and maybe some of the Plastics that are used as a washer but the manufacturing process is not um and we still have people who more or less demand that we make them so we continue to make them they like them because they work 100% of the items that we make whether we make them 100% in house or whether we bring them in from someone else who did the machine work we still do 100% checks and tests on everything that leaves our facility that's great that's great that's what we like to hear a significant amount of Labor time and Care go into each piece so here's a breakdown of the BV that's all that goes into it so this is a full BV valve full valve piece every single piece for the small one yes so we've got our our C8 4400 bronze and then we have 316 stainless 316 316f a Rubber seal yep and then what are these these are just that's a brass nut that will F in the 316 driver right so the driver along with seals will run in here wow and that engages the ball handle goes on the outside of that once it's engaged this entire thing can be disassembled very very easily repaired and put right back together with without having to remove from the hole of your boat right so this can all stay bolted up and you can have it down to this plug it from the outside and you could rebuild the whole thing exactly so those are 4in valves 4in valves they're big and they're the they're the third largest valve that we make wow what's the largest we make a 5 in with a side port we also make a 4 in with a side so it's a third the fourth largest um the side port 4 in bigger and then the two different 5 in are absolute monsters wow how much does this weigh that probably weighs about 85 lbs wow that's incredible so that's the ball that's inside the BB valve the ball that's inside the BV Val so what do a lot of other valves use instead of solid 36 stand major right we are in this case uh there maybe another valve or two on the market that does use 36 or does use steel um it's not common most other balls that are on the market are plated brass so Chrome plated or nickel PL plated brass the the balls that we use on this line of product um are the standard of the industry which is going to still be plate brass it takes a long time to build what really appears to simple and is mechanically simple these it's much more consistent every plastic piece that's on there is a custom injection molded part proprietary materials UL tested they go through the whole thing everything is consistent as consistent can be with these they'll build them they'll come over to one of two pressure test stations pressurize it time it hold it to a certain pressure watch for a pressure drop if they don't have a pressure drop obviously it's okay if they do hold it off to the side to figure out why so they release the pressure back and back out cool and they move on to the next one wow right um every single piece gets checked wow so our electronics department cool uh this is where we do all the electronic valve buildings they'll build the gear boxes they'll do all the potting for the cir for the the position indicators which requires some soldering and some circuit Boors you close that Val when it's supposed to be open it knows it and it will just open itself back up and vice versa if you try to open it when it's closed it will close itself if you try to physically override the motor is there like you don't have to okay um so I like if it's trying to open the valve and you're trying to close it can you does it have like a clutch it does so if for some reason power is off on you when it's here and you and it's not functioning the way it's supposed to with an automatic drive or with electrically controlled Drive simply pull the spacer out move the cam and you can move it in any orientation you want full manual again fully manual and then when the time comes you snap it back in place when you want to go back to regular operation one thing to note too at the end of the day it's still a manual seock right it knows actually here's the thing it knows it's open it knows it's closed oh yeah you want to open it it opens it and if you watch this cam the cam is pushing it and the cam is going to move backwards as soon as it's completed the cycle and so by doing that you're able to then again operate it like nor open and close Okay smart so here we're doing all of our basket fabrication we buy a perforated sheet and a lot of it this is a Manel sheet and we buy stainless so 30 or four stainless or 400 or four or5 Manel a nickel-based alloy and a sign significantly more expensive than steel but it is also more corrosion resistant we offer a plastic basket there's no corrosion whatsoever with a plastic basket downside is my own personal opinion I I don't see a downside to a plastic Basket in a strainer it won't corrode and as stupid as this sounds when you're cleaning it it floats and then this department I want to say probably relatively unique every single pipe fitting that we do whether we make it inhouse or whether we have it made for us and brought in is 100% checked these are all replacement baskets bunch of parts wow all pipe fittings just groco as far as you can see this is like my candy shop here well it's it's a garage that's for sure well Dan that was uh an awesome tour I'm really thankful to see all it is that you guys do and there's an obvious commitment to Quality here and it seems like everyone gets along and it just seems like a really cool place to work yeah I appreciate the time you were able to spend and come check out what we do I mean we're proud of everything so we really like it when people can come in and and see the parts that they're using and yeah you know where it comes from and helps work goes yeah right on well I'm glad to know where it's all coming from and I'm sure we'll see some of your stuff on the boat when and uh but yeah thanks for timeing well you know you're welcome anytime come back and feel free to visit apprciate that it's nice to be here huge thanks to Dan and the other folks at groko for showing us around today that was very interesting for me and I hope it was for you too it's like a really interesting intersection of Old World craftsmanship and modern technology so that's really neat antidote has a lot of old groco products on board that are 35 or more years old and there's a good chance that on your boat you do too and maybe your grandparents boat and their grandparents boats it's just been around for a really long time and we were looking around in an old Ledger while we were there and found this entry from 1920 something from chriscraftboats we did manage to meet up with Bridget while we were in DC that was a lot of fun we didn't film a whole lot of it though but we did manage to blast around and check out the site and what a cool City if you're new to the channel and like to get caught up from the beginning there's a playlist for you right here that you can check out and if you want to subscribe for more of these videos usually it's just boat work you can hit the button right there see you next time are you a power booat guy or a Sabo guy HBO guy okay is there anyone else we can talk to absolutely

2025-02-24 00:58

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