The CWB Association Welding Podcast
The CWB Association Welding Podcast
Episode 179 with Scott Fong and Max Ceron
The CWB Association hosted this year's annual CanWeld Conference in collaboration with Fabtech Canada in Toronto, ON. Join us as we bring you special episodes recorded on-site to keep our members on top of what’s new and exciting in the steel and welding industry.
Unlock the secrets of high-temperature heat treating and welding with industry expert Scott Fong, CEO of Gallant-Fong Group Inc. and Director of Copperheat Equipment, as he shares his incredible journey from a field Heat Treatment Technician to a Journeyperson Welder and Welding Inspector. Gain valuable insights into the challenges and nuances of managing equipment longevity amidst thermal cycling and shutdowns, especially in the petrochemical and power generation sectors. Scott also provides his candid take on Fabtech Canada and the importance of events like these for professionals in the welding industry.
Website: https://cooperheatequipment.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cooperheat-equipment-ltd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cooperheatequipment/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cooperheatequipment/
A special thank you to Cooperheat Equipment for sponsoring our Podcast Booth at 2024 Fabtech Canada! https://cooperheatequipment.com/
Thank you to our Podcast Advertisers:
Canada Welding Supply: https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/
Miller: https://www.millerwelds.com/products/mobilearc
What did you think about this episode? Send a text message to the show!
All right, I can check. Check, I'm good. So I'm Max Duran. Max Duran, cwb Association Welding Podcast, pod pod podcast. Today we have a really cool guest welding podcast. The show is about to begin.
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Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to another edition of the CWB Association podcast. My name is Max Teran and this week we are at Fabtech Canada here in Toronto at the Toronto Congress Centre. We've been having lots of fun. The show's been going on all day. This is now technically day one. We got day two, day three still coming. This is my first podcast of the week. I got Scott Fong here, who is CEO of the Gallant Fong Group Inc. And also director of Copper Heat Equipment. How's it going, scott? Good thanks.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me here, awesome, awesome. So when did you get in? I flew in yesterday from Doha. I got in around 9.30 in the morning and then proceeded out to London to visit a colleague out there. Yeah, so yesterday.
Speaker 1:And then, how's the show been so far today?
Speaker 2:Great, I haven't had a time to look around really good but it's the first time I've been to Fab Tech Canada. Oh really yeah absolutely Been to the US lots and quite impressed with what I've seen so far.
Speaker 1:So I guess, why Fabtech Canada? If you haven't done it before, why this year?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm speaking at the conference, so that was a driver, yeah, yeah, if I'm going to be here, I'm going to come see it all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what are you speaking on this week?
Speaker 2:Talking about the sort of practical considerations for high temperature local heat treating applications, so around post-weld well, not post-weld heat treatment per se, but field heat-treating and high-temperature applications.
Speaker 1:Okay, now you're talking like flame heat, induction heat or all sorts.
Speaker 2:Induction and electrical resistance for solution annealing or normalizing the higher-temperature stuff above what you'd consider post-weld heat-treatment temperatures.
Speaker 1:So anything above say okay. And then what applications are we talking big, big, like greater blades? Are we talking mining bearings?
Speaker 2:or typically it's on piping, okay, vessels, that's where we see most of our stuff being done. Um, you know, in in the petrochemical and power generation facilities you're seeing a lot of uh facilities being pushed past their initial design life, and so we're getting in a lot of these unique repair situations.
Speaker 1:So you're seeing, you're putting layers on layers on layers, layers on layers.
Speaker 2:But you get a lot of this precipitation, hardening and cracking of certain types of materials Just from the wear of its expansion and expansion, contraction up and down, uh like, uh, you know dynamic loads of some different kinds, moreover.
Speaker 1:Uh, thermal cycling? Okay, shut downs right.
Speaker 2:So plants up and down, and yeah, they shock the equipment and over time it starts to.
Speaker 1:I worked in the mining industry in saskatchewan potash and that's a lot of brine. People think that it's not going to be as hard on the equipment because you're not using solvents or chemical, it's just water and salt solutions. But the temperature grades you go from cold to boiling hot to cold, back and forth all day long. The equipment just gets destroyed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I can only imagine.
Speaker 1:Yeah now, you know, in terms of you coming to to fabtech canada. You know you submitted a paper, so what was the initial expectation for you coming here? Being like all right, this is my first one. I've been to a few in the us. They're type like, depending whether you're in chicago or vegas or wherever. They're all different. Yeah, what did you expect this one to be like?
Speaker 2:I expected it to be smaller than it is actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was quite surprised by the size of it. Yeah, you know, when we were working on the setup here, initially we had scaled back. Yeah, we weren't going to use that other building because we thought it wasn't going to fill. It sold out like within a week. Wow, it sold out like within a week. Wow, we had to open it right up and it's. It's a. It's a sold out house here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I'd been involved years ago with the Canweld uh uh conference and back when they used to have their own the expo. Yeah, separately, this is going back, you know, over 10 years ago, for sure. Yeah, um, but Never Fabtech Canada.
Speaker 1:So what's your connection to the CWB? You know you said you've been around with the Expo before. That's going way back, you know and I so you know you've been around the block then. Like what's your connection?
Speaker 2:So I started out in the field as a field heat treatment technician for Cooper Heat back in the day, and then I went into welding, became a journeyman welder and got into welding inspection. So then the. Cwb certification. There became a welding supervisor and I'm not a great welder, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 3:I met the minimum acceptable standard to get my journeyman certificate.
Speaker 1:You got a 70? Then I went to an inspection right.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I've just been involved through that and with the AWS northern section in we. One of my companies has been a sponsor there for a long time. Yeah, I just I like the organizations that are, you know, really supporting the education outside of you know, the day to day, the standard stream yeah, yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 1:So you said that you supported the AWS chapter in Alberta. So you are. Is that where you call home is Alberta?
Speaker 2:Right now I call home whatever Marriott's closest to the airport I landed at.
Speaker 1:I feel you brother, I know that life yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm on a rotation between North America, europe and Asia or the Middle East on a pretty regular basis right now.
Speaker 1:And that's all with the heating solutions, or is this a part of a larger network?
Speaker 2:It's mostly related to Cooper Heat, which is the heat-treating equipment manufacturer based in the UK. They have a big client base throughout the Middle East so I've been going there a lot, spending time at the facility where they manufacture the equipment and then back here in Canada. I have a couple companies as well that are um uh in the rental equipment and then a field heat treatment service company besides and where are those based out of? Uh, we have offices in edmonton, fort mcmurray, calgary, sarnia, london, frederickton between the group of three or four different companies.
Speaker 1:That's a busy schedule, man. How are you managing this?
Speaker 3:Not well.
Speaker 2:I know that life.
Speaker 1:You've got to eat well. You've got to try to get some exercise in.
Speaker 2:I have not done well with it. The last 16 months has been bad. I've gained weight, I've been eating in restaurants way too much, not exercising enough. Yeah, I've started to put things in place now that it'll get better over the next, but I've had a run of about 16 months that were rough yeah, like coming here.
Speaker 2:For example, I checked out of my hotel would have been Saturday night here, probably 10 pm. Saturday night in Doha, went to work all day, drove from work out to the airport to fly to Dubai, stop over and fly to Toronto, landed at 9.30 in the morning, went to London to meet with a colleague there and came back to check into my hotel about 4 o'clock in the afternoon yesterday. So it was about a 42 hour shift. Yeah, I mean I sleep on the flights and stuff yeah, you do learn to sleep on planes.
Speaker 1:I have to someone told me like, oh, I can't sleep on a plane. It's like once you get into the work we do, yeah, that's the only time. Yeah, that's when you actually sleep like a baby now on a plane, like I'm out.
Speaker 2:You can't, uh, you just can't do the amount of travel and and there's no time for jet lag to be down well, and sleeping on a plane really helps with the jet lag yeah, yeah, because then you just wake up and it's just the next day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't even think about it, right? Yeah, so when?
Speaker 2:I timed my sleep. I'd been up for 24 hours straight and when I uh took off from dubai, I scheduled myself so I was falling asleep and I was waking up at 5 am Toronto time. Basically, yeah, that's how it's got to go.
Speaker 1:And you got a family, you got kids.
Speaker 2:I have a fiance and stepson, stepson's in Barcelona and my fiance's currently in Italy, but we live in Montenegro, kinda Kinda. Yeah, that means you get mail sent there. I don't even. Actually I don't even I don't even get mail sent there, because I've been in about 30 days in the last six months how is that balanced like with family?
Speaker 1:I mean, I I can give you the bad coals notes of my life where I went through a divorce already as a business owner and not being home and that whole thing. It's hard man.
Speaker 2:Well, so I got engaged much later in life, right? So I haven't gone through the divorce, but I found a fantastic woman a little over four years ago, yeah, and we just recently got engaged. She has the flexibility to travel as well. She was a business owner and so you know we don't usually spend that much time apart. You find ways. Yeah yeah, yeah, like we'll be on maybe a three-week run now, but generally, you know, it's not very often we're that long apart, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The trips are usually shorter, and then somewhere in between we're meeting up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for the conference here you come in. You know you're sponsoring us. Thank you, you know we appreciate the support. Yeah, what is it that you look to gain or to grow? You know working with companies like the CWB and even just these events in general, you know.
Speaker 2:This is a lot less about growth and just more about being part of the industry that feeds you right I've always been a big believer of that.
Speaker 2:I've been involved uh as a volunteer in multiple organizations over the years for the betterment of uh, the field, heat treatment occupation, for example, in trade. Now, um, I was involved with the ipa conference in edmonton for for many years as well. I don't know. I've just always found that when you're volunteering with these organizations and continue to give back to the industry, that feeds you, it continues to feed you. So it's never a calculated. You know people ask me all the time, it's not a KPI.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not a.
Speaker 2:KPI. So what did you get out of that? What did you get out of that? It's like, just you know, if you just wait, if you do good things, good things come back to you yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like I mean, that's a very, that's a very interesting lesson that I'm always trying to give to young people, because, and they're like, why would I come spend a day a month volunteering with the local association, whether it's us, aws, asme, whatever- you learn you network, the opportunities become endless and you meet people.
Speaker 2:You meet experts in the field and it's just so good, it's just yeah. I mean and I've had conversations with people as well and I'll tell them the same thing Get involved in the industry that feeds you and it will pay dividends A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:And the relationships you make. You don't even know the connection, this world that we live in, this space we occupy, of the steel industries. Although it seems huge and wealthy which it is in another way it's tiny Because you'll meet someone at a conference, at a networking session. 10 years later you're gonna run into them at some job in russia or something like, yeah, it's just crazy how that works.
Speaker 2:It is absolutely. You're running people all the time and uh, uh, I've been panama last year, ran into a guy from regina a boiler inspector actually that's panama canal and this guy comes up to ask me on the shoulders hey, hey, Scott, I'm like Dude, how are you? And he was a boiler inspector for TSAS. We worked on a shutdown together at co-op. He said yeah, man, I just saw your brother last month for a beer. I'm like. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:It never ceases to amaze me and I do see a lot of youth being involved, like we had our nac this morning all the chapters. I swear it was the youngest room we've ever had that I've been a part of. Oh yeah, I'll bet you half the chapters are people under the age of 35. That's great, yeah, and that's really heartening to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I mean even like a lot of, uh, the speakers here at the conference, so there's quite a few people there that I know from other places, right, Other conferences and over time, and yeah, it's just great.
Speaker 1:It's good Now when you compare Fabtech Canada to Fabtech USA. Do you go into it having the same expectations for yourself, or is it kind of you have a different angle depending on where you're going?
Speaker 2:Well, it's like I said my first time at fabtech canada, but now I, now that I've seen it, yeah, my, I'll do the the power walk several times through several of the aisles looking for what's the latest uh and greatest technologies and you know what companies are providing what systems and all sorts of different things. Like man, it's just so much to learn here and there is it's people ask that too. It's like why do you go to these trade? Because you will learn something every single time. You will learn something, right.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite part? What's the cool like? When you come to any of these trade shows you're like I can't wait to see X.
Speaker 2:Uh, I don't know. I I the probably more of the metal working stuff, something like the forming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they always take up a lot of space. Big machines. Right, you know, that thing's not 100 grand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1:It's like I don't think I can afford that thing, but sure is cool yeah.
Speaker 2:If I sold all of my companies, maybe I could afford a down payment. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like with your equipment. Now, like you said, this is your first time you don't have a booth here.
Speaker 2:No, no, no.
Speaker 1:So, like when you're coming here, you're looking for people that you could possibly share your you know business technology with, or you're looking to gain information from there to improve your product.
Speaker 3:Probably to improve our product right?
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm sure there's opportunities here to sell equipment. I wasn't really looking at it from that perspective. Someone on sales will probably shoot me for that, but you know it's like I really came to be part of the conference, right. And then the opportunity to speak there and they said oh, if you sponsor us, max will talk to you. I'm like that'd be pretty cool.
Speaker 1:I'd like to sit down and talk to him.
Speaker 3:Well, awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Yeah, now let's talk a little bit about your product, because I mean, induction heating has been around for a long time, right? Induction heating has been around for a long time Right. And it is something that I've used. I like I remember when induction blankets got really big for stress relieving and stuff like that. What is it that you guys do different?
Speaker 2:What's the shtick in your product that makes it cool? So there's induction and there's electrical resistance, and they're two different things, right. And so the induction thing became popular when Miller made it popular, right, but induction heating was around long before Miller started.
Speaker 1:I remember the coil ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so we produce at Cooper Heat. We produce the ceramics right for electrical resistance. The difference in the products is how they heat right. So with a heat treatment console, for example, you would have six plus what I would call channels of power that you can control with finite control. Okay, so a heater would cover 120 square inches and you could put one thermocouple on there and you could control with finite control 120 inches square.
Speaker 1:120 square inches, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:With the induction you can't do that same sort of thing. Well, it's mainly outgoing in, right? Yeah, so they'll have. They've got an inverter. There's only a single inverter in there, so they only have finite control of a single thermocouple.
Speaker 1:Right, okay.
Speaker 2:We do sell. Like one of my other companies, we do sell induction equipment as well and we rent it through one of my other companies and we use it in the field through one of my other companies right, and induction is a great tool, but it's not the end-all, be-all. It's not going to replace electrical resistance.
Speaker 1:Now electrical resistance. So if I look at it, like if you're just trying to explain this to a layperson and they're in the welding field, I got an electrode, I go to strike an arc, that arc, that heat, is electrical resistance. Sure Right, how do you get from that to what you do?
Speaker 2:So actually actually the electrical resistance heat treating actually started out with using welding machines as power supplies okay so basically, what they have is a bunch of ceramic beads that they weave a wire through back and forth and you have a connection on one side and a connection on the other, and it's sort of like your baseboard heaters at home.
Speaker 1:Well, you're from regina yeah, we don't, we have, we have central.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you got gas yeah if you're from the east coast, newfoundland, where I'm from, we have electric heaters, so it's just like a it's like a, an element right, yeah, okay that it has high resistance.
Speaker 1:You run a current through it and it heats up right now couldn't you just and I'm just daydreaming here couldn't you just hook up a negative on one side and a positive on the other and just let the whole dang thing be a a conductor you could?
Speaker 2:um, that's how they used to thaw pipe sometimes yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 1:Uh, because in the winter we would do that with ibeams too yeah, but you did then what you're doing there is also not good for the steel.
Speaker 2:No, no and it won't have the same level of resistance and every piece of pipe you connect it would be different and every material would be different, so this it's very specific, right. You cover 120 square inches. You got the exact same length of wire in every heater. They run 3.6 kilowatts of power, they have a 1.77 ohms of resistance and they draw 45 amps.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's yeah, every one of them right and so you can control that by switching it on and off to ramp up your heat, basically so there isn't a dial to be like hotter, colder, it's more like on off it's on off switching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay and then it to get to a desired temperature level. There's probably a gauge and it just bounces it up to that point or do you go to measure?
Speaker 2:no, there's a controller. Okay, yeah, so you just set a temperature and a rate you want to get there at, uh, maybe a dwell time or hold time okay, yeah for your soak period, and then a cool down rate as well, right?
Speaker 1:that's so interesting, like if you had to say you know your product um versus you know where the technology was, say, five years ago. Has there been a lot of advancements in this field?
Speaker 2:Surprisingly, not, no, surprisingly. Yeah. So Peter Cooper of Cooper Heat started Cooper Heat back in 1958. And he was originally using some ceramic heaters and resistance wire to make what were called finger elements, and they were slightly different than what we see today in the ceramic the flat ceramic heaters and resistance wire to make what were called finger elements. Uh, and they were slightly different than what we see today in the ceramic the flat ceramic. And uh, it was believed for a long time that he actually was, or cooper heat was the first people to make these pads, but actually wasn't, was a guy from another company called manning's and I got the story from uh a guy that's like 82 years old and still kicking yeah, and he said no.
Speaker 2:No, actually wasn't cooper heat that started it, and all these guys are from southport uk, because that's where it all started all started. Yeah, yeah so, um, and then he, he sort of revolutionized the industry by making them popular. And you know, since that time there hasn't actually been a huge amount of innovation, other than that, the way we control the system, you know we used to have what would be like a dial and you would turn up this dial, a pack or you know turn a button.
Speaker 2:Now, you know digital display digital display controllers, and now we've gone to laptops, controlling them with plcs and right, you know, we built in artificial intelligence to sort of tell us a little bit more about what's going on with the weld as we're heating it, in terms of if there's a fault or an error we can pick up on things that are happening before they become bad to the heat cycle, just from the heat, the way the heat moves within the piece. Yeah, yeah, so you're still dependent.
Speaker 1:The thermal resistivity of it.
Speaker 2:Not the thermal resistivity of it, but, moreover, the action of the amount of heat input that's going in, and then the temperature rise.
Speaker 1:Right, right, because it'll be a standard scale if everything's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it should follow a pretty standard scale. But now all of a sudden someone goes and throws a bucket of water on there and your machine starts calling for a whole bunch more power. If you're not watching you don't know why. Or say, one of your contactor sticks or starts to fail early and sometimes they'll fail open before they fail close now you'll notice the behavior of the contactor changing, going ah, that contactor needs to be changed out.
Speaker 2:Now we have systems that can figure that stuff, so they've taken more of the uh responsibility away from the technicians. I guess, and you know, we're becoming more reliant on machines to tell us when something's wrong, where before you used to just, you know, hit the guy and back it ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:what about the like durability of these systems? Because I worked with some induction, I worked with some um, uh, like reheating elements in my career and there was always like be careful, don't, don't crack the ceramic, you know, don't break them. Yeah, are they still touchy like that, or have they become more durable?
Speaker 2:uh, no, there's. There's a percentage of centered alumina in the beads somewhere, and you know they're. They're meant for good thermal conductivity, but they're also meant for uh, high temperatures and it's an insulator at the end of the day right what we're trying to do there is keep that electrical wire inside.
Speaker 1:They're contained from burning up, from burning up or arcing out somewhere else
Speaker 2:right so the ceramics are still pretty much the same. Um, you know, they're not meant to be dropped and beat around a lot, yeah. Um, the machines themselves are pretty durable. I've got machines that are 30 years old, yeah, and and they still work really well. You know, uh, with induction it's a little different because there's so many different electrical components in it. Uh, you know, when we used to go out with induction equipment, we would always bring a backup machine just in case just in case With electrical resistance.
Speaker 2:You never had to do that, Right.
Speaker 1:So Now you'd think that that would be a space for innovation. You know, because, like I mean, I remember getting. I went down a rabbit hole once about ceramics. Yep, because ceramics is in all aspects of welding. There's always some ceramic angle right. Yeah yeah, yeah. And I went down a rabbit hole of what makes a good ceramic and a bad ceramic. And I fell down the AC Delco rabbit hole. Have you ever heard why AC Delco spark plugs are AC Delco spark plugs?
Speaker 3:No no.
Speaker 1:Because they have a patent on a specific type of ceramic. So while all the other spark plugs in the world are creating triple blah, blah blah and V-new grooves and super grooves and blah, blah, blah and V-New Grooves and Super Grooves and blah, blah blah and all these other companies are trying to be so innovative on their spark plugs, acdelco has never done any of those things and is still the number one selling plug. But it's because the type of ceramic they use is less likely to fail than the others.
Speaker 2:So we know within our industry where to get our ceramics right. Yeah, you can get it from India, you can get it from india, you can get them from china or from china, or you can get them from hunger and we get ours from hunger and that's like the good ceramic.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The balcony yeah, I've been over to their facilities watch how they do it right, yeah, yeah it is pretty cool actually yeah, yeah, how do you?
Speaker 1:how do you cook things that need to be cooked?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, so they put them into these molds and they're green actually before they go in this big uh kiln and they go in this kiln and they're cooked really hot for 24 hours, something like that, and it's uh, it's pretty impressive and they cook them with the wire in it? I assume no, or they're just beads, just beads and then we weave them in the, in the plants oh wow in the in the fabrication facilities right yeah now, when you are gonna a product up, do you have to remove paint?
Speaker 1:Do you have to clean it off the grease Like how much prep is involved with wanting to use your product successfully.
Speaker 2:Not a lot. I mean we'll burn the paint off, that's fine.
Speaker 1:If there's grease on there, you don't want any combustibles around there for sure, right yeah?
Speaker 2:And we're used for that reason.
Speaker 1:We do bake-outs on pipe that contain, just to clean them out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to get the hydrogen baked out of there and the product and the residue cleaned out of there right, so they can weld prior to welding right.
Speaker 1:Cool. So how long have you been with Cooper Heat?
Speaker 2:So I started with Cooper Heat in Canada as a field technician back in 2000.
Speaker 1:What year are we now? 2024? Yeah, 2024. 24 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I started with, but I've not been with that company for 24 years Okay. So I worked for them for a couple of years and I went on to work for another company called Technical Heat Treatment, and then I went to work for another company called Connell Stress.
Speaker 3:And anyway I just worked my way through the industry, kind of thing right.
Speaker 2:At some point in time Cooper Heat had broken up between Cooper Heat Europe and Cooper Heat North America.
Speaker 1:And Europe is the base, home base. Yeah, it's Southport.
Speaker 2:Southport's where it's. That's the homeland. That's the mecca for heat treating and then or for field heat treating at least Somewhere in the mid-2000s. Cooper Heat North America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Team Industrial Services bought them and then, they ran a company called Team Industrial Services, a Team Cooper Heat, for a long time. The team eventually shut down the Cooper Heat brand in North America because they thought they were a bigger brand. They're not Globally.
Speaker 2:at least they're not and then they sold the brand back to Cooper Heat in the UK, which was owned by Stork, which was owned by Fleur, okay, and then. And Fleur's huge, fleur's huge, huge, huge. And then Fleur and Stork, which was owned by Fleur, okay, and then. And Fleur's huge, fleur's huge, huge, huge. And then Fleur and Stork was huge. Stork was a billion-dollar, over-a-billion-dollar company.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So somewhere along the line they basically Fleur decided to sell off Stork. They broke up Stork Cooper Heat sat under Stork UK. Stork UK decided to shut it down. They were in the process of shutting it down and I acquired it and restarted it and restarted it, and it's been and that's just a little over a year, not quite a year ago.
Speaker 1:It'll be a year this september and it's good like oh, it's phenomenal so like I mean, I feel like there was a marketplace there that never left what was the? Problem like why the difficulties in industry when it seems like it's uh, like you got clients and wait?
Speaker 2:uh, mismanagement, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's like bad timing, like timing yeah a number of different things? Did they expand too much when they did the uk's us?
Speaker 2:split? I don't, they were a global company. There's still fragments of Cooper Heat around the world. And they were the ones that started field heat treating as we know it today. But anyone that's done any field heat treating anywhere in the world knows the Cooper Heat name because the foundations that are training would have come from Cooper Heat.
Speaker 1:From Cooper Heat yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm not sure what happened exactly, but uh, I heard they were going to shut it down and uh, I reached out, got in touch with them and and acquired them and uh, got um, got the, the company restarted with the staff that were there that were going to be without jobs and right, and uh, and we started with a group and we've grown since that time and uh, it's going phenomenally well.
Speaker 1:We're really busy yeah, yeah, now with the existing company. This is still in the uk. Then that's still. Yeah, that's still cooper heat equipment in the uk and you haven't, uh, set up a new branch here in the americas I like manufacturing or just distribution manufacturing.
Speaker 2:I set up a legal entity in the us that's more for distribution yeah we're still going to continue to manufacture as the uk. Uh, it's just, there's no reason not to Not manufacturing.
Speaker 1:I set up an illegal entity in the US. That's more for distribution.
Speaker 2:We're still going to continue to manufacture out of the UK. There's no reason not to. At the end it's just really the people that are there at that company, the people that have been there for so long. I mean one of the women there is actually second generation. Her mother was like there was two companies. There was Cooper, heat, heat and then eventually company Manning's came out of Cooper.
Speaker 1:Heat.
Speaker 2:They were the two premier companies in the world. Her mother used to be the assistant, the executive assistant, of Ron Manning, the founder of Manning.
Speaker 3:And she now works for.
Speaker 2:Cooper Heat, because at some point in time, actually, stork acquired Manning's as well.
Speaker 1:And then it all got swallowed up.
Speaker 2:So we've got people there that have been in the industry for a long time like a long time.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:And a lot of knowledge there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They've seen it all.
Speaker 2:They have and they're just, they believe in the brand. You know and I did too.
Speaker 1:Do they all heat up their coffees at home with their little induction heaters? Do they all heat up their coffees at home with their little induction heaters? No, no, no, it's the UK.
Speaker 2:They drink tea Right right, right, yeah, no, but it's been phenomenal and for me, an opportunity to go be a part of that is beyond a dream, right? I mean going there for the very first time. Like I said, for me it was like going to I don't know, I can't explain it. You're a soccer guy, I guess right, yeah, well, I'm.
Speaker 1:Just because I'm latino, it doesn't mean I like soccer. It'd be like going to the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like the world cup or, or going to mecca, or just like that.
Speaker 1:It's the yeah, homeland, yeah like birthplace, yeah, yeah, so I mean to be part of that now.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's just phenomenal, right so, you know, taking over a company like that fresh right, you're still fresh yeah, um, sounds like it's on the up and up. I mean you're sponsoring there's, you're making investments, you're doing the right things. Where does this future world sit with you? You know when we're here, we're looking at all this automation, all this. You know new technologies. You're talking about having second generation workers back in England. Where is the space to connect those two worlds? Do you see a connection there?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely we're now. What I'll say is, over the next couple of years, you'll see a real emphasis from us on product design and development, and that's where you're going to start to see the innovation come through.
Speaker 2:I've been involved with some other people here in Canada with some product development already, you know, in automating certain things and yeah, I mean we're like to be here at the show to see some of this stuff is good. But we've got some big plans going forward as to what we're going to do and how to mesh that new technology that's coming and be prepared for what's going forward and I'm sure, as the new boss rolling up to the company, that they were all fearful they were about to lose.
Speaker 1:you know, you come in with all your hair, hair, brained, ideas and all this new vision and you know, like, how do they feel? How's the new staff feel about what you got going on, are they?
Speaker 2:they have they bought in they have bought in in a big way. I mean, they were, they were, they'd been working, a lot of them had been working there a long time and then, all of a sudden, their jobs were going to be made redundant. And then some guy comes in out of the blue and you know, Not even a local.
Speaker 2:Not even a local, but like you know and they could see that I believe in the brand and what they're doing and honestly they've been phenomenal, like I mean mean so good, like the people there are really something and it makes it all worthwhile how much of that gives you your confidence to go forward as a business owner, because, like I mean as a business owner myself, having good staff is, like, honestly, one of the best feelings ever, for sure, yeah, I mean you like, it's for sure, having good staff, uh, having a good management team behind you as well, like I mean, the guy that was over there was a temporary consultant bought in by the previous owners.
Speaker 1:Right Was that.
Speaker 3:Stork, yeah, yes, it was brought in temporarily.
Speaker 2:He was there for a few months and they told him to get ready to shut it down, and when I first approached him on hearing what was happening, he said yeah, there's, there's a business to be had here yeah like, if you want to do this, this is, this will work.
Speaker 2:Yeah and uh, and he decided to stay on with me as a consultant for a while and now he's an employee, you know, and so he's been great. Uh, I've got some great people at my companies here in canada that really gave me the ability to go do this. Like. I can't stress that enough either.
Speaker 1:It's yeah, because you it, you gotta switch gears to do something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you already got other gears on the fly yeah, yeah, having that team behind you, absolutely right yeah people can say, like you know, that's a lot of risk, right, how do you, how do you put yourself out there on that, on that ladder kind of thing it's like well you gotta see the guys that got holding it right yeah, those guys are phenomenal to give you that confidence.
Speaker 2:Give you that confidence that people will say how can you take that risk? And I look, I don't see it as risk the same way yeah, because I've got.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know strong risk is all about perception, man it's all about perception. Yeah, um, I I actually fit. I don't. I don't even know if risk is sometimes the right word to be off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I don't see it that way. You have high risk tolerance. I'm like, well, if you knew what I knew and how I could see it, then it's not nearly as risky as you think right.
Speaker 1:It's like when people ask about failure, like, well, what it is Like?
Speaker 2:that's not even a word in my vocabulary, the only way I can see a possible equation to failure is if you didn't try at all, yeah, yeah, right, like you, you've got worst case scenarios and you run those through your head and you, you get a decision. Okay, if this happens, what do I do once you got your worst case scenario figured out? Then?
Speaker 1:it's all gravy, it's good, you just go yeah, you just go. So it looks like you are a part of a larger group of ownerships too uh, yeah, kind of.
Speaker 2:So I I sort of started the glenn fong group as an opportunity to sort of try and get all the companies under one umbrella, one umbrella yeah that was the intent of it.
Speaker 2:So we put together and it allowed me also to go out and and bring in some, move some key people into positions as executives, right, right, uh, uh. Well, the guy used to be my, uh, my financial controller, cassie technologies. He moved up to be my cfo. I went out to the industry and got a guy with 40 years experience behind him and a guy that I highly respected in the industry and considered a, you know, a bit of a mentor to me. Yeah, I got him involved, you know, uh, and it's been, yeah, it's been really good.
Speaker 1:So where do I send my resume, Scott?
Speaker 2:What do you want to?
Speaker 1:do Whatever, I'm good at everything, and I'm not, so. This is why I have to hire these people right.
Speaker 2:But no, it's been really good. You know I talked about like technical heat treatment. That was the second company I ever worked for, so I acquired them last year and I was like six weeks away from closing that deal when the cooper heat opportunity, and now that can kind of become a piece of that yeah, yeah, ultimately, yeah, certainly can. It's because it's a very field heat treatment a very small industry yeah, right, and even throughout the very niche right uh, and so yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:Uh, they sort of all tied together in a way, yeah so what's on the horizon then?
Speaker 1:because you don't seem like a man who rests on his laurels. I don't know.
Speaker 2:There's uh, I'm not sure, really, it's uh, you know, if you went back, like I said, if you were, 10 years ago, you had no idea that any of this was going to happen.
Speaker 1:Two years ago.
Speaker 2:I had no idea and he's told me two years ago that I was going to own Cooper eat and technically treatment now today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wouldn't believe you yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So, uh, you know, these things sort of happened really fast and I seized it and you know, yeah, I don't know, really it's hard Did you ever have a plan?
Speaker 1:No, no, not really. I find those are the best plans. I have ideas.
Speaker 2:You know, and I've got some, like I said, I've had some good people behind me and every now and again I have an idea that works and the guys yeah. So I'm not sure I really it's hard at this point in time, but uh, the cooper e thing has been phenomenal. Uh, you know the amount of business that we've seen in the time that we've uh, that I've taken hold of it and stuff like that. Yeah, it's not even it's. I can't even say that it's stuff that I've done, it's just it's been there, you know, yeah uh, and the same thing, uh, with tech heat.
Speaker 2:Uh, I got those guys like I hired some good people there, some phenomenal people, and uh, they really helped drive it. All it's been. I know it's been. It's a lot easier when you have really good people behind. It is really easy, you know, what I mean yeah and yeah, I've got some of the best in the world, right, without a doubt how much competition do you have in this sphere?
Speaker 1:You talk about it being a niche market to get into. That also kind of means there's a niche clientele.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. On the heat treatment equipment manufacturing side, there might be half a dozen manufacturers in the world that are, you know, substantial, I would say, besides your chinese and indian companies that are.
Speaker 3:You know they're all over.
Speaker 2:There could be 300 of those for all I know yeah, yeah but we only come up against uh two couple other heavyweights three yeah, really in this industry on in the global market right. Yeah, um, you've got some people that are more localized right, like a manufacturer or two in the us. There might you've got some people that are more localized right, likea manufacturer or two in the us. There might be one on the east coast of canada, but they don't have that same sort of global reach right right and we had distributors at 17 different countries and, and and, being from the mothership, so
Speaker 3:to speak?
Speaker 1:yeah, does that give you more clout, because you can be like that could be part of the pitch, like hey, we're the og, like yeah, certainly the legacy is there.
Speaker 2:There's certain things that we do differently than other people do, and, and because we've got that experience behind us, uh, but all the same, we we haven't had that drive towards innovation in the market like the founder had at one point in time it never sort of regained that.
Speaker 1:And do you want to bring that back? Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And how do you find the motivation?
Speaker 2:From your customers. Yeah Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just that making your customer's life easier. You know when you see something that they're doing and you know you can provide them with a better experience with what they're doing.
Speaker 1:A solution to a problem? Yeah, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:Uh, you're a welder, I'm gonna do but you know, hooking up those ceramic stuff like that was always a pain in the butt you didn't really like you became a welder so you could weld, not so you could heat, treat right and watch it. Yeah, so one of the first things we did at Cassie Technologies is we simplified the machine right so we put analog ammeters on the front so if you had a burnt out heater you could see it immediately yeah. That's like that's not right, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Simple controller. It had four buttons on it right. One was up and one was down, one was up and one was down. Whereas you know the Cooper heat of North America. They had a great controller but it had eight buttons on it and it was an amazing process controller. But for what? For guys that are preheating welds? They just don't care. Yeah, and that was 90% of our customer base.
Speaker 1:It's either that or a Tiger Torch yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you're getting them away from the Tiger Tor, it has to be easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if it's not easy, they don't want to do it.
Speaker 2:Or those belcher torches, those things are rad yeah, you ever seen those, the ones that are like oxygen?
Speaker 1:yeah, like 600 000 btus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're like rockets, but you know you talk about being from the mining industry and uh, I was with a client who had bought a machine from us, a self-contained rig with a generator and console all in one for a job up in northern BC, and it was his client that drove him to buy it. And when I spoke to the maintenance manager, there he's like we know we get longer service life out of buckets when we use electrical resistance for the blade replacement than we do if we tiger torch it well, you have way better control the grain structure.
Speaker 1:There's a natural fluidity to the steel. When you get to kind of that that, even heat that, you get from through thickness heating.
Speaker 2:And through thickness heating, yeah, because when you're a welder preheating with a torch, you're just heating up that one spot so you can hit your temp stick and go like oh, I can start welding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like oh, if the inspector's around, you're maybe checking an inch outside the heat affected zone right, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you're never really getting through that thickness. I used to work on dozer blades. They pre-heat and post-heat all of them, because you're going from ar400 to mild steel, yeah, and it was just a series of tiger torches moving around over hours and then we finally got induction and, uh, resistance heaters. Yeah, because that's the right way to do it right, yeah and you notice it even in the color of the steel.
Speaker 2:You notice it in the sound of the steel yeah, right, like it just it's a different game and and the and the beat flows right, yeah, it does when you're heated right through evenly through that steel it flows better.
Speaker 1:It flows differently. Yeah, do you miss welding at all?
Speaker 3:I never, that sounds like a no, I never did a lot of welding honestly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, before I even. Well, you had to have gotten your hours in. I did, but I had done a level one welding inspection through sate before I'd even got my journeyman welding ticket okay, I was already a heat treating technician so it was just kind of off the side of your desk type of thing.
Speaker 2:I was doing multiple things at once. So before I even graduated with my journeyman welding ticket I, I was in school and I got a call from a company to go to work as a level one contract QC person.
Speaker 3:So I started my company like that week, Then yeah.
Speaker 2:May of 2006,. The same month I graduated with my journeyman ticket and went right into QC and then I had my first QC job and then I went and welded for the summer for Laird Electric up at the Opti Long Lake Nexen project.
Speaker 1:Just welding, unistructed brackets, yeah, brackets and boxes. Hey man, the welder for an electrician outfit is a happy dude. Yeah, and then I went and did my AWS CWI.
Speaker 2:I took some time off and did that course to get my CWI and then I just asked for a layoff from Laird to go do my B pressure. Okay, it was registered in Edmonton at local 488. Okay, the pipe fitters was a part of and literally I drove back on a Thursday night and Friday morning I got a call for another QC job. And it was like the QC job that I'd been preparing myself for, like the one I want. Yeah, the company I wanted to work for.
Speaker 1:It was all there.
Speaker 2:It was like it was there and I went to work on that job and then just did QC continually after that.
Speaker 1:So I never even got my B-pressure to get it. The QC game is like an animal man because, like everyone I know, that gets their level one or their level two.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Once you get that, that first QC gig and you're on the books, the work just rolls in. It really does.
Speaker 2:And so I did that for a few years. I moved over to in-service inspection, doing API work as a boiler 650 tanks. Yeah, yeah, I was 510, 570, 653, 571, 577, 580. Like I had them all on the national board for boilers. So yeah, so then I started in that game and then I got into equipment eventually?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's where it took over. When did you decide to make the transition into, like the desk side, the desk side. Which side is the desk side? The not out there inspecting, not out there being the technician, but on the product side?
Speaker 2:I think it was like the company was growing and I kept hiring people to with Cassie Technologies, I kept hiring people. The company was growing and I kept hiring people. With Cassie Technologies, I kept hiring people. I want to say, maybe 2019?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like all right, I was on a shutdown and I had staff at Cassie several staff at Cassie at the time, I think it was 2019. And a sales guy that was working for me at the time just called me up and said you can't do this anymore. You can't leave us for two weeks straight consecutively. We're too busy, right? Yeah, it was 17, 18, 18 or 19 right in around pre-covid it was pre-covid for sure, yeah, probably 2018.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So and that kind of made the decision for you and that was sort of maybe, and so you know, the company was growing and we brought in some consultants because I didn't know why it was growing as fast as it was, and I just didn't know anything. I brought them in and they said you know you need a CEO.
Speaker 1:You need to sit here and boss, yeah, and I'm like ah, we're one branch.
Speaker 2:We need a general manager and they're like well, it's got to be you and I'm like okay so I did I did it for a while and then I hired somebody I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:No, I didn't want to do it right, and so I hired a general manager there and uh, yeah, I mean, you talk about resume. If you want to be ceo, you can have my seat. I I'm trying, I'm trying to hire, but uh, I keep being told that that's a role I can't hire for anymore I actually have to sit in oh, you have to just do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, allegedly, allegedly yeah, but I mean I always like the the problem solving the things and uh, seeing customers and seeing what the problems are, then trying to figure solutions for them right that's my, that's my technical background, so well, you know we're almost at the interview here at the end.
Speaker 1:What do you got planned for the next two days? You said you speak tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2:I'll be attending a couple of social events tonight with.
Speaker 1:CWA Tonight will be fun.
Speaker 2:And then I'll stick around and see some talks myself with some other people and tour the show and see everything there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't even gotten to walk around at all. I've been bouncing from meetings and I just got off the keynote here and I, I haven't even gotten to walk around at all. I've been bouncing from meetings and I just got off the keynote here. Yeah, and I can't wait to. I don't even think I'm going to get to walk around today, maybe tomorrow, because after this we've got to get ready for the parties.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's terrible, that's terrible.
Speaker 3:It'll be such a terrible time.
Speaker 1:But you know, for all the people that have been listening, you know For all the people that have been listening, this Fabtech Canada, it's not a small thing.
Speaker 3:No, it's not at all.
Speaker 1:It's not like oh, it's a dumbed-down version of Fabtech USA. No this is a million square feet or something in here and it's full. We're right, full, and all the sessions are full. I think we have over 200 people registered just for CanWeld. I don't know what's going on over here on this side. It's going to be pretty busy for day one. Day two is usually the rock and roll day.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be a good time. Thanks for coming on the show, buddy. Thanks for having me here. Awesome, all right, everyone, keep checking out the podcast. We're recording a whole bunch this week here at Fabtech Lots of great guests, lots of really cool people that we're going to be talking to. Thank you to Copper Heath.
Speaker 3:Cooper Heath.
Speaker 1:Cooper Heath Equipment for sponsoring the booth here and Scott Fong, who's the CEO. Thanks, Max. Thank you, Take care.
Speaker 3:We hope you enjoy the show you've been listening to the cwb association welding podcast with max. If you enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at cwbassociationorg to learn more. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on what you'd like to learn about in the future. Produced byced by the CWB Group and presented by Max Holm, this podcast serves to educate and connect the welding community. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.