Here are a few photos of some recent fabrication that has left the shop. Business has been slower but not totally dead.

The first photo was an order for two 25 x 16 to 25 x 10 cold air boots (aka buffalo boots). These are as common as plenums and trunk duct when it comes to installing a forced air furnace. These are for a retro-fit change out in town.

The next photo is a basic plenum, customized with a flat top instead of a normal plenum style cap that would recess 1/2″ down inside the top of the box. The customer needed a flattened top for this particular installation.

The last photo is a small order of trunk duct and some small fittings.

Nothing fancy, just a few photos showing the kind of work we do on a daily basis. All of these items are custom made and are what keeps the shop moving along. We concentrate on the residential market consisting of smaller HVAC companies and homeowners with some work coming from very small commercial clients.

Our input costs are quickly rising. The load of metal I received Friday afternoon was the highest metal has been in over three years and until oil and other commodities stop rising, I see no end. A 25% increase in our metal price since the end of the fourth quarter 2010 is a tough pill to swallow. This scenario is a killer for our business because
of how small we are and the type customers that we service. With business being steady to slow, the chances of just going out and getting more work is a fool’s errand at this point because it just isn’t there. Competition for jobs is tough and the bigger companies are cutting prices to keep their employees working and we just can’t compete in the bidding process. We live on the scraps from these bigger jobs and the less of them there are, the less scraps to go around.

A main advantage of being a giant corporation is that you can lock in costs when the opportunity presents itself and even hedge those positions if possible. This advantage is magnified in scenarios of rising input costs. This doesn’t mean that they are totally out of the woods when prices rise, but they definitely have a better chance of surviving than small businesses or micro businesses like ours.

As a micro business we can only afford to buy so much material at any given time, which can be challenging as it is. The most I may purchase in a given week is 40-60 sheets of metal, less when sales are slow. This is not near enough to lock in any type of pricing with supply houses who have order minimums and means that we are at the mercy of the current market. The fact is, we can only keep prices at certain levels for a small amount of time in these situations. These costs are passed on to the customer almost as soon as we see the prices start to tick upwards. As much as it hurts to do so and may hurt sales more, it’s the only thing a micro business like ours can do to stay alive.

We try to keep our customers as informed as we can in these situations and most are very accepting of why prices may be rising. All we can do at this point is track our costs closely and see where we can save some money and keep the customers costs down. However, without sheets of metal we have no business, so cutting costs elsewhere is a must and its what we will do if necessary. On the flip side and even more important, if we have no customers to buy that metal we have no business.

The next few months entering the summer cooling season should be interesting.

Here is what I am working on this afternoon. A customer needs a door fabricated to fit on this pre-made 12″ round fitting. So, after a bit of drawing and thought, I came up with an idea for a frame that I can fabricate separately and bolt on. Today was the day to build the shell of the door frame and map out where to cut the hole on the pre-made 12″ round Y-fitting.

Here is the pre-made fitting that
I will attach a door frame and door. The frame will be 12″ wide by 14″ tall and will wrap around the back side of the fitting.

Below is the template that I have cut for the top and bottom side of the door frame. I have left 2″ of material  so that I can bend a 3/4″ flange that will run along the inside of the frame. This is so the door that I fabricate later will have something to sit against when closed.

By the magic of pictures, the flat template has been bent into what will become the top and bottom of my frame. I will need two total of these and two total of  what will be the sides of the frame. Those are just basic flat templates with the same bend and flanges. I made an executive decision and left those pictures out.

Below is the finished frame which I will attach to the pre-made 12″ Y-fitting that was shown above. This is only the frame, I will later need to make a door that will fit inside and sit on the 3/4″ flanges around the inside of the fitting. All of the fabrication was done with bends and Pittsburgh joints. We do not weld anything at our shop. (except for stick pins used for insulating duct)

Now that the frame is complete, I will place it on the pre-made fitting so I can get my measurements for cutting a hole in the 12″ Y-fitting. The hole on the fitting will end up being roughly 10″ wide by 12″ tall. See photo below.

Starting tomorrow I will cut the hole and start to attach the door frame to the 12″ round fitting. This actual job order doesn’t need to be completed for a few days, so I am working on it in between other orders that need to be finished first.

These are the types of projects that break up the monotony of fabricating stock duct fittings and trunk duct. I will have another post to show the next few steps in a few days.

Even though duct work is our bread and butter and what the majority of my work day consists of. We often get projects that are along the same lines, but just different enough that some extra thought and attention is needed. Case and point, the project I had for the last few days has been to fabricate an exhaust hood for a drying machine inside a small screen printing shop. I won’t even pretend to know exactly what the machine does, the customer drew up what he wanted and I am making it to those specifications. Simple. Here’s some pics.

Below is the wide shot of the hood. The customer wanted a rectangular box with pieces angled inside that would deflect the air to the center 4″ collar.There are no welds, everything is done with the Pittsburgh machine, break, hammer and rivets.

This picture just gives a clearer view of the depth of the piece and a look at the collar in the center. The total dimensions were 62″ wide, 6″ deep and 12″ in height with a 4″ collar cut into the top middle.

Here is a shot looking inside at the angled pieces that will deflect the air toward the center of the hood.  It’s tough to see, but I also added a 1/4″ 90 degree lip around the bottom edge for some stability. Even though the hood is for a smaller application, the width of the hood will make it weaker in the middle and prone to bowing or popping. The angle will give it just enough strength to keep it stable when the machine is running and keep any noise to a minimum.