Video Transcript

Dave Roberson: My original plan was to spend 20 plus years in the Marine Corps. While I was in Afghanistan, lost some dear friends, came back and was able to hold my son for the first time. In that moment my mind had changed. I couldn't put it on somebody else to, I have to come home and tell my son that he wasn't ever going to get to see his father again.

As I started getting back into machining and started to understand just how deficient we were compared to the rest of the world, I thought to myself this is another fight that I can be in now. Didn't have a whole lot of money growing up so we had to figure out how to fix everything. My dad was extremely proud of the fact that I'd luckily gotten like two or three VCRs under my belt that I was able to repair which tickled him to death because then he didn't have to go and buy a new VCR. This was in grade school.

Dr. Tony Schmitz: So we recognized that we needed to reinvest in manufacturing in the US. When the Department of Defense decided to make this America's Cutting Edge program, IACMI The Composites Institute, was the organization that picked up the Workforce Development efforts. I first met Dave Roberson in that in-person training. He was an instructor. Dave was different.

Dave Roberson: I wasn't content with just doing my job. I wanted to know how the machines were operating, why we did processes in a certain way.

Dr. Tony Schmitz: He's curious and curiosity will take you so far in any discipline including machining.

Dave Roberson: We have to do better. For decades now, shop owners have had the harsh realization that all the business is going overseas. Somebody does this better than we do and that's unacceptable. I started trying to push, increasing that level, increasing my spindle speed, and increasing my feed rate, trying to make these machines move faster and faster. I mean you're dealing with in milliseconds. I was improving processes and everything, but you can only get so fast before you start picking up chatter. You got a real bad surface finish and it can absolutely beat the tool to pieces.

So get signed up for the Ace Program, come down and meet Dr. Schmitz.

Dr. Tony Schmitz: Tap testing is a measurement that we can perform to understand how structures vibrate.

Dave Roberson: Now I've got this technology with a tap test I can get the ideal feeds and speeds for that exact situation. I was stopping because I'd started experiencing chatter. I didn't realize that I could push through it and there was like another level that I could even be on to where I could run that much faster. I'm getting better surface finishes, better material removal rate, better tool life because I'm not abusing the tool. It's just like a light bulb going off. I can now push this faster and really get this thing humming around. We can't become stagnant, we can't become comfortable, we have to push or we just sit here and twiddle our thumbs and are content with our lives until we we shrivel up to nothing.

I get a lot of man, I really wish that I'd went into the military and I've got a lot of respect for you because of what you did for the country and everything, you know I really wish that I could have done something like that. And especially in a manufacturing environment, why don't you? I'm not talking about going into the military I'm talking about stepping up and saying it's not good enough. Right there opportunity's knocking. Come on in.

This video was developed by Christine Schmitz, in collaboration with MRT partners ACE and IACMI.