The Roboticist Chronicles

What is good fit-up? And why is it crucial to the success of a welding project?

Dan Allford, President of ARC Specialties and the host of Roboticist Chronicles, meets with Dave Hebble, ARC Specialties’ Technical Services Manager, to expand on the idea of fit-up and explain it to the rest of the company. The two have worked together since the late 70s, with Hebble acting as Allford’s mentor ever since.

You can trace a lot of robotic system failures to poorly fitted parts, explain Allford.

“With machining, you impose your will on the part. You take the part and you remove everything you don’t want… In welding, the part imposes its will on you. In other words, the shape of the part we can’t change – we just have to deal with it.”

Hebble also touched on defining the scope and flow of a welding project before getting started on it. “What is good fit up?” he asked. “Good fit up means something different to each person, so before you start, that needs to be defined.”

Allford added that, to him, fit up meant three things: joint accuracy, fixture accuracy and robot accuracy. All of those things could potentially add even more confusion to the process, emphasizing the importance of defining the flow.

“Before you can figure out which problem to fix, you’ve got to figure out which problem you have,” he said.

Subscribe to ARC Specialties’ Roboticist Chronicles podcast to learn more about the nuts and bolts of robots, automation, and the implications of an evolving machine workforce.

Enjoyed this episode? If you found value in this conversation, please consider subscribing, rating, and sharing it with a colleague or fellow engineer!

Links & Resources:

• Host: Dan Allford
• Listen to More Episodes: The Roboticist Chronicles 
• Video Version: Watch on YouTube via the link in the description above.

Thank you for listening to The Roboticist Chronicles — bridging the gap between hands-on engineering and industry innovation.

Because they deal primarily with physical products, anyone in manufacturing knows that the industry as a whole has taken a hit from the effects of the pandemic. “But COVID isn’t the only crisis that has occurred in the robotics industry,” revealed Robert Little, Founder, and CEO of ATI. “What people are not familiar with is the decline in automotive since 2017 – a decline worldwide in the investment in automotive robotics.”

Enjoyed this episode? If you found value in this conversation, please consider subscribing, rating, and sharing it with a colleague or fellow engineer!

Links & Resources:

• Host: Dan Allford
• Listen to More Episodes: The Roboticist Chronicles 
• Video Version: Watch on YouTube via the link in the description above.

Thank you for listening to The Roboticist Chronicles — bridging the gap between hands-on engineering and industry innovation.

Oh boy. Now they’ve really gone and done it. Arc Specialties President Dan Allford always enjoys getting a little spicy on The Roboticist Chronicles, but in this edition it’s a full-on spirited debate with host Tyler Kern. You may have heard back-and-forth about lockdowns, which most nations have implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic to stem the spread of the deadly virus, but very few started with a three-pawed lion in Zambia.

Enjoyed this episode? If you found value in this conversation, please consider subscribing, rating, and sharing it with a colleague or fellow engineer!

Links & Resources:

• Host: Dan Allford
• Listen to More Episodes: The Roboticist Chronicles 
• Video Version: Watch on YouTube via the link in the description above.

Thank you for listening to The Roboticist Chronicles — bridging the gap between hands-on engineering and industry innovation.

Johnny Tyler, Marketing and Design Specialist at Arc Specialties, has seen many companies adopt an unambitious marketing strategy – or, worse, not even draw out a strategy at all – rather than invest resources in something that can make even a small company a globally known name in the internet age.

Enjoyed this episode? If you found value in this conversation, please consider subscribing, rating, and sharing it with a colleague or fellow engineer!

Links & Resources:

• Host: Dan Allford
• Listen to More Episodes: The Roboticist Chronicles 
• Video Version: Watch on YouTube via the link in the description above.

Thank you for listening to The Roboticist Chronicles — bridging the gap between hands-on engineering and industry innovation.

Every business approaches how they work in a unique way. Each has a philosophy and culture, and each approach has its merits; some more successful than others. But why? On this episode of The Roboticist Chronicles, we talked business philosophy with Dan Allford, president of ARC Specialties.

ARC Specialties has sound technology, but they still need a corporate structure to execute it. Allford, who had years of technical training but only one business class, wanted to create something that worked at ARC Specialties. Instead of reading books on the latest fads, he followed people. And one that inspired him the most was Lockheed Martin’s founder Kelly Johnson and his Skunk Works philosophy.

What is Skunk Works? It is the name of Lockheed’s Advanced Development Program and has become a business philosophy applied to many, many industries. It’s based around creating groups within an organization and allowing them a high degree of autonomy.

“What I appreciate about Johnson and Skunk Works is that it’s about empowering project managers and giving them the ability to control their destiny," Allford said.

While working in automation and robotics, you might assume that it isn’t people-centered. The human portion, or the "team," is the most significant part according to Allford.

“We reward people based on what they create, not who they manage,” he said. “A good manager hires the right people, gives them a task, tools, resources and lets them do what they do best.”

That’s how ARC Specialties runs, stripping out layers of bureaucracy and focusing on the task. It also allows the company to remain nimble in the marketplace and exchange ideas. It even allows Allford's employees to tell him when he’s wrong!

Enjoyed this episode? If you found value in this conversation, please consider subscribing, rating, and sharing it with a colleague or fellow engineer!

Links & Resources:

• Host: Dan Allford
• Listen to More Episodes: The Roboticist Chronicles 
• Video Version: Watch on YouTube via the link in the description above.

Thank you for listening to The Roboticist Chronicles — bridging the gap between hands-on engineering and industry innovation.

From its inception in 1983 to now, ARC Specialties has become a case study in the growth of an American entrepreneurial endeavor. Company President Dan Allford took the business out of a garage and has since turned the automated manufacturing systems provider into an international enterprise. On the first episode of The Roboticist Chronicles, host Tyler Kern sat down with Allford to explore the history of ARC Specialties and analyze how its trials and tribulations reflect growth and challenges within the industry. Continuity and steady growth kept ARC on an upward trajectory over the decades, and Allford said that sometimes it is not about what a company does, but what it does not do. “As long as you keep your mistakes commensurate with the size of your business, you’ll survive. So, while we were small, we made small mistakes, and we survived,” Allford said. ARC has endured the globalization of manufacturing which has seen jobs leave the United States, but Allford said the industry is entering a renaissance in America today. Certainly, that is a welcome sight to Allford, who after almost forty years still has an unwavering passion for welding and manufacturing. “I still like building things,” he said. “The only thing better than building something is building something that builds something.” After creating jobs in more than 20 countries, Allford’s greatest build may not be a product but an exemplary company.

Enjoyed this episode? If you found value in this conversation, please consider subscribing, rating, and sharing it with a colleague or fellow engineer!

Links & Resources:

• Host: Dan Allford
• Listen to More Episodes: The Roboticist Chronicles 
• Video Version: Watch on YouTube via the link in the description above.

Thank you for listening to The Roboticist Chronicles — bridging the gap between hands-on engineering and industry innovation.

As integrated solutions like automation, robotics, and process development become more and more integrated in the manufacturing industry, we decided to sit down with Dan Allford, President of ARC Specialties, to get some insight on his industry and break down just why “manufacturing became cool again.”

Enjoyed this episode? If you found value in this conversation, please consider subscribing, rating, and sharing it with a colleague or fellow engineer!

Links & Resources:

• Host: Dan Allford
• Listen to More Episodes: The Roboticist Chronicles 
• Video Version: Watch on YouTube via the link in the description above.

Thank you for listening to The Roboticist Chronicles — bridging the gap between hands-on engineering and industry innovation.