- 11 November 2005 -
Mobile Training Center Brings Latest Metal Finishing 'Best Practices' to Your Front Door

In the dinosaur movie Jurassic Park, the T.rex (Tyrannosauridae) is depicted moving extremely quickly across the terrain. Fast forward to 2005, where a similarly named vehicle operated by the Metalast Tech Center (Minden, Nev.) is covering a lot of ground in its efforts to educate the industry about better metal finishing practices.

Similar in size to the terrestrial carnivore of its namesake, T-REX (which stands for Touring Research & Educational eXhibits) is a 48 x 8 x 6-foot double wide black trailer that expands to a 48 x 22-foot, 36-seat training facility. The program is run by the Metalast Tech Center, a training facility of Metalast International, Inc., a firm offering products and services for the industry. According to Greg Semas, vice president, sales and marketing, the 17,000-square-foot technical center is designed to educate the industry about better metal finishing practices, not necessarily about the company’s offerings.

Though the technical center continues to host training classes on a monthly basis, Metalast notes that companies don’t necessarily have the funds to fly employees across the country to attend this training. "Because of this, we decided to take our technical center and put it on the road," Semas reports.

T-REX is equipped with state-of-the-art audio visual equipment, as well as a fully automated 21-station anodizing/plating wet process line replica. Complete wireless Internet capabilities keep the T-REX in constant communication with the T-REX Command Center and the Metalast Tech Center. All attendees get a full view of the Metalast wet process line, two 63-inch plasma screen flat panel televisions, video and DVD projection, wall displays, sponsor logos and other visual aids.

According to Metalast, the free program provided via T-REX is designed to educate manufacturers, engineers, electroplaters and others about solutions that can help cut costs, reduce rejects and improve consistency in metal finishing. Messages focus on the solutions provided by Metalast and the T-REX sponsors. Attendees are instructed on a number of different topics concerning metal finishing, including an overview of the industry, technologies and processes that improve quality and reduce rejects, and instruction on how to eliminate hexavalent chromates, a banned substance in Europe, from the metal finishing process.

"Basically, we talk about the metal finishing industry and about actual metal finishing," notes Semas. "We also discuss things like rejects and recalls and the reasons why they exist, and the solutions that are out there for them.

"Solutions could be from Metalast, sponsor partners, whoever," Semas adds. "Overall, the presentation is educational in format."

Richard Anderson, senior principal engineer, strategic research and development, M/A-Com Inc., Tyco Electronics in Lowell, Mass., notes that an interest in replacing hexavalent chromates from the metal finishing process was a key reason he contacted the T-REX and brought it to his company. "Metalast is licensed to make a hexavalent chromates replacement chemical called TCP-HF that is considered safe, so I asked them to come in and give a presentation on it," he remarks. He also wanted to expose employees to other available information with regard to plating capabilities and Metalast's plating software process controls.

That training itself includes a 60-minute video presentation, which is followed by a question-and-answer period. The direct satellite uplink to Metalast's Tech Center allows participants the opportunity to ask technical questions of the company’s scientific experts. The plasma-screen presentation is also hooked up to the metal finishing line replica.

As a result, when a particular station is discussed on screen, that station also becomes active on the line. "They're actually in sync with each other," Semas reports.

"The overall presentation was very compact and very precise," Anderson observes. While he notes that he would have liked even more information in the presentation, he acknowledges that time constraints would not allow for it. "The good thing was that you can ask questions and get more information if you want it," he adds. "Overall, it covered the major points and the high points."

Anderson says he also liked the fact that the presentation didn’t show everything being perfect. "It showed things being the way they really are, and how they can be improved."

Though each session holds 36 people, Metalast does offer flexibility with its presentation. "If a company has, say, 80 people who want to see it, we’ll do two or three presentations that one day," Semas explains.

T-REX will also do training for several companies at one site. "At some facilities, we have three or four different companies on that one day," Semas points out.

If it's a very large audience of 200 to 300 people, Metalast will bring in a regional sales manager to do the presentation in that company's auditorium. "It's the same presentation, except it’s not in the truck," states Semas.

While Metalast originally planned T-REX to be a three-year plan, the company remains open to the idea of conducting the program beyond 2007. "The three years was a number we came up with when we took into account the size of the U.S.," says Semas. "The U.S. is a big country, and we believed that three years would give us enough time to do a pretty good pass back and forth across the country a few times." Metalast could end up conducting the program indefinitely, he adds.

In addition to offering the program to industry members, T-Rex also visits conventions and trade shows, as well as local, state and federal government agencies, colleges and universities, whenever possible. Open houses are also on the schedule, providing tradespeople as well as the media and the public access to the facility during stops in major cities.

Metalast continues to seek sponsors for the program. Sponsors--which include ASC Process Systems, Price Industries, M.E. Baker, Penguin Pumps, Inc., TrueLogic Co., Integrated Technologies, Inc., and Master Metal Polishing Corp.--receive exposure via a variety of media. This includes a 30-second commercial during each presentation; a listing on all hand-out materials; a link on the Metalast Web site; company information on a sponsor’s map inside the training facility; and a 1 x 2-foot logo on the side of the truck.

"All of our sponsors are affiliated in some way within the manufacturing community that sends out for metal finishing, so we're going right in front of their customers or potential customers,” Semas reports. “It provides brand recognition."

"It's a nice relationship," observes Eric Roiter, vice president, M.E. Baker. "Because as their vendor, I have to perform for them, and they have to perform for me because they’re my marketing arm."

Roiter said he considers the concept revolutionary and unique for the industry. "I've seen these types of marketing campaigns in higher profile industries, but to see it applied to the surface finishing industry is great," he says. "It makes people really pay attention to the message. It's given us the chance to communicate with our customers in a way that they’ve never been communicated to before."

M.E. Baker reports that customers have received T-REX in a positive light because they are getting educated on process control. "And because these customers are not job-shop platers--they’re actually OEMs--a lot of them did not have previous knowledge of the ins and outs of plating and anodizing," Roiter points out. "So they're getting a free education."

For M.E. Baker, the result of sponsorship has been additional business, including three automated lines that represent multi-million dollar business. "We've gotten added business that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise," Roiter says.

At press time, T-REX had already reached some 400 companies in 2005, including 4,000 engineers and other participants. Semas says he expects great things ahead for the program, as companies become more aware of what is available to them.—Anita Shaw