Racing and Machining

Wade Anderson:

Manufacturing world. Welcome to another episode of Shop Matters sponsored by Okuma America. I'm your host, Wade Anderson. And joining me here in the studio in Charlotte, North Carolina today, I've got Rocky Helms from Richard Childress Racing and Tom O'Toole one of our Okuma brethren. Welcome, guys.

Rocky Helms:

Glad to be here.

Wade Anderson:

All right. So, Rocky, why don't you just give us a brief introduction?

Rocky Helms:

I'm Rocky Helms, Vice President of Manufacturing at Richard Childress Racing. I've been there, going on 23 years. Came from another cup team prior to that, manufacturing background prior to that, all the way from high school, went to college for machine tool technology and got in at RCR really at the perfect time, when they were getting ready to ramp up the Okuma partnership.

Wade Anderson:

Excellent. I don't know that I knew you were a vice president.

Rocky Helms:

That came about in the last month.

Wade Anderson:

Well, congratulations.

Rocky Helms:

Thank you.

Wade Anderson:

That's awesome. Tom, how about you? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Tom O’Toole:

I'm a Double Column Product Specialist at Okuma. So, I support the dealers and my coworkers on the large bridge mills, our large product, and our large VTLs, and that's the day job. Other than that, try to support Richard Childress. We go back quite a ways now, 20-something years now that we've been associated. I was fortunate to be involved in it from the ground floor, from day one. It was really nice to see that grow over the last 20 years.

Wade Anderson:

So, talk me through a little bit about how it got started. My understanding, Waddell Wilson and Freddie Wilson were the catalyst of getting Okuma introduced into it. People who don't know, or may know, Freddie from the industry, Freddie Wilson's been with Sandvik for, I don't know, over 20 years and is still our Sandvik OEM rep at Okuma. Tell me a little bit about how all that got started.

Tom O’Toole:

Well, Freddie was pretty instrumental in getting Okuma involved or at least bringing it to our attention that NASCAR would be a good avenue to promote Okuma products. So that was way back, the Larry Hedrick 41 car that he was at when Waddell was there. And then later, they moved to the 17 car, and our participation moved as Freddie moved. He would just badger the heck out of us until we went with him.

Wade Anderson:

So, Freddie was a machinist back then, right?

Tom O’Toole:

Of course, Waddell is legendary in the industry. Freddie's brother, Greg, is an engine builder and was there at the time, and as well as Freddie, running the machine side of it to support the engine program and the car bodies.

Wade Anderson:

All right. Rocky, tell me a little bit about how did we get involved going from the cars that Tom talked to, to joining up with Richard Childress?

Rocky Helms:

I had gotten there towards the end of 1999. It's a weird story, so came there as a machinist and fabricator on what was going to be a new Xfinity Series, at the Busch Series at the time, Xfinity Series Program.

Rocky Helms:

Our normal HR manager, this is how much smaller Richard Childress Racing was back then. The normal HR manager was out that week on vacation. The vice president of the company, which was Bill Patterson. Bill Patterson was very instrumental in all this also. He'd done all my paperwork for insurance and all the new hire stuff.

Rocky Helms:

I'm filling out a resume so that they have something on file. He noticed that I had a lot of manufacturing background and experience. He asked me if that was something I was interested in. Actually, lo and behold, that was the whole reason I came there, during my tour, it was one of the few race teams at that time that had any type of CNC technology.

Rocky Helms:

At that time, they still only had two. They were part of the engine research and development part. All they'd done was strictly engine parts and it was only a couple of things. He told me they were working on something, that he couldn't really say what it was because it hadn't been announced yet, but that he would keep me in mind if that was something I was interested in.

Rocky Helms:

So, found out a few months later, Richard come and talk to me, actually in the Busch shop and told me that they had been talking to Okuma, looking at a technical partnership. We sat down and actually talked about what that was looking like, what it entailed, sat down and talked with Spenny Clendenen and Steve Wilson, which were the ones that ran the engine shop. They transferred me over to there and that was when I found out the backstory that they had been involved with the 41 car.

Rocky Helms:

Richard Childress Racing was looking at expanding their machine tool technology, capability, and manufacturing, and decided to partner up with someone not only from the machine side, but the big thing with Okuma was also the application side and help in general with... We were going to be going from doing some cylinder head machining and intake manifolds, and a little bit of piston modification to trying to produce more of the car in-house, billet spindles, center link suspension components, more engine components than what we had been doing, as far as rocker stands, and rocker bars, and motor plates, and a little bit of everything. They wanted to bring more in-house. We felt like with Okuma and the expertise Okuma had, with the application side and being able to utilize that, that was what led us to get in touch with Tom O'Toole and all the people at Okuma and try to make something happen.

Wade Anderson:

So, Tom, tell me a little bit about your role. How did you get involved on the race car side of Okuma's ventures?

Tom O’Toole:

That's a really good question. I don't recall exactly. I-

Wade Anderson:

Just drew the long straw?

Tom O’Toole:

I believe John Hendrick probably said, "Do this."

Wade Anderson:

So, you did that.

Tom O’Toole:

Well, I was always kind of a motorhead, so as Childress was pretty small, so was Okuma back then. We wore a bunch of different hats and if you're in engineering, you may help on a project and then you find yourself installing the machine as well back then. So fell into it that way. But RCR was the first program we did that we really laid out, like Rocky said, the parts that we wanted to do. We did a matrix and looked at the cost of the parts. Why make a 10 cent part in-house. Look at the more expensive parts, the more complicated ones, the ones that could be improved. It wasn't just all the engine stuff, but a lot of chassis as well.

Tom O’Toole:

So, it was a learning for both of us. When we started the program, I guess some of the parts we looked at were what you consider commodity, just usable stuff that making it in house had its own advantages. And then we spent a lot of time working on R&D type stuff. That's what Okuma really brought to the table is, some lathes and mills to make the commodity stuff. But then when we got into cam grinding and piston turning back then, nobody was doing that in the industry making their own. In fact, if you recall, you had the one-of-a-kind piston turning machine, the only one that existed like that.

Wade Anderson:

The V8 CAM lathe, wow.

Tom O’Toole:

Yeah. We could tilt the turret to cap the ring grooves on the piston, which nobody did at that time. We're doing a lot of things back then that were unique.

Rocky Helms:

We were the first, and still only, team to do their camshaft manufacturing in-house and that wasn't something we even thought about until partnering up with Okuma. There was a huge advantage to the camshaft side, with longevity at that time, a cam was one race and done, and our engineering department on the engine side had some materials and stuff that they wanted to try but at the same time you don't want to go to just a camshaft manufacturer and say, "This is what we want." It may make its way out into the rest of the world. We started out with a lot of R&D camshafts. Once we got the Okuma cam grinder, we could spool up and make our blanks and then rough grind them leaving stock all the way around. And then at the drop of a hat, within 30 minutes to an hour, we could grind something special, put it in an engine, put it on a dyno, try it out, see how it was and make some slight changes and put another cam in. Within a few hours we could be back on a dyno with a whole different profile.

Wade Anderson:

Wow. That's interesting.

Tom O’Toole:

Back then cams were all hardened. Stellite, I believe so. I think I still have blanks in my garage just stellite blank cams that are still sitting around.

Rocky Helms:

They went from 500, six or 700 miles on a camshaft into the four, five or 6,000 miles.

Wade Anderson:

No kidding. That's incredible. All right. So, let's talk through the technologies. What was the first machine that, I guess, Tom, that you worked on, or the first machine that came into RCR?

Rocky Helms:

MX-55.

Tom O’Toole:

MX-55 vertical. We did pistons on it.

Wade Anderson:

You worked on that machine?

Rocky Helms:

So, you're not just big machines. You actually did small machines back then too.

Tom O’Toole:

Oh yeah. Back then, wore a bunch of different hats. They weren't ready for a double column yet at the time. So, you just had to go with what we had. But we laid out a complete shop layout, Steve Wilson, at the time, with the building that we had a whole vision of what we wanted to make. So that was my earlier comment about the matrix is that that really drove what machines they got. Remember at the time, two engine blocks. It was almost impossible to get a quality machined engine block at the time.

Rocky Helms:

That was when we got to MA-50 horizontal.

Tom O’Toole:

The horizontal.

Rocky Helms:

And we started doing all the manufacturing of our engine blocks. We were just getting a cast in with some roughed in stuff. It'd be decked and some rough bores and stuff like that. And every engine manufacturer was doing a lot of customization, even piston oilers on the bottom. I was doing machining on the pan area, lifter bores, boring it for sleeves. That was when we started doing sleeve blocks. A lot of customization of the machining away from a standard block that was coming from GM.

Wade Anderson:

And that's all cast iron.

Rocky Helms:

It was CGI, compacted graphite.

Tom O’Toole:

That was an event. CGI was an event in itself. It's a material that contains a kitchen sink and everything else, I think, they can throw into it. Insert life was minimum.

Wade Anderson:

Tool life challenges.

Tom O’Toole:

Huge.

Rocky Helms:

A big one for us was cylinder heads also. And we worked with Okuma. They had the PM-600 Cosmo. Worked very close with them on developing a process to do cylinder head machining with that machine.

Wade Anderson:

So, that was the first machine that I saw at Okuma, when I first hired into Okuma. Actually, I might have saw it on the interview. When I was interviewing and they walked me out on the shop floor, as you walk out into RDT, it was sitting right there on the right. As soon as you walk out, on the ball screws sticking out of the roof.

Tom O’Toole:

And you didn't run away.

Wade Anderson:

No, I didn't run away. I should've, but no. I'm just kidding. But that's an interesting machine. So, anybody that hasn't seen that machine, what Rocky's talking about, the PM-600, was like a hexapod machine. So, the spindle is actually supported just by the ball screws. So, there's no linear X, Y and Z. Everything is in the ball screws on the spindle, which made it a very fast machine and you could articulate it very well. So, you guys had machine number one and then machine number two was on the floor, when I first started at Okuma. And then eventually you got machine number two, and those, to my knowledge, are the only two in the United States.

Tom O’Toole:

That'd be another example of, RCR has some pretty unique technology from us. And those machines have been up there for quite a while now, running.

Rocky Helms:

The first one came in '04 and the next one in '07. And they still run 24 hours a day, five days a week. And when we go ahead on go home on Friday, we load another cylinder head in each one. They run a lot.

Wade Anderson:

I remember the first time I visited RCR, the motor, basically on the end of the ball screw, it swung past, there was a rafter in the ceiling. And if I remember right, it was positioned in between the rafters. So, it would actually pass through it.

Rocky Helms:

We notched out the drop ceiling to make clearance for them.

Wade Anderson:

That's interesting.

Tom O’Toole:

Our building's grown quite a bit then the size, where we started out originally.

Wade Anderson:

Is that in the same building or is that a different facility?

Rocky Helms:

When I went there and done my tour, like I said, it was at the back of the engine R&D department. They were in just a... It probably wasn't a 30x40 room with two machines crammed in there, a horizontal and a 5-axis. And when we got the Okuma deal, they were going to give us our own building. So, it was right straight across the road from the R&D department, but we were also going to merge it with engineering. So, it was going to be a full capture shop of being able to do everything. We were going to have our engineering department. And like Tom was saying, part of it was branching out beyond just engine components and starting to do chassis components. At that time, when I went there, we were purchasing a chassis, which every race team was for the most part, they were buying either a Hopkins or a Laughlin chassis.

Rocky Helms:

And then they were buying their spindles and their centerlinks and idlers and Pitmans and rear-end housings and trailing arms and all that. So, Richard had the vision that we want to branch out and start doing more stuff in house for two reasons. Not just because you don't want your concept or your idea to get out, but also the big one is the turnaround time. That's the main thing, is most machine shops are going to be four, six weeks. If you took an idea to somebody and said, I need this new spindle or whatever, you're going to be six weeks. Well, that's six races. And at that time, in a 32, 34 race schedule, that's pretty big, if it's going to take six races to get something new. They want to be able to do it in one to two. And most of the time it's one.

Rocky Helms:

"It's Monday morning, this is what we want. And we want it on the car on Thursday to go to the track." So that was probably the biggest driving force. And that was where Okuma came in big time with Ron Raniszewski, was our main contact on the mill side. And Rick Kimmins on the lathe side. So, I remember Raniszewski coming up the very first week the MX-55 hit the floor and giving us all training. And they helped us out a lot with getting going early on. We had taken an engineer, Clifton Kiziah, and moved him over to programming.

Tom O’Toole:

That's right.

Rocky Helms:

You remember Clifton?

Tom O’Toole:

I remember Clifton. Yeah.

Rocky Helms:

We had Clifton and Sevan [Davitian]. Sevan was doing our 5-axis and Clifton was moving over from the engineering side in engine shop to start programming. And then we'd hired Mark Osborne had come on to help manage it and oversee it. And that was the big thing, was bringing a lot more stuff in house to be able to turn it around real quick.

Rocky Helms:

And like I said, they'd come on Monday and want something in a few days. We had the building with engineering in the front and we got the back half. So, we crammed five machines in there. We had a MX-55 and then a Cadet 4020 vertical. And then we had a LB200 and an LU15, two lathes, and then we brought the MA-50 in. We got rid of our old horizontal that we replaced the MA-50 with. And then we still had our 5-axis that we had before the Okuma partnership, until we found something that could do cylinder heads. They had 5-axis machines, but they were bigger, and we didn't need anything quite as big to do a cylinder head. But to answer your original question, we were just the back half of that shop.

Rocky Helms:

We probably didn't have more than 2,500 to 3,000 square feet of it.

Tom O’Toole:

That was tight.

Rocky Helms:

And engineering had the front. And at that time, we were rotating machines out probably every four to six months. We had two or three LU15s. A customer could buy a machine from our floor. And then the LU15 V8 CAM came in. So, as we got the ball rolling, it didn't take long to realize, "Man, we can get some cool stuff done, pretty dag on quick." And then we just started adding more machines, more machines. We got another lathe or two. Then the PM-600 came into play, working with Kevin Kraieski and a bunch of different ones at Okuma, Raniszewski. They come up with the concept and worked with us.

Rocky Helms:

We also worked with our PTC on the post side of it, developing a post and moved the cylinder head manufacturing over to the PM-600. The best I remember, that machine was actually on display at the PRI show that year, in 2004. And I think IMTS, as well. And then once it left the shows, it came to our facility and we kind of outgrew it at that point. So, the partnership started in 2001. By 2007, six years, engineering had moved out. So, we had the entire shop and we still had outgrown it. So, we went from the back of the shop to the entire shop, to moving to the current facility that we're in, which was probably about double the size. And then just a few years ago, we added another 5,000 square feet onto that. We've added a second shift, now we're up to 21 machines and about 32 people on two different shifts. And now we've outgrown that, again.

Tom O’Toole:

It's grown and back then, that was before you had the really large building that you have now. So, it consisted of a bunch of smaller buildings that were spread out. So, you ask how I lost weight. A lot of it was going up the hill to the three shop because nothing was close to nothing. We had R&D across the street. That was okay.

Rocky Helms:

They built the chassis shop. When we started doing all this stuff, they just started doing our chassis in house. So, a whole new facility got built for chassis manufacturing.

Tom O’Toole:

But it couldn't be any further away from the three. The chassis shop was all the way on the far end of the earth.

Rocky Helms:

And they built a new engine shop for production. So, we had the R&D engine shop in the production engine shop. And they started taking on alliances and we were at the height, we were building about 650 engines.

Wade Anderson:

And Tom, your office was up there, right?

Rocky Helms:

Yes.

Wade Anderson:

You were stationed there at RCR full time.

Tom O’Toole:

Stationed out there just to support and help it grow. Like Rocky said there were a lot of irons in the fire of different things we were doing back then. So, I was up there pretty much full time. And then, of course, you'd reach out to your coworkers whose level of expertise, like Kimmins. Rick Kimmins was the guru on piston turning. He knew how to program the machine to adjust the ovality.

Wade Anderson:

He was the cam turning expert.

Tom O’Toole:

Yeah.

Wade Anderson:

And it's fun for me, as you guys are throwing all the names out. Rick is one of our main instructors over the training program at RCCC, the college that we deal with. So, he's still tied in with us. You mentioned Ron Raniszewski and Kevin Kraieski, these are still active.

Tom O’Toole:

He's still around.

Wade Anderson:

He still working.

Tom O’Toole:

Rob Titus on the cam grinder.

Rocky Helms:

He'd done all the cam grinding stuff. And Kevin Kraieski's actually been heavily involved in our latest venture with MULTUS with the B250 ARMROID machine. Getting that up to speed with the new hub nut for the Next Gen car.

Wade Anderson:

So how have you seen manufacturing really transition from where you started, in the early days of the relationship, to where we are today?

Rocky Helms:

Definitely one of the big things is the technology that we've got. We started out with a 3-axis mill with a fourth axis rotary for doing the pistons and horizontal and some 2-axis lathe with live tooling. Our latest machine is the MULTUS U4000, with the full 5-axis and the ARMROID, the B250. Both of those are two of the most technologically advanced machines that we've had in the shop.

Wade Anderson:

Right. So, the MULTUS U4000, that's a big mill-turn machine. What type of parts do you do on that?

Rocky Helms:

Little bit of everything. We've got some small parts that we do on it, some oilers because they have angled holes and stuff. We've started branching out. One of the things we started about four or five years ago was branching out into contract manufacturing beyond just the racing stuff. So, we've got some military and defense-type parts that we're doing on it. One of the main things that we utilize it for was the camshaft manufacturing. We had been doing that on LU15 and then an LU300 later, using the upper and lower turret, pinch grooving, pinch turning, and tailstock. And we had to send it out, we'd send our cam shafts up north to a gun drill manufacturer company contractor to have the centers gun drilled. It was like a one-inch diameter hole, about 20 inches deep.

Rocky Helms:

Once we got the MULTUS U4000, it has high pressure coolant and everything, we actually do the gun drilling on the machine and do all of the turning and stuff using the sub to pull it out from the main, and then working up against the chuck. When we first started doing the camshaft manufacturing, at that time it was a LU15, and we were new to it. So, we were not being overly aggressive on speeds and feeds and all that until we got more familiar, the camshaft was about two hours and 45 minutes, a little bit less than three hours. Now we're right around 25 minutes.

Wade Anderson:

That's incredible.

Rocky Helms:

And a lot of that was with Kennametal helping on the tooling side and then with Okuma helping on the application side.

Wade Anderson:

So Rocky, the MULTUS B250 that you guys recently took possession of, that's got a built-in Okuma robot inside. Talk me through a little bit, how does that integrate into your production, into your manufacturing?

Rocky Helms:

So, that's been a new one for us, definitely. I've wanted to get us into the robotic side and stuff for a couple years. And then when Okuma came out with this line, the ARMROID and the STANDROID with the vertical stuff, reached out to Okuma about trying to get us into the automation side a little bit. So, we had won a contract. A lot of people, especially if they're familiar with NASCAR, knows that in the last couple years there's been a transition to this Next Gen car, which ironically is almost back to the way racing was 20 years ago, where more things were purchased. So, there's single source suppliers for your suspension components now and stuff like that. Now the engine is still specific to the manufacturer. So, everything we've done engine-wise we're still doing, but on the car side, you've got a single source supplier for your transaxle and for your suspension components. Your chassis, we can no longer build our own chassis in house.

Rocky Helms:

So, that was another reason a few years ago with we knew this was coming. So, we have 21 machines and 30 some people and all the technology we need and experience to do basically anything. So, we started looking at how are we going to keep everybody employed, but there are still over 200 part numbers that you have to manufacture in-house. So, we still need the resources we have for the engine shop and for parts of the car, but we try to offset the cost of that by doing contract manufacturing also. So, we actually built the very first Next Gen car. NASCAR contacted us or basically we were contracted to build the first one. So, that was a major undertaking. And without Okuma and their support and everything we had, it would've been impossible. From the beginning of manufacturing to the car being on the track was about seven to eight weeks.

Rocky Helms:

And that was for a car that had never been built. We had to build the fixturing Dallara was contracted by NASCAR to design the car. So, we did receive the designs, but as far as manufacturing, and it was a total effort of everybody at RCR, the chassis shop they had to do everything. And then we had a whole team that basically worked on nothing but the Next Gen, working with Dallara. There was a lot of design changes on the fly and working with Brandon Thomas and the group there at NASCAR. So, we built the first car and then found out that the way NASCAR was going to do it is, these individual assemblies and parts and components were going to go out to bid. So, we actually bid on some of those and won some contracts. So, we're the supplier for some of the Next Gen parts to all the teams.

Rocky Helms:

So, we realized that we're going to get into more automation. We're not just making parts for us, now. One of the contracts we got was the single wheel nut. That's been a big topic because it's one of the biggest differences between the car last year and the car this year is, instead of five lugs, there's one single lug. We got the contract for that and realize we're not just supplying that for our team. We're going to be supplying that for 40+ teams. So, it's not going to be something that changes every week, like everything else we've made for the last 20 years. Spindle this week is not... We always joke it's the spindle of the week. Every Monday it was, "We need a different spindle this cast, we need this cast and camber, and we need this ball joint location."

Rocky Helms:

So, now we've got something we know we're locked into on design for three years. We know how many teams we have to support. And once we get into the race and we can determine what our usage is going to be, that was the main driving force with trying to get something that was automated in. And it's worked great. The ARMROID, we just load the stacker with slugs, and we've got two options right now. One is doing just the turn portion on the ARMROID and actually using the PM600 5-axis for doing all of the pockets and all the 5-axis milling. Then there's another option, which is the entire finished part on the ARMROID. Obviously, the total throughput to get parts out the door is faster to split it up, but then if we have a little bit more time than we can do the whole thing on one.

Rocky Helms:

And it's just loading the slugs. It's got the collision avoidance on it, which is how the whole system works, basically, with the robot. And then, we've got the tool breakage and tool wear and all that stuff. So, we know what our tool wear is, we know how many parts we can run and then it's got probing on it also, so we can measure the parts on the machine, make offset adjustments. Without Kevin Kraieski and other people at Okuma, we would not be anywhere near where we are on getting up to speed on it.

Wade Anderson:

That's awesome. So, tell me some stories on Tom, from Tom's time back at RCR. Tell me some dirt that we can use to give Tom a hard time about.

Rocky Helms:

I know there was one where he about blew up his neighborhood.

Wade Anderson:

All right. Let's hear it.

Rocky Helms:

There was some gas and maybe some beer was involved.

Wade Anderson:

All right, Tom, so talk us through that. What happened?

Tom O’Toole:

I miss carburetors. That's what I miss. I'd like to get back to those days when we were machining parts like that.

Rocky Helms:

You was there for some of the carburetors at the last minute, staying all night.

Tom O’Toole:

That was a lot of work that went into them manifolds and things like that. I think, Rocky said, "Now you got to buy the parts." And I've still got some old 350 spiders sitting in the garage and I don't know where they came from.

Wade Anderson:

Showed up in your lunch box one day?

Rocky Helms:

Well, back then, like I said, we were changing something every week and the little change... One thing we were doing was header design. When the header design would change, it would change where the starter needed to be. So, I don't know if you remember, but one of the early parts that we were doing on the verticals was starter housings. We would buy a starter, an ACDelco starter, would take the housing off and make our own so that we could relocate the starter in a different spot so that you could clear the headers. So, something you wouldn't think would even matter that much, all you just put starter on. But when the header design changed, then that's going to dictate where the starter needed to be. And it was stuff like that. We made like five different versions of just the starter housing, where it would locate it in a different spot.

Rocky Helms:

The parts were just, especially on the car side, once we got... The engine side has always been a more, I don't want to say planned out, but they'll put together a build schedule and a testing schedule and stuff like that. And the car side on, especially the chassis components and stuff, is every single week everybody's moving the needle just a little bit more. So, you're trying to come back with something that is a little better than what you had the week before. And that's usually been the biggest hurdle, is the timeline that you have to try to get something done.

Wade Anderson:

Well, Tom did a great job as a true sales guy, deflecting the story from him. So, we'll keep blowing up the stuff for another time. Well, Rocky, as we talk about contract manufacturing, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you guys to look at doing manufacturing work for them, how do they reach out to you guys?

Rocky Helms:

We actually have a website. RCR Manufacturing Solutions. You can go on and Google us or anything or get in touch with me as far as email and stuff like that, rhelms@rcrracing.com. Reach out to us, we also have a guy that's VP of business development and stuff, Mike Brown, that handles, actually, the technical side of that with getting customers in the door and stuff and handling all that.

Wade Anderson:

All right. Excellent. Well guys, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate your time and thank you for joining us. If you have any thoughts, questions, ideas for future podcasts, please reach out to us. Otherwise, till next time, we'll see you then.