welcome to recycled Idaho for to recycling industry veterans bread Eckart Nick Snyder’s for Idaho businesses and organizations that are putting in the work to keep Idaho environmentally and economically viable at the same time take a listen to how these entrepreneurs business owners and operators making things happen in the great state of Idaho and this boots on the ground I get a chance to walk the production for it with Ken Cortez the owner of metal craft I’m with Ken Cortese metal owner of metal craft we’re gonna do a sit-down podcast with you here next week or so whenever it’s available for you but we’d like to do kind of the boots on the ground portion where we get it like really see just kind of show us your shop all right come on yeah this is going on our 33rd year over here is now started in 1986 my father started it back then and we’re still at it another 33 year old family business family I’m one owner a family-owned business he is your son he worked for you I have one son of the business really cool daughter was in

the business 14 bozo moved away do you guys have like one item you guys mainly make chords they’re just kind of budgeted for country no we are strictly a job shop so we don’t have a product line of our own okay we rely on a lot of different customers different to OEM different people need metal parts made for their products will be able to get into a lot of that for you on the sit down portion okay but I just like to kind of see it I’ve obviously been here before but I’ve seen it but we want everyone go see it like what is what is this machine do this is a watt numata co2 laser it’s 4000 Watts we can cut up to basically one inch and we don’t like to think it’s too heavy okay well we’ve got a lot of light gauge steel here this has been a great machine for us so it was just kind of our workhorse on the laser sight and we have a bunch on the other side but you know along I’ll cut mainly still in here got everything there steal all the stainless everything

in here yep this is what makes the skeletons rocks doesn’t make over the update so you can see a lot of different parts that are brought through here everybody has its own work order everything has its own timetable it needs to meet I first met you I think we were removing some equipment that was over here well we actually more alone right yeah with a bunch of ladder on here yeah we added 7,000 square feet okay so these are all parts that are coming off the laser this is like a there’s 50 50 shelves that we may bring these units okay that’ll go to a bigger bigger assembly great do you guys have more machines over this way yeah so we have on this side of the walls we lose all our material that comes in on the other side is our punch some assembly area we got some other stuff over here receiving there’s a pretty good machine we’ve been a trump house for a lot of years tomorrow four years ago there’s an electric punch a little bit different a little bit better technology yeah with this program offline this is

a proven program that runs I think the program runs about 15 20 minutes and I’ll come and take this it drops it into the bucket and they’ll think there’s another sheet on we have to sometimes throw on a skeleton light crew yeah oh yeah you gotta load up and unload of it you know like the laser over there sometimes we’ll have six and eight hour run so we’ll run them over the weekend just let them run that’s the scale that’s coming off of that one yeah right now it’s probably cutting the radius and setting this edge around here right now it’s cutting these two corners go around then it’s probably gonna come and do the conversation skeleton for that part yeah well the best we can get out of that particular part well there’s all kinds of equipment so this is basically where everything gets punched and plee the punch or lasered this is kind of a staging area this is my model shop gentlemen earning this 96 years old oh wow probably the work most of them here oh you know so he’s rolling those flat for me right now and then so

he has this we finally bought a little power roller but he’ll come in here but he’s worked for us for many many years yeah and that’s just we just have to get that a little flatter you know up until up until about a week or two ago he didn’t want us to buy it but he had a roll he did by hand oh really yeah which is it’s sitting over there so we want that yeah that’s just a little you know secondary machine but he would do all those by hand Wow we have to deburr rooms so this super room will allow us so this is the steel deburr room and so the ferrous material and non-ferrous on the other side then we have the Machine Sanders in the middle so we try that we filter the air got ducts and everything coming out of here so the machine Sanders and wet sander the dry sander in here these two areas here that’s a dry machine at the web machine right well it’s just some of them some people like the dry grain that we can get out of them out on that

machine we have we have several parts that think we’ve been doing for many many years the texture that have the finish yeah that the dry does and this is actually it’s a de burrs and grains at the same time so it’ll actually take off burrs off the part also so it has a belt and two rollers inside of it all that something comes off the punch easily has to be the verge I figured out yeah you got to get the edges off of it so these are all parts that this came off the laser that came off that’s the punch part mm-hmm correct well no we we got to build our first article and do everything for the first time that’s an inspection a laser inspection machine okay yeah so we have to build each one of the products out first or we agree on we agree on a price first and then if they agree on it then we go from there oh yeah long-term still have these are all parts of we make it for quite a few years now no this all sub skin ready lots of shipping there’s

a shipping area all these crates and this thing is going out pretty and studwelding over here and then the fresh break area so everything that’s comes off the flat comes over here and gets folded okay so we have fresh breaks all the fresh rachels will keep the same tolerance or will repeat within for thousands and a half a degree so you know they’re tight tolerance machines we’ve got some good tolerance we have keeping them we have something don’t this is where all the hardware insertion is done unless you like said I’ve got four fresh brakes I got two four footers a six footer and a 10-footer these are all electric brakes now and that’s a hybrid that’s a electric hydraulic so it comes down to the pinch point gives you a electric till it gets to the pinch point then it turns on the hydraulic motor the circuit for certain hydraulic motors aren’t you know they’re more friendly for the environment they’re not running a little cheaper to run how they want their electric yeah yeah big stuff will go over here but see this when it’s not running like the old fashioned

hydraulic you know that pump is running all day long you know so now these runner what it needs it but as our well Department so you can see that different weldments it’ll be quelled it over here you saw part there and then just too big we’ve had this part we had it on so this is a two more weld station so yeah yeah so we added this back portion in that portion back a few years ago so you see a lot of welding that well you know it’s the most important or your most expensive I can go you go the laser and a bunch of the real expensive machines but you know they all each one of our products on average will take anywhere from 9 to 14 operations before it leaves the building so they’re all really important yeah right yeah that’s a disadvantage and you’ve realized I think with how much really goes into x-ray mm-hmm I don’t I see it yeah it’s one movies well I think it’s a good thing you guys are doing yeah I realize like how much there is and like Idaho I think it’s

different industry isn’t like and we’re obviously like tying it back into recycling didn’t but like so many different industries ever cycling in like I want we wanted to also teach you so people like the true what recycling really oh yeah oh yeah like and and I’ve always did that well I like people that are doing it oh yeah you know there’s a lot that goes on around there we go it’s a lot of material that goes through this valley there is no I think like myself included like before I started doing this I didn’t realize I didn’t realize that this world really existed I think we’re very cool yeah very lucky to be able to open a business have a business in Boise you know it’s not the easiest thing to do but it’s a great place to live great place to work you know and there’s a lot of opportunities over here – okay I think all right buddy thank you very much