Episode 10: Where Your Tire Valves Come From | A Tour of Haltec Corporation

Hi, I'm JJ Bock, Director of Operations for Rubber-Inc. Welcome to another episode of In Stock With Bock. Today we're on site in Latonia, Ohio, here with our partners at Haltec. Today we're going behind the scenes to see how Haltec produces the high quality tire valve solutions and why they've been a industry leader for over 45 years. Brendan and Jeff, thanks for having us. Tell us a little about what you have in store for us today. JJ, we're very excited to be hosting the Rubber-Inc team today and then a great opportunity for us to be able to show you our manufacturing capabilities

as a U.S. supplier. So today we're going to be in one of the three facilities that we have on campus here in Leetonia in Salem, Ohio. We're going to be in the primary manufacturing plant looking at the processes involved in making the large bore, super large bore, z-bore, and mega bore products. Sounds great, looking forward to it. If you look behind us here you can see a wide range of different sized brass rod. This is some of our highest volume brass rod. Additionally, we have this modular lift system that really is an inventory on-demand system that holds about an

additional 100,000 pounds of materials. And so when you think about a brass rod relative to an tire valve part or an airflow component, really this is the product line that lends itself to a turning center. Okay. And so when I say a turning center, I quite literally mean a lathe. So all the machines you see behind us here function under the same premise of we're feeding a brass rod material in and spinning that component part with tooling operating around that part to form the features of the part. The machine behind me here is the 17B. This is the large

bore valve body and so across the 22 machines inside of the machine shop we really are making around 500 different unique stock codes. But this product is an example of something that's really high volume for us. Okay. And once it goes to the assembly area, really what this is is the large bore valve body that can be soldered onto additional parts. And so this one part will end up in a lot of different applications and it's high volume. So for example, that'll go into make an extension, right? Absolutely. Or different large bore valves with different bends. Yes,

are all of those things that you make. Fantastic. And so other parts that we make on some of the other turning centers of this area and really the reason that we invested significantly in six new machines over the last season is there also is a unique amount of lower volume product. And so this is an example of a lower volume product. Low volume might mean we are making a customer design product that our engineers designed and drew up. And really, if our engineers can design and draw it, we can manufacture it. So let me get this right. If we have a customer who has a

custom need, you guys can accommodate that need. We can accommodate that need and with this equipment, we can traditionally do it very, very quickly. That's awesome. So where does it go from here? Once it leaves this machine, what's the next step? Okay, so from here, and really with everything that we're machining on on the different machining centers. Getting clean debris free parts is a really high priority. We have a state-of-the-art parts washing system that is very eco-friendly. This is the the large bore valve body. I'm getting ready to go into the parts

washing system. There's actually another more unique part. This is a little more complicated part to make. You can see all the chips and coolant that's still on the parts as they go through. This is the core component for the chuck handle that goes into the 377 and many of the inflator and gauge parts that we make. Okay. And then when they come out of the parts washer, you can see the significant difference between what the parts look like prior to parts washing and then post parts washing. And so these products are going through the oven. The oven is an ammonia-fueled oven that burns at about 1700 degrees Fahrenheit. The product flows through

the oven and comes out into the inspection and packaging area. We are 100% testing every valve that we make to make sure that there is no chance it reaches a customer and can leave. Okay so I gotta stop you for a second I want to double check this. You're testing every valve that comes through here? We are testing every valve that comes through here. That's amazing. So this is a similar product after the oven process. Okay. And now we're in our intermediate work cell and so Mike is running a CNC controlled auto bender where he's taken the part we saw come

from the oven and getting the precise custom bend required for the application. More than just bending that happens in this work cell, Heather's team, Heather's our lead in this area, Heather's team does hydraulic pressing, marking of parts, this is where... This is essentially where they're dressing the valve. That's correct. You go to the final product. That's absolutely correct. When you look at the five different components that I'm showing you, this, it doesn't necessarily look like it would be all that difficult to screw all these parts together and assemble it.

But when we're talking about hundreds of thousands a year and we're making, you know, 30,000 plus a month on some of these product lines, it really is a significant time savings to have that automated. We also do have some additional assembly stations inside of the plants. The parts we saw being machined earlier looks like it's actually being assembled now. This is earlier what we saw as the blank 375 chuck

at the parts washer. Now it's been nickel plated and is getting assembly work done to it to create a finished 377 chuck. Hey, Brendan. Hey, JJ. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about the Haltec Inflation Solutions? Sure. Haltec designs and manufactures custom inflation solutions for a wide variety of industries. From the sporting good world to the tire service industry, we have you covered. One important point we like to make the customers because of the importance of accurate air pressure is using the same Haltec calibrated technology

from cradle to grave with that tire. So when you're mounting the tire with our overinflation system, but when you're topping off the tire with our mobile solutions, to when you're using our systems on roadside service calls, you're using that same calibrated process. Sounds like Haltec has an inflation solution meet every need. Yep, thank you. Visit www.rubber-inc.com for high quality Haltec valves, extensions, gauges, chucks, and more.