Back from VC what an impressive day

[elkimmeg]

Got the scoop on the ever burn technology

Found out other US manufactures Subcontract VC to make their castings

Vc makes more than stoves grills. They even cast castiron pans to the tune of 20,000 a year

Found out the new Ever burn Defiant and Encore are bolted together using gaskets not refactory cement.

Every stove is smoke tested before being boxed

Visited the testing Lab where the stoves are burned with movable walls and 50 or more sensors attached to the stoves and walls to monitor temps

The current test was burning common fire wood to see why a pre fab fireplace was smoking up the glass

Got a preview of the mold for the insert replacing the Winter warms

WE were informed of a new Cat combustor developed that is better than current combustors using no platium or ceramics.

New everburn Defiant and Encores emit .07 grams And saw the testing filters of how they and the Epa certified labs test

Goose and I got to see the entire casting, ceramic coating. essembly the R&D lab. We got to see how the make the molds of the cast iron and for the cement refactory parts

Did you know that even the pallets they make are from wood that is sterilized required to ship to European countries

Found out they are also using more and more stainless steel bolts and 3200 dedgee never sieze.

I have to leave some info for Goose to fill in this was just the tour in Bethel. We then got in out car and went to the huge foundry in Randolth Vt 10 miles away
Here Vc is the largest single user of electricity in VT. The Cast iron moldes and pressed in a machine using a 24" hydralic cylinder One is required to wear a hard hat and ear plugs at all times. This machinery is heavy duty and noisy. Guess what one of the major sources for the cast iron is? Old break calipers drums and disk. Currenty VC has all but stopped outsourcing all materials from the Pacific Basin the last remaining contracts are for ductal iron, but that opperation has been shifted to Ontario Canada Things are going well that they have expandeed opperations in Indiana. About the only thing outsourced, are the gass grills made to be sold in Home Chepo. All gas grills dealers sell, are made in North America

Did you know the own some of the patterns for harman pellet stoves They have no interest in bringing their prior pellet stoves or new ones to market. Found on the Premise is a Jotul Oslo, they purchase for testing and comparison
Time for Goose to take over here Please explain the manufactures Btu claims descrepencies and the Everburn technology

 

[wg_bent]

What about ever burn Intrepids or a replacement small stove?

 

[webbie]

Elk, you must have been in your glory seeing all that stuff! What a bunch of nice equipment - that is one of only 4 or 5 foundries of it's type in the world - in terms of stove castings and enameling.

Yeah - the stuff shipped here from China cannot use any real wood, only plywood. I guess bugs get into the stuff.

 

[elkimmeg]

Talk about the Vip treatment, We were given the tour by the head of engineering. He filled us in on the castings world wide. If a stove company subcontracts to China, because of weight the cargo containers can only be half filled. A lot of moving and shifting is involved and damage is a real issue. Should a company get damaged parts, it will take anouther 4 months to replace them.
They arrive on the West coast unloaded from the containe ships and trucked accrost the country. Shipping cost and time, has made subcontracting VC a vialable option, especially on the East coast. They can get parts to PA in less than 12 hours. Other companies cast parts are comming from Europe, but again shipping cost and time factor in there.

When these furnaces are fired up they are not shut down 2 and 3 work shifts work them 40,000 stoves are made a year here. We watched the large press working, to the tune of 240 presses an hour. Every where one looks safety is paramount. and that transmitts to delivering a safe end product. The heavy foundry has a sign 75 days without an incident report. And VC recycles Water, sands, metal ,almost nothing gets wasted. Even the glass bleakage test was explained to us using a 3 lb steel ball lifted about waist high and swung into the glass. If it breakes, they examine why and modify the gasketing or holding clips.

 

[par38lamp]

Thanks for the report. Keep the details coming. I love reading stuff like this. Pics?

Glad to hear they practice safety. I have seen the shift to more PPE in the construction industry, and I welcome it. Like my dad always said, "They don't pay you enough to get hurt".

 

[BrotherBart]

Sounds like an impressive operation. And I am sure glad safety is priority. That is some dangerous work. Makes running a chainsaw look like laying on the couch.

What stoves did you get for your program?

 

[webbie]

The disamatic molding machine is amazing because it presses sand hard enough that you don't need to have a box for the mold - the sand itself holds up. Without that machine, it takes an incredible amount of hand work to make molds for parts.

Even with all the fancy equipment, it still will surprise most people to see how much hand work is involved in making a stove. It is not mass production.

 

[elkimmeg]

Craig the have the essembly line where the receiving cast for bolts and drilled in precision gigs and tapped out just as fast

There are multi stations where workers examing the cast and grind off the excess or discard them if they don ot measure up

Get this by gasketing the new everburn stoves, should a stove get damaged during installation only that damaged part needs to be replaced by removing the bolts
and just replacing the single part Can't do that easilly when the stoves joints are held by refactory cement. They no longer use the 4 threaded rods to hold the stoves together, each part is bolted in. The everburn Defiant and Encore come equipped with rear and bottom heat shields. You would have had more questions than goose or I had , but they answered everything. We were allowed to R&D and could even take pictures Employed there is one of the original master molder from the mid 80's The head engineeer Peter MacLeary was one of the original engineers that brought the winter warm to market. He agrees it had its time. and admits to the differculty of manufacturing and essembly

 

[elkimmeg]

Oh! the donor stove well there was a mix up originally they were giving me the new color Bordeaux (barn red) Encore Cat
but when we were picking it up some how two stoves were inventoried the Encore Ever burn Cat and the Encore cat.
At one point I though we were ending up with both. But I felt thar would be imposing So they insisted we take the Everburn Encore

 

[GVA]

Did you say Pictures?????????? No that grin ain't quite big enough.........
Did you bring back any stoves?



EDITEDITEDIT
Ya know sometimes your post just takes too long to post before someone beats ya to the punch......
That pic doesn't look like the foundry though.....

 

[elkimmeg]

Actually I have a dvd and VCR version of the entire tour. I just have to play it and pull out some of the pictures for the forum. What a pressing machine, then it goes into a long tunnell
that shakes off the a most of the casting sand and captures it for re- use. We were in the control room where the inject the cast iron molds as it is injected on the computer screen it is monitored and examined for consistancy every mold injection comes up on the screen we them walked on a walk way where the molds leave the injector and could look down at the molted metal. You can feel the heat 240 mold injections an hour Every cast that gets rejected gets re-melted If a cermanic coting does not work out to standards they are placed in a machine where the cermanic is removed then sent back to be re coated. You are right I pulled the picture from the web page to show the color. However the one I got has a blemish or chip some where.
GVA you would have enjoyed the tour and plant. Goose and I hit it off imediately like we were old friends.

 

[wg_bent]

This is very cool. Really good press for VC and I think a good thing since there was a perception of quality issues, it sure sounds like that has been overcome. I'm so happy to see good "press" on an american product.

Maybe some of the other US companies would follow this lead. Harmon? Lopi? Alaska? Others?

In other circles...Ford, GM? I'd sure like to get a tour of the Macintosh facility in Kirkwood.

 

[babalu87]

Nice review but isnt this a little akin to Rumsfeld telling us everything is going swimmingly in Iraq

Was this part of a public tour or was it compensation for all the good press over the years
Sounds like an interesting trip.

 

[elkimmeg]

This is very cool. Really good press for VC and I think a good thing since there was a perception of quality issues, it sure sounds like that has been overcome. I'm so happy to see good "press" on an american product.

Maybe some of the other US companies would follow this lead. Harmon? Lopi? Alaska? Others?

In other circles...Ford, GM? I'd sure like to get a tour of the Macintosh facility in Kirkwood.

Read between the lines they cast for other manufactures One of with you mentioned I saw their molds

 

[elkimmeg]

Nice review but isnt this a little akin to Rumsfeld telling us everything is going swimmingly in Iraq

Was this part of a public tour or was it compensation for all the good press over the years
Sounds like an interesting trip.

There is no public tour the general public will never be allowed to see what we saw including permission to pictures and admittance to R&D and testing,
Pay back possibly but I'm self employed I lost a day of work I did it for my own knowledge and to help with the donor program which helps others.
to me I have no other motives

 

[wg_bent]

This is very cool. Really good press for VC and I think a good thing since there was a perception of quality issues, it sure sounds like that has been overcome. I'm so happy to see good "press" on an american product.

Maybe some of the other US companies would follow this lead. Harmon? Lopi? Alaska? Others?

In other circles...Ford, GM? I'd sure like to get a tour of the Macintosh facility in Kirkwood.

Read between the lines they cast for other manufactures One of with you mentioned I saw their molds

Wow cool...I wonder when Macintosh will start selling those cast iron amplifiers. Must be for the heat sinks!

 

[Michael6268]

[/quote]
There is no public tour the general public will never be allowed to see what we saw including permission to pictures and admittance to R&D and testing,[/quote]

But arent "you" the "general public" or did I miss something??

 

[BrotherBart]

There is no public tour the general public will never be allowed to see what we saw including permission to pictures and admittance to R&D and testing,[/quote]

But arent "you" the "general public" or did I miss something??[/quote]

Nah. He was VC's top sales person on the East Coast last year. Just like Spike was for PE in the Mid-West.

 

[Roospike]

I heard Englander has a new sales rep too .....................


Very impressive day guys , sounds awesome.

 

[elkimmeg]

You guys have no idea the extent Ul governs stoves and testing a then approval I get a kick out of people calling the manufacture asking if they can do sush and such with their stove installation. No one at the manufacture's place can tell you anything different than what has been listed, tested, and certified.

During the tour in the testing lab I see the front door handle to a Defiant attached. I made a comment that its about time they attached the handle they always seemed to get lost.
the head of engineering explained to me UL would not allow them to attach the handle unless VC was willing to resubmit the attached handle to the stove and submitt it to testing and approval.
If the handle is deamed to hot the entire test fails and ther goes another $20,000 They also cannot attach it to the consumer sold stoves as that would violate the UL listing.

I was telling you about the steel ball and glass test. That too is part of the UL test that broken piece of glass means the test fails and another $20,000 gone. the $20,000 is just the test not counting the R&D behind it. This is not a one time test but a random test can be ordered at anytime. All stoves have to be re-certified every 5 years. Between UL the EPA and OSHA there is a lot to worry about opperating a plant and being in the stove business

 

[tutu_sue]

Hats off to VC for their generosity and taking care of the Elkster. I know now that VC is definitely back to becoming a company who's products we should seriously consider.

Wow Elk. That was a really cool tour. You must have been in heaven. I'm jealous. I visited the VC web site and see that the Everburn technology uses 30% less wood, not to mention the .07 grams per hour. I have never seen emissions that low. Do you know what's different about the parts of the Everburn system, how it works and if they have patented it?

I got to visit the Martin Guitar Factory in Nazareth, PA. Being a guitar owner, that was also a very excellent tour and was very interesting to see the process from start to finish. I was amazed that they are still using same tools that were used in their factory in the 19th century, as well as the latest in CNC machinery. And there was not a spec of dust in the whole place. You would never know that they build using wood.

Cast iron - Is that why McIntosh amps are so heavy? No wonder they sound so good. I have my dad's Mac, and the amp weighs around 70 lbs. Eesh!!

 

[Roospike]

You guys have no idea the extent Ul governs stoves and testing a then approval I get a kick out of people calling the manufacture asking if they can do sush and such with their stove installation. No one at the manufacture's place can tell you anything different than what has been listed, tested, and certified.

During the tour in the testing lab I see the front door handle to a Defiant attached. I made a comment that its about time they attached the handle they always seemed to get lost.
the head of engineering explained to me UL would not allow them to attach the handle unless VC was willing to resubmit the attached handle to the stove and submitt it to testing and approval.
If the handle is deamed to hot the entire test fails and ther goes another $20,000 They also cannot attach it to the consumer sold stoves as that would violate the UL listing.

I was telling you about the steel ball and glass test. That too is part of the UL test that broken piece of glass means the test fails and another $20,000 gone. the $20,000 is just the test not counting the R&D behind it. This is not a one time test but a random test can be ordered at anytime. All stoves have to be re-certified every 5 years. Between UL the EPA and OSHA there is a lot to worry about opperating a plant and being in the stove business

Good information , love it.

So does this mean everybody that attaches a handle or handles to the VC stove is voiding UL listing when altering the design ? Kinda like changing a heat shield or the leg kit that came with the stove ? ( changing leg hight )

I wonder about testing a stove if they can just test the stove with one option to another option to this that or the other thing within one test ?
(example)
Stove brand X model G is tested with ash pan ............ whole new test with out ash pan ? ( or within the same $20k test )

 

[BrotherBart]

I heard Englander has a new sales rep too .....................

Interesting you should say that. I am going down there in the morning.

 

[Roospike]

I heard Englander has a new sales rep too .....................

Interesting you should say that. I am going down there in the morning.

I told you i had my eye on you brother !

 

[BrotherBart]

I heard Englander has a new sales rep too .....................

Interesting you should say that. I am going down there in the morning.

I told you i had my eye on you brother !

The heck with cast iron. I'm gonna see me some welders!