September/October 1994
The principals of this Oklahoma-based design engineering firm see their role as solving recyclers’ processing equipment problems. And with the company’s recently expanded operations, and “breakthrough” nonferrous separator, it may be poised to solve more than ever.
By Kent K iser
Kent Kiser is an associate editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling.
If you want a clue to what Osborn Engineering Inc. is all about, read the motto on the company's business cards: Recycling systems and solutions.
To Marlin Bills, the firm's president, that sums it up. In his eyes, the company exists to provide solutions, to be a scrap processing equipment problembuster, a company with all the right pieces to a recycler's equipment puzzle. "We're a design engineering company," he says, "and we're here to solve problems."
Osborn's specialty in the problem-solving world is engineering the upstream and downstream components of ferrous and nonferrous shredding systems, including conveyors, dust collection equipment, cascade cleaning systems, trommels, and eddy current nonferrous separators.
But that's not all the firm does. This 30-yearold company, headquartered in the Tulsa, Okla., heartland, provides the gamut of services for what it calls "engineered air and solids handling systems," taking on everything from engineering consulting and computer drafting to equipment installation and system testing.
The Custom Route
Osborn Engineering isn't your typical scrap processing equipment manufacturer. Technically, in fact, the firm isn't a manufacturer at all because, while it designs and preassembles its products, it doesn't fabricate them. Instead, the company contracts out most of its manufacturing work to three fabricators-Bixby Fabco (Bixby, Okla.), which makes its infeed conveyors, eddy currents, and structural components; Neilson Steel Co. Inc. (West Tulsa, Okla.), which makes its cyclones, cascade systems, and other rolled-steel airstream parts; and G&M Manufacturing (St. Louis), which makes the ceramic linings in its dust collection systems.
While some manufacturers might consider it a disadvantage to work with outside fabricators, Bills insists it's a hands-down advantage, one that enables Osborn to be more cost-competitive. "In good times, it's fine to have your own shop because you can make equipment cheaper," he explains. "But in slow times, you still have the same overhead."
When it comes to product quality, Bills asserts that his contract fabricators 11 can produce as good equipment as anybody-at a reasonable price." And Osborn commands great service from its fabricators, in large part because it accounts for anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of each of the contractors' business. "They're committed to us and we're committed to them, so it's a good marriage," says Randy Johnson, vice president and Bills' nephew. And besides, he notes, Osborn has worked with its fabricators for so long-12 years with Bixby, nine with Neilson, and six with G&M-and become so close to them that the four together are "almost like one company."
Osborn also differs from other equipment makers in that it is a custom operation, with virtually all of its jobs customer- and site-specific. "Our equipment isn't made in advance and sitting in a factory somewhere," Bills says. "We don't tell customers, 'This is the kind of equipment we sell, put it in your process."' Instead, recyclers come to Osborn with a processing equipment problem, and the firm adapts its products to each recycler's facility, existing equipment, and/or unique needs. "We work side-by-side with our customers to make sure they get what they want and what they need," Johnson says. "Our willingness to work with the customer is our strongest trait."
Getting the Train Rolling
One thing Osborn Engineering does have in common with many other scrap processing equipment vendors is that it relies on the scrap industry for virtually all of its sales. The firm wasn't always so focused on scrap, however. When Tulsa entrepreneur Jack Osborn founded the firm in 1964, it served as a representative for a number of manufacturers of products such as fans, compressors, baghouses, scrubbers, mixers, pumps, vibrating feeders and screens, and conveyors. The company then put together complete systems from these items for light industrial customers located mostly in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and the Texas panhandle.
Osborn Engineering made its first foray into the scrap recycling industry in 1972, when Universal Engineering Inc. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) called in Osborn's expertise in dust collection/pollution prevention for an auto shredding system Universal was building for Standard Iron & Metal Co. Inc. (Oklahoma City).
Gradually, the company began attracting more attention from the scrap industry, but even as recently as a decade ago, recyclers only accounted for about 50 percent of its business, recalls Bills, who joined Osborn Engineering in 1974. (Johnson followed in 1976.)
The scrap ratio has since made gains, owing in part to the 1986 acquisition of the firm by Bills and Johnson. At that time, the company was like "a train that had lost its fuel and was coasting, getting slower and slower," Bills recollects. "When we took over, the train was almost stopped, and it was real hard to get it going again." Between 1986 and 1989, times were indeed tight and the company pared down to a staff of three: Bills, Johnson, and longtime secretary Juanita Dixon, now a 14-year veteran of the firm.
To get the Osborn train rolling again, Bills started attending industry trade shows and advertising the firm's services-a first for the company-while also continuing to improve its existing equipment and expand its product lines.
The results have been nothing short of a corporate resurrection. Osborn's annual sales, which had never exceeded $1 million prior to 1986, surpassed that mark the first year after Bills and Johnson took over and have risen steadily ever since. The firm had its biggest year ever in 1993, reaching $3 million in sales, but it had passed that mark already in the first half of 1994. By this year's end, Bills predicts the company will hit the $5-million mark.
In response to this growth, Osborn's staff has swelled over the years from the three at the time of the 1986 purchase to 14 today, including three engineers, five draftsmen, a production coordinator, a purchasing/parts manager, and two equipment assemblers. In 1993, the company also established its first division office, located in Peoria, Ill., and directed by Ron Chandler, who formerly worked for Peoria-based Central Manufacturing Inc.
In contrast to the dog days of the mid-1980s, when the firm was "aging," Bills says, today's scrap-focused Osborn Engineering feels young again, primarily because "we keep injecting new ideas and innovations into the business."
Solving Problems Through Products
One reason why Osborn is able to devise these innovations to recyclers' problems is its principals' previous experience with other industries. "Our knowledge in various fields has taken our blinders off and enabled us to be more creative," Johnson says. "We try to look at ways of doing things from a different angle rather than staying with the old hat method."
This blinders-off perspective and decades of experience solving equipment problems has enabled the firm to develop many unique features in its products, Bills says. "We were the first in a lot of areas to do certain things," he asserts. "Everything we've got, we've designed from scratch."
One product Bills points to with pride is Osborn's new "diamond facet" trommel, which he says offers two advantages over traditional trommels. First, it is built in the shape of an octagon rather than a circle, which maximizes the time material spends on the trommel's surface and minimizes the time it spends sitting on lifters or falling through the air. In essence, the trommel's flat surfaces make material "do more work," Bills says, noting that this translates into a faster and better sort than circular trommels can provide.
Osborn's trommel also enables operators to easily adjust the octagonal side plates to sort material of different sizes. The diamond-shaped openings in the plates are also an important feature, Bills explains, because they retain their shape when the sides are adjusted, by simply being scaled smaller or larger-something not possible with round openings.
Turning to conveyors, Bills also has no trouble pointing out what he believes separates Osborn's systems from the pack. Unlike other manufacturers, he says, Osborn constructs its infeed conveyors using steel tubing rather than structural shapes to give them added strength, installs impact disks on the tailshaft to protect it from damage, and includes steerable return carriages to ensure proper belt-tracking. The company also seam-welds its products inside and out rather than only on the outside, an example of Osborn's philosophy of "doing everything high quality," Bills says. Johnson echoes these comments, asserting, "We build everything extremely heavy-duty, based on scrap plant use. And we guarantee all of our equipment and will do whatever it takes to make sure every product functions as it was intended."
Just as important as construction considerations are the safeguards Osborn builds into its equipment, Johnson stresses. Every conveyor system, for instance, features pull cords that let employees stop the conveyor in emergencies, as well as easy-to-detach guards that shield everything from the belt to the rollers to the tailshaft--any potentially dangerous component. "Those are standards on our equipment that many other manufacturers consider options," Johnson says. "We don't want anyone to be able to touch anything except maybe the top of the belt, and we won't sell equipment unless it has these safety features. Companies can't be too safe in guarding things."
The Next Big Thing?
Of all Osborn Engineering's products, Bills crows loudest about the firm's new electronic nonferrous metals separator, an eddy-current-like system that was previewed in August at a "top-secret' gathering of Osborn's largest customers. "This will be one of our biggies," he predicts.
What's so different about the new separator--which Bills calls a "machine of the future"--compared with conventional eddy current systems? Principally, the company has replaced the traditional rare earth magnets in the drum--the most expensive and fragile component of existing eddy currents--with electromagnets. These magnets are specially configured to function in an eddy current context, and their magnetic field is controlled by an electronic "brain"--a transistor-based central processing unit.
"While existing eddy current units do a good job separating moderate-to-large-sized mixed nonferrous metals from a nonmetallic residue stream, they are literally stone age,"' Bills says. "You've got a bunch of rare earth magnets--essentially rocks--glued in the right spots inside a drum, and the rocks spin around at high speed inside the drum. We're going to get a similar effect by not spinning rocks. Our top-secret circuitry is going to make this machine do things that have never been done before with eddy currents."
Well, like what?
Unlike current systems, the Osborn electronic nonferrous metals separator is designed to be adjustable. The electronic controller will allow operators to vary the frequency and strength of the electromagnets, enabling them to repel materials of differing densities, sizes, and properties from the residue stream. Using different machine settings, recyclers could run nonferrous residue through one machine, say, four times and possibly recover four relatively pure nonferrous metals, or they could install a series of four separators, with each set at a different frequency to achieve one-pass, on-line sorting of the four metals selected.
Bills calls this "a major breakthrough.” Instead of generating one mixed nonferrous product that's worth perhaps 25 cents a pound, he says, a recycler could recover relatively pure unmixed nonferrous metals worth generally more than 50 cents a pound. "You may not need nonferrous buyers in the middle anymore," Bills notes. "You'll be able to sell your material direct to the consumer. This is going to make what heavy media separators are doing in a big, complicated plant available to every auto shredder for an inexpensive price."
Speaking of price, Bills says the new separator could cost about 30-percent less than a typical eddy current unit, which can run $100,000 or more. This cost will be even more of a bargain, he claims, in that the payback period of complete systems could be as short as one month for a high-volume processor. "From then on you're talking major profits," Bills says.
The system's electromagnetic components also offer the added benefits of low power consumption, the ability to separate fines, and adaptability to existing eddy current systems. In addition, the electronic separator reportedly requires less maintenance than traditional eddy currents, whose high rotating speed--usually 1,800 to 2,800 revolutions per minute--inevitably wears out the magnetic drum, requiring rebuilding or replacement. The magnetic components of Osborn's new separator, in contrast, have no moving parts, which Bills says eliminates abrasion and minimizes the potential need to rebuild magnetic heads.
"We think we'll sell one of these to every shredder in the country," Bills states. In addition to auto shredders, however, he also sees market opportunities for the new separators in material recovery facilities and even landfill-mining projects. "We're just tapping into what the potential of this thing is," he says.
How Big Is GM?
If Osborn's new separator catches on as Bills predicts, the company could enjoy unparalleled growth--a prospect that the company's president fully welcomes. "We have no qualms about letting the company grow," he says. "At this point, we're not saying no to anything."
One thing Osborn said yes to this summer was buying a new headquarters, a circa-1950s office building that enabled the company to move from its old 1,500square-foot rented space in the Tulsa outskirts into newly remodeled 5,500-square-foot digs downtown. In addition to more elbow room, Osborn's new home will feature a test lab to enable the firm to cook up and test new inventions under its own roof.
With a new home, expanded personnel roster, and novel product lines, Osborn appears to have all systems on go. Still, before the company can truly capitalize on its progress, Bills notes, it must "become more worldwide than it is now." Not that Osborn hasn't had its share of foreign sales, with installations in England, France, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Denmark, Canada, and Mexico. What the company lacks is a network of international sales reps and licensees. Such a network is necessary, Bills says, to ensure that Osborn Engineering claims its share of emerging markets around the world, such as those brought about by the opening of Eastern Europe and the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"Some people may limit how big they want to grow," Bills observes, "but we want to be as big as we can be."
And just how big is that?
"How big is GM?" he asks. •
The principals of this Oklahoma-based design engineering firm see their role as solving recyclers’ processing equipment problems. And with the company’s recently expanded operations, and “breakthrough” nonferrous separator, it may be poised to solve more than ever.