Intelligent, innovative and integrative. McElroy’s iSeries is the “future of fusion.” Get a complete overview of all the latest enhancements on the iSeries fusion machines. We’re joined by special guest: an actual iSeries machine! See how it moves, how it works, and what’s new and different. Hear directly from the team who helped developed these fusion machines and those who put them into action on the very first jobsites in the world.

We’ll cover:

• Operator experience, controls and soft-wared assisted options
• Enhanced machine design for more accommodating fusion and reliability
• Integrated communication, more interaction and diagnostics

Chelsea 

Hey everybody, and welcome to ISCO insights. I’m Chelsea Rabideau. I’m your host today, we’re so excited to have you joining us. We are going to be taking an in depth look at the McElroy Iseries machines and doing a little side by side comparison with the series to machines as well. But before we get started with all that great information I want to do just a couple little quick housekeeping things. Just a reminder, if you have any questions throughout the presentation, there’s the q&a function at the bottom of the screen, just enter your questions in there anytime they pop into your head. If it’s on the topic we’re talking about, we’ll ask it right then and there. Otherwise, we’ll hold it to the end. We also have a question and answer section at the end of the presentation. So again, don’t be shy with the q&a function, throw your questions in there and we’ll get to them at some point during the presentation. And if we don’t get to it during the presentation, we will contact you afterwards. There’s also the chat function if you’re having any technical issues, put those in the chat box and we will try and help you out with those as much as possible throughout the presentation. So let’s get started with things here. We are so excited to have a great group of panelists for you today myself, looking a little bit different not so blonde anymore. We’ve got Andy Niblett here in studio with us he’s with our rental team. We’re going to change up our looks a little bit but then also down in Tulsa we have Chris Gregg’s who’s a product manager with the TrackSTar I Series line of machines, so happy to have him. And then we also have Garry movie who is our very own in house ISCO HDPE guru so we are so excited to have both of them with us down in Tulsa. So we’re excited about that. But before we get to them, we are talking about the I series, mainly the Iseries also a little bit about the series two but Andy, tell us a little bit about how ISCO has been handling the introduction of the Iseries in the market.

Andy Niblett 

Sure thing Chelsea really happy to be here on this gunsights again, talking about the Iseries technology and the new products that macro has coming out and the TrackSTar range. So Iseries represents a large part of what we’re doing. And our main addition is on our rental fleet here at ISCO with keeping a young, well maintained, well equipped fleet. So we’re really happy to be bringing this product to market through the rental fleet. It gives us an avenue for people to use the equipment before they make a decision to purchase or anywhere they just get to get their hands on and get comfortable with it. Along with that commitment to bringing this product to market. Also, we have a major commitment to education around this product. Which is why when we started to roll this equipment into our fleet last summer, we started an initiative alongside of macros white glove service, to actually have one of our technicians on a job site to orient a user with the equipment the series just to bring that comfort level up. So we’re doing that sort of thing. We’re also doing hands on demos around the US and key markets. We have our next one coming up in April, April 12 Down in the Orlando area, and then also utilizing resources like this Iseries to get the word out and make sure buys comfortable with the equipment and by

Chelsea 

the way, happy St Patrick’s Day. Happy March Madness. Got to get those out of the way. We’re wearing our green today. Hopefully everyone out there is having a great Thursday and Happy St. Patrick’s Day. We appreciate you spending the day with us here with ISCO insights we know there’s a lot going on. We’ve got the Michigan game on right in front of us not to tattle on ourselves, but we like to keep up with things here. So without further ado, we are going to be heading down to Tulsa and the guys down there are going to be going over a few things that we’ll run through in just a minute but we want to give you a little intro to the Iseries from McElroy first Are you alright, so once we get going here we’ve got a lot of information to cover. So we want to get started on that as soon as possible, we’ve got a few things that we’re going to go through, I’m gonna give you an outline of the presentation here we’re going to talk about the side by side comparison that I series to the series two and just see some of the things that have evolved since the series to safety first, which is one of ISCO’s Paramount values and some of the new developments with the Iseries that have put safety at the forefront of the development design of the machine. We’ll go through the difference in the operator screens, joint quality, productivity, fusion comparisons. So like I said, we’ve got tons of information. So let’s head down to Tulsa. We’ve got Garry boo Bay and Chris Greg, standing by down in Tulsa at the McElroy headquarters. Hey guys, how’s it going?

Garry 

Hey, good afternoon, Chelsea. Hello, afternoon,

Chelsea 

Garry. Just so you know, and and here I’m gonna I’m gonna put a series been listening to me on my Apple watch a few. Microphone. Very Can you put up the first poll question that we have just so we can kind of gauge how familiar familiar people are with the Iseries. We’ll pop that up there and get some answers going. Let us know what experience you have with Iseries. If you’ve seen one before, if you’ve used one before, things like that. But Garry, while we’re waiting on that, I just wanted to let you know the score of the Michigan Colorado State game is currently 66 to 58. And I want to take a moment here to thank Garry for for being with us on this his favorite day of the entire year, the beginning of the NCAA Tournament, Garry, we appreciate it.

Garry 

Well, thank you, Chelsea. I mean, you basically have me working on a national holiday.

Chelsea 

I know it’s like it’s like asking you to work Christmas. Oh, exactly. I

Garry 

mean, this is my Christmas Day, and I’m missing it. But you know what? With my good friend Chris, Greg’s old home week back here in Tulsa. I started my career HDPE wise right here in Tulsa in this very room.  Yeah, just yeah, just about so

Chris Greggs 

I’m coming. It’s great to have Garry back. And it’s great to have the opportunity to talk about the future of fusion in the Iseries. Absolutely.

Garry 

Well, let’s get let’s get started into this. Or did the poll question come up? Chelsea? I didn’t know that. I

Chelsea 

already did. We had some people answering there while we were chit chatting. But yeah, you guys go ahead and take it away. Let’s get started. Fantastic.

Garry 

Well, let’s get started. Chris. And, you know, this machine is Series Two, we’re looking at a comparison between the two units. Right. And, you know, the track, the track machine itself is actually celebrating an anniversary, right? I think it’s 25 years about the age. You and I are 25?

Chris Greggs 

Yeah.

Chelsea 

We don’t lie to our viewers.

Chris Greggs 

a data logger. And the TrackSTar not the same as Yeah.

Garry 

So tell us a little bit about why the change. I mean, this series two units only been around about five or six years. And so why are we Why did you move and create this new Iseries version?

Chris Greggs 

Why is the evolution to the iTunes? Well, we’ve got two great fusion machines here, one in the series, two TrackSTar fusion machine, and the other in the new Iseries TrackSTar. Both great products. And to understand how we evolved from one to the other, you kind of have to think back to where we came from. Okay. And it was 25 years ago that we evolved into the TrackSTar line, which proved to be very popular, very highly productive. Just just really took the market by storm, as well as the data logger. Okay. And so, this series to TrackSTar line was out for we were in production for about five years on that particular product. And the data logger had evolved to sort of a next generation data logger six and with the data logger six, we got a lot more computing power and started considering things like guided workflow. How can we take the operator through that fusion process and just make everything more easy fission guided workflow makes sense. And then with the evolution of the new data logger seven, we had an even more powerful Android technology. We were thinking, Okay, what’s the next big thing for track stars? What’s the next big thing for data logger? What’s our industry facing? What challenges are we seeing today? How do we? How do we find and retain new fusion technicians? You know, how do we attract younger people to our industry? How do we get them trained faster? And how do we make them proficient? Faster? How do we get them operating at a very high level of quality, right. And so what we did is we took that computing power in the data logger seven, which you see on both of these machines, by the way, data logger seven, and we integrated the data logger seven into the I series platform. What that did is it took the data logger from just being a device that’s going to record store, evaluate fusion joints, to really the main operator interface. Okay, so the Iseries, I series uses the data logger to communicate with the operator and the operator with the Fusion machine. So really, it was a natural evolution. Okay. And with that evolution, and with that technology, we were able to really incorporate some cool, cool features that I think our users are really growing to appreciate. Yeah,

Garry 

well, let’s take a look at some of the changes, Chris, that we that have been made in the machine. And, you know, we can really I want to go back to you know, Chelsea hit on it is safety first. And there are two neat things that I think the the Iseries brings to the table, we’re going to talk about a memorial in depth, but I just want to highlight them and that is the hydraulic lockout, right, which really gives the operator a safe working area, if should he need to do something inside the the fusion zone area, right. And then the collision avoidance, I mean, we’ve all been on the job site and, and have that accidental damage of opening a jaw into a heater, or if you haven’t had that experience, you haven’t been doing this very long. Exactly, exactly. So those two features right there, which we’ll get into later, we’ll demonstrate those and show those to the people. But those two features really are big advantages that he’s bringing, those

Chris Greggs 

are really cute and wonderful features. But there are some other things we’ve done with the Iseries to enhance or elevate the level of safety, we’ve added a couple of emergency stops, for example, we’ve got recessed paddle levers for controlling the actions of the carriage and the indexer. So you have to actually reach in to activate those so you won’t have incidental bumps and those kinds of things. So there’s there’s a lot of little things that add up to some really big Sure. Yeah, it’s really, really neat features.

Garry 

So let’s start you know, Chris, looking at kind of the, the layout here, you look at this series too. And, you know, this is the kind of machine that I you know, spent 28 years in the business, operating light hydraulic manifold and got all these different hydraulic levers on the machine that you see here that control all of the features all the functionality of the unit, right from opening and closing jobs. You look at the Iseries, you don’t see any of those, I mean, there’s like 18 of them here. And you don’t see any of them on the Iseries Yeah,

Chris Greggs 

we have a much cleaner control system here and different way of interacting with those various controls through the can communication on the on the machine. So these are can keypads that are also intelligent. So you can see hopefully on camera, the LED backlit, we can also give those keypads action to guide the operator towards the next required step in the process. Right. So the intelligence there, built into the Iseries machine really works with the operator to take them through that fusion process. And as you look at the front’s of these machines, if you stand back a little bit and squint, they almost look the same. Yeah. Okay. But if you examine the details, you mentioned, all of the hydraulic valving the plumbing associated with that the guarding associated with protecting those controls, all just adds sort of the mask to this side of the machine. And if you look at the Iseries, it’s just clean, its crisp, there’s not a lot to get in the way and very efficient to operate. Absolutely

Garry 

and one of the things that I noticed with that, you know, the strategic positioning of the, the buttons that you have on the CAD system are very similar to the hydraulics you know, the levers and everything that we’re using that so accustomed to using on So

Chris Greggs 

that was very intentional dairy. As we were designing this machine as our, our engineers were designing this machine, they intentionally tried to keep the controls in the same familiar locations. So technicians in the field would, they wouldn’t have to relearn any of that muscle memory that they’ve grown to appreciate over the years from operating the legacy machines that would carry right over to the ICU. Yes,

Garry 

that makes it makes it easier for us long term.

Chris Greggs 

It really does. And one of the sort of aha moments that I had, as I was first seeing the the Iseries, technology, the Iseries platform was in that vehicle display. Yeah, that we do, we don’t have, we

Garry 

got to kick that next slide, if you would bear it. And we can see that vehicle display for the,

Chris Greggs 

for the two machines to bring that there we go. Yeah. So this is the vehicle display on the series two machine, versus the seven inch touchscreen display on the Iseries machine. And I was very familiar with both of these. But until I had the machine side by side, I didn’t realize the extent to which we had really evolved in technology, not just McElroy, but just technology in general, in the short period between the time we came out with that serious to right, Shane, and the launch of the I mean,

Garry 

it just goes with every other form of technology. Chris, right. I mean, you talk about phones, computers, whether they’re good for two, two years or less, right. And then you’re you’re due for an upgrade and sort of new ones. So I guess this is no different. It’s no different.

Chris Greggs 

Right? So it was so in many ways this evolution to the Iseries platform was very natural.

Garry 

Yeah. Yeah. And I love that the new the new display, as you said, it’s a touchscreen, everything for the operator is right there he can diagnose diagnosis on the machine, telling them where maybe a potential problem is, and to direct him right to where he needs to go.

Chris Greggs 

That’s right. Yeah. So the intelligence in the data logger seven, carries right over through that can network to that display, and the whole machine is is evaluating itself continuously. And if anything’s not functioning as it should, it’s going to tell you, that’s

Garry 

That’s great. Yeah. So let’s, let’s look at, you know, we’ve talked about some of the controls, you know, joint quality is, you know, as a big aspect, what everybody’s looking for, right, more, more and more people we’re seeing, you know, data loggers required quired on job sites for fusions, we’ve got more inspectors, I don’t know how many inspectors we’ve trained over the years on the fusion process to understand so joint quality is big and in all market is really in, you know, with with the new Iseries, you know, on to the scale on the series too. We can data log, right, we can record that well know exactly what we’re doing to have a high degree of confidence. Weld, right, completed

Chris Greggs 

the not only the data logger technology, but the data logger vault, right. Okay. All of that sort of works together. And that data logger seven that you see here on the series two machine is the same data logger seven that’s integrated into the Iseries machine here, I could literally take any data logger, plug it into an Iseries machine, and that I series technology would just wake up, right. Okay, and you get all that added functionality of the Iseries built in that same familiar platform.

Garry 

So now it’s not just recording a joint, it’s actually the brains the operator controls of the entire fusion machine. Yeah,

Chris Greggs 

right. And that’s, that’s a great way to put it when we call that the fusion guide control system. Okay, the fusion guide control system is the technology we use in the data logger seven and the i series, to give us really the three levels of operator interaction with the machine. Okay, you can select each of those three levels independently, depending on the experience of the operator, depending on the particular needs of a job site, or the requirements and specifications being used at the time. So you’re able to select those three. Yeah,

Garry 

well, let’s look at those on the, the guides the three different levels that they have, right? The three levels

Chris Greggs 

level one, as an example, is what we would consider manual fusion, okay. Okay. That’s where the operator is going to be in full control of the actions of the machine, for example, carriage movement, okay. And they’re all the operator will also be responsible for the timing of those actions. So it’s as close As we’ve got in the Iseries to a legacy machine, any other McElroy hydraulic machine right, the difference is on the Iseries, drag is automatically compensated for the operator is calculated at the touch of a button. And the proper pressures will be preset by that intelligence without the operator having to turn turn dials and read gauges. Now level two, you still have automatic drag compensation. But level two, the operator is in control of the timing of certain events through the process. But then the machine will perform that function when prompted. So if I decide, for example, I’m going to my beat up process is complete as an operator, I would simply tell the Iseries machine beat UPS complete, let’s move to the next step. And the machine itself would make this perform the shift sequence and move on to the next step. Level three then is fully automatic. Once you face the pipe and inserted the heater between the pipe ends, you simply press Start fusion machine takes over and fuses the pipe for you automatic Wow.

Garry 

So yeah, you’re that that’s a big change.

Chris Greggs 

That is a big change. And we often ask people when they first experienced the Iseries, which which level do you think you’re going to use? What what do you see being the most you? And we get a variety of answers. But in reality, each of the three fusion levels has a place in time there they each are well suited to certain types of applications. Right.

Garry 

And we’ve got a guide, Andy, kick it over to you to talk a little bit about this fusion guide level when? When is the appropriate time to use level one or level two?

Chelsea 

Hey, Garry, before we get to that, I just want you to know that Michigan State or Michigan sorry, one, they’d be Colorado so

Garry 

big 10 Go big town. That is the company Oh, the power conference this year. So thank goodness, I’m not gonna miss my finding a line either on on the screen or all night.

Chris Greggs 

We might have a couple of brackets there. Sorry. But in Oklahoma here, I don’t get it. You’re

Chelsea 

right, I’ll hand it back to Andy.

Andy Niblett 

Yeah, absolutely. Hey, thanks. Thanks for kicking it over, Chris. So one thing I’d like to start with is actually something that you taught me this week, is that this fusion level guide. Publication, you just saw this brochure, this is actually on the DL seven now, right? So if an operator stayed in there, maybe have some questions about what level should I be using, they can reference this and see those different scenarios that were, it’d be right in front of them. Yeah, that’s pretty dynamic. I love it. So just to talk about this a little bit. One thing, I’ll reiterate what Chris said, on all three of these levels, the machine is automatically taken care of your drag pressure adjustment. And it’s also taking care of the old shift sequence and the manifold block, it takes care of all those things like all the pressures for you. So to get a little bit deeper on level one in the manual operation, you would be using that if you’re doing in a tie in situation or possibly in ditch or put in a fitting in line, someplace where you maybe didn’t want the full stroke of the carriage to open up and back and have a limited room. It’s complete manual operation, just like a lot of you operators are used to with the series two. So on level two of the fusion guide level, the way this one works a little bit more in detail, again, is after you face the pipe and you bring the heater in all the actions can be performed automatically when the operator confirms for that action to happen. So let me say that again. So that the operator is in control of exactly when each of those fusion processes are happening. And you might use this in extreme weather conditions where it’s really cold outside, or maybe have a windchill, where you’re going to require a little bit more beat up time than what you would in level three, level three, the fusion guide. Sorry, level three of the fusion guide, workflow is going to be more on a job site. That’s just your typical job site, highly repetitive. Everything’s normal standard, nothing out of the ordinary. So this is gonna be the hot production, face the pipe, put the heater in, push the button and let the machine do what it does.

Garry 

Yeah, thank you, Andy, that you know that every situation is going to be a little bit different than there’s going to be different times you’re never going to be locked into one one level at a time. That’s right.

Chris Greggs 

And as you think about one of the exciting things we talked about productivity with the Iseries machines. If you think for Minute about level three, as an example, in level three, once you face the pipe and inserted the heater, as Andy mentioned, the machine takes over, you press start fusion, and the machine is going to fuse the pipe for you. And it’s going to tell you when it’s done. Right. Okay. So if we think about productivity, what else could an operator on that job site be doing? During that fusion process?

Garry 

It could be setting up a second machine, right? He could be operating a second, they should be loading, loading his pipe for the next, getting ready for the next one

Chris Greggs 

and organizing the other staff on site. Okay, where do I need to make a cut? Where’s that fitting that I need? I need to, you know, whatever it may be, it frees the operator to see to other duties that that lend itself to a productive, profitable job site. Exactly.

Chelsea 

One quick question here, guys, before you move on there. Gene has a question Do you still have to input the temperature from the heat plate before every weld on it series?

Chris Greggs 

That is that is just like, on the data logger seven, yes, that’s a data logger function, you do have to input a few. If you select that, it’s actually a preference. If you want to record the temperature, you have to input the temperature. Now on the Iseries, we do have the ability right here on the data logger screen to see what the temperature is reading. On on the the RTDS. Yes. Okay, so we get a readout here, but it’s not actually measuring that surface temperature for you. Yep. Good question.

Garry 

Yeah, really good.

Chelsea 

Thank you. And just a reminder to our audience, feel free to pop those questions in the q&a function anytime you have. And we’ll ask them throughout. So back to you guys.

Andy Niblett 

Real quick, this is AMD one thing before we move on from talking about the fusion guide. So this is a big deal to write to have the guided workflow in the DL seven integrated into the Iseries. One of the things that I always talk about, I don’t think that can be overstated enough that the DL seven is an integral part of the Iseries. So not only do we have this workflow, but we also have the industry standard for quality control at our fingertips with every weld we’re making. We also have access to Macros, optimized cooling, which when, you know, put that in conjunction with level three, automation, I mean, this is some major productivity gains. So that’s pretty exciting to me.

Chris Greggs 

It really is the i series platform has really unleashed the full potential of the data logger and the McElroy vault. Right. Okay, it really takes takes it to a whole new level, right.

Garry 

And since he mentioned productivity, right, that kind of leads us into, you know, kind of our next topic, which is, you know, the productivity. And, you know, one of the things that lends itself to, you know, productivity is less downtime. Yeah, we’ve, you know, we’ve touched on the collision avoidance, right, when you don’t have that machine going down. And because you’ve damaged something on it waiting for a part to come in or having to swap the machine out, that increases productivity,

Chris Greggs 

it goes right to the bottom line, more uptime is better.

Garry 

That’s all the contractors really liked that. Like that song,

Chris Greggs 

it also touches to that collision avoidance touches to the safety aspect that we that you started this discussion with, right? Just less likelihood of damaging yourself or the machine, right.

Garry 

And then we’ve already touched on, you know, operator being able to sense essentially multitask on the job site, while he’s in level three, doing other things getting ready that helps speed up at that input. But there’s other things that are on there that you don’t see from from this angle machines, Chris, and that is the, you know, the cowling design that you have on the backside of the platform on the stationary jaw side. Yeah,

Chris Greggs 

we’ve changed the the engine side of the machine completely. And we’ve done it again, with a lot of forethought. One of the challenges on on a job sites dealing with fittings, right, okay. And oftentimes, you might have to take the job set off of the vehicle, whether you’re in confined space or not just to provide clearance for manifolds or fittings or valve bodies or, you know, things of that nature. Well, that was a challenge on the job site that was identified early on. And so with the I series, we had the luxury of being able to design to help improve that functionality. And now with the Iseries, we’re able to fuse full size fittings in that inner fixed jaw with the carriage on the vehicle. Okay, that’s huge. That is really a big deal. If you if

Garry 

you had to do the fittings in the field on series to you know, the it’s a little laborious. So to accomplish that,

Chris Greggs 

if you’re a field guy, you’re gonna love this. Yeah. So that was a big deal. And you can see it now in the graphic on the screen. I don’t know how long that’s been up there. But you can see the clearance allowed. So we could actually, this TrackSTar 900, I, we could actually fuse 36 inch full size t, right, without removing the carriage from the vehicle

Garry 

that is nice. And and in when you do have to do it. And speaking of carriage removal, when you have to do an index. Well, those those tie in welds that last, that last weld of your section, or you know, taking the upper works often the Iseries I’ve found to be much simpler than what’s on the series has been greatly improved. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So another productivity, productivity enhancement. Now that cowling redesign was that base because the engine size or framework changed or what I think

Chris Greggs 

with the Iseries as as a design consideration, that was one of the challenges. We wanted to be able to do diffuse fittings on the vehicle. And so that played a part in engine selection and cowling design so that that all worked together. It wasn’t one happened. Therefore, the other could it was how do we make this overall machine deliver all of the capabilities that we wanted to deliver for our operators in the field? Fantastic.

Garry 

Well, it really is, it really is a great design and a benefit to the to the guys in the field. I know they will appreciate it when they get the opportunity. We hope so. Yeah, absolutely. We’re

Chelsea 

on that point, I would like to pop up our next poll question, which is just kind of assessing what people feel like is going to be the most impactful feature of the new Iseries when they’re out on the jobsite, we’ve got a couple options here the increased safety function, which obviously is a big deal for any job site, higher productivity, better quality control, or do you you know, or do you fall into the fourth option? Which is, you just like buttons, go ahead and answer that for us? I am operating. We’ve got level one, level two, level three, I’m operating on level four, which is somebody else do? Exactly.

Chris Greggs 

Chelsea, I’m gonna be I’m gonna be interested in what these answers all right, it wouldn’t surprise me if we got answers across the board there. Because really, right.

Chelsea 

Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting, you know, just to hear what people prioritize when they’re out in the field. And you know, I think for all of us, we’ve got a question here, too, that I’m gonna pass on to you. But for all of us, safety is a huge deal. But, you know, we also want to be able to, to keep up with our deadlines, and meet all of our schedules and all of those things. So those are important as well and have great quality control in the Iseries, new features and benefits are really putting that into the users hands. So Joey Rico says fusion operator safety is so important. So it’s nice to see hydraulic lockout included in the Iseries. How exactly does that work? Is it automatic? Or is that operator controlled?

Garry 

Well, that is a great question. And we’re actually going to demo that. I mean, you couldn’t acute that up any better. For us, Chelsea, and Garry. So thank you, you know,

Chris Greggs 

we are going to start the machine. I think

Garry 

we are we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to kick on the series, the Iseries machine. Pretty quiet, Chris is going to actually show that. So why don’t you go ahead, Chris. And kind of show that. Yeah,

Chris Greggs 

so So I just started the machine up. I just did it with the press of a button here is very easy, you might be able to see some flashing lights, I just confirm the locations of the jaws and jaw clamps and I can now operate the machine freely. Okay. It operates very much like one of our legacy machines might operate. But for example, after I face the pipe, Garry, I might want to reach in between these jaws and remove shavings that’s normal as an example that happens you know every fusion joint well, with a legacy machine, I might have to turn off the engine or I might be in a hurry and late in the day and I might not just you know, but to be safe, while we really would want to do here is just hit a hydraulic lock and there’s a single button here I just touched right and when I touch that button, you’ll notice all of these keypads turned red. The red keypad means none of these functions. I can’t move the indexer I can’t open or close the carriage right. But I do have two LEDC that are still live That one is the engine start stop. So I can turn the engine off if I want to now no need to now, or I can disengage the hydraulic lock. Now, we’re thinking about safety here, we’re locked out, we’re doing our work, and we’re ready to unlock it. Or what if somebody comes up and just, incidentally, bumps that control, right? You’ll notice as I bumped that control, it doesn’t disengage the hydraulic lock, I have to intentionally hold that button down for three seconds, at the end of three seconds, you see the red lights go away, I again, just verify the location of my jobs and clients. And I’m back in operation

Garry 

back in business that really, really simple to do to operate. But really does add a tremendous amount of safety. Yeah,

Chris Greggs 

and drive some value of those lights and the action of those lights. I don’t have to wonder what comes next. Exactly.

Garry 

I mean, you compare that to a series to these, I mean, they’ve got a guard on these hydraulic levers, but there’s a potential for a piece of pipe to drop on it or help somebody to pump into it. Accidentally, right. It wouldn’t make much we hope not.

Chris Greggs 

Yeah, we’ve been we’ve been building machines, you know, this is well guarded slowly, but it is like that it’s not a Garry

Andy Niblett 

really making a case for the Like buttons. And I gotta tell you, the blinky lights around them really makes them more traffic.

Chris Greggs 

You know, another thing we brought up earlier, Garry was collision avoidance. Okay. And it’s an easy thing to say, right? But what is that really, you know, if I, let’s say, I’m ready to face my pipe. And I want to bring the facer in. But notice this facer light, I just tried to bring it in, it turned red in the face or didn’t pivot in, right. So that means I get a message over here that says, hey, collision avoidance been activated, you need to move something. So I get a red light telling me I can’t do that. And I get in, in plain English. What needs to happen, I need to move something before I can index that face or in, I index the face or over. And now it operates just fine. I can pivot that face there in. Okay, that is collision avoidance. So I wouldn’t have crashed that jaw, or that face or into that job.

Garry 

I mean, that Chris is going to save a lot of people a lot of heartache, a lot, spare the wallet, and

Chris Greggs 

I don’t care how experienced you are a new user experience, we all get tired, we all get hot, guilty. We all get, you know distracted. Yep. And, and there’s real value in that because you don’t have to make that repair. You don’t have to pay for it. You don’t have to get to another machine. It just really translates throughout the job downtime. And

Garry 

I’ll ask Andy the question, since he’s kind of overseeing our rental with this equipment, and he on the jobs where that machine’s been out. And come back. Have you seen the damage that we similarly get with a typical, you know, mega Mac machine?

Andy Niblett 

No, absolutely not. And I’m very happy that that’s the case. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable those conversations are. That’s not a cheap thing. When you knock a face are all for breaking arm or damage a heater. So that collision avoidance system is doing its job. We’ve had a lot of equipment out on rent and not a single incident. So that’s great.

Chris Greggs 

No, and another benefit just came to me as we were listening to Andy and having this conversation this machine’s running right now. Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s coming through for our guests. But we’re able to have this conversation side by side or through the through zoom, or while we’re doing this, you know, we don’t have to scream and shout and yell and we can hear him just fine. That’s my normal.

Chelsea 

Did you just it is on Zoom. But this reminds me of our conversation about your your affinity for technology. And I know being a keeper of flip phones. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic.

Garry 

So we’ve done it. So that’s answers the lockout, hydraulic lockout question. We showed the collision avoidance, which we have tested in all kinds of scenarios, and tried to create those job sites situation

Chris Greggs 

we have tried, but that is not a challenge to our users. It does a lot for us. But you know, it’s not possible. So

Garry 

fantastic. So and you mentioned the sound if I had this one on, we wouldn’t be yelling, trying to talk talk over it. So with that said, Chris, I want to dive into a little bit of the operation right Andy mentioned it earlier. In all the different levels about that automatic drag calculation, which is necessary when you’re doing your fusions to calculate that drag to make sure that you’re getting the full true pressure that you need to create a quality fusion well, right on there. And so why don’t you go ahead and get ready to demonstrate that. And while you’re doing the drag calculation on there, you’re gonna do I’m gonna go on to my tried and true series to unit here. Very good. I’ll walk them through.

Chris Greggs 

And we’re working on the same data logger seven prior, okay, yeah, and the screens look very similar. So I’m just going to start working through my writing process here. So

Garry 

I don’t have my machine on just for the sound purposes. But you know, my first step would be make sure my facing pressure is down to zero. So I’m

Chris Greggs 

turning down my pressure, I’m going to press a button here that says measure drag, okay, I’m just gonna press a little

Garry 

button. And then then I’ve got to hit my carriage. And then the forward position, right, so I’m going to dial this pressure up, making sure waiting for that, that to start moving, right, once it starts moving. Now I gotta turn it down, I just wanted to get barely CRI as it’s moving. Over there. Once I get to that, I look at my gauge on here. And I see that I’ve got my my gauge pressure, right. So let’s just say it’s 100 psi in the simulation, I’ve now got to go to my heating mode, which is over here on my screen, I don’t

Chris Greggs 

know if you can see what’s going on on the i series here, that character is moving, it’s calculated the drag, it’s performing the slip check for me all while I’m able to stand here and enjoy watching my work, Chris, but you know, really efficient at this. So now added 100

Garry 

stage right here. Now I go down to my fusion pressure. And I’ve calculated my fusion pressure on here, but I gotta make sure I add that 100 Well, as you notice, I use the 100 because I can add that really was done here. Heaven forbid it was some drag

Chris Greggs 

studying psi on this thing. All of my valves have been preset to the appropriate and I’m done. I’m exhausted,

Chelsea 

don’t stress yourself out,

Garry 

you know. So now I’ve got that set. Now I’m ready to bring and start my heater process. No, Garry, you

Andy Niblett 

forgot the slip check. Wait, Chris did that to slip, slip Check.

Garry 

Dang it forgot the slip check. Yeah, you can see,

Chris Greggs 

I don’t know if it really came across there. But literally just press a button here and confirm the action. And it does everything for you. The nice thing about that is it does it reasonably fast. Okay, but it’s gonna do it the same way, every time. And you’re you and I both know, with drag compensation or calculating drag, even the most experienced operators, we could have a roomful of them on the same job. Same setup, right? Calculating it in much the same way. But they’re going to come up with a little different number, right? Okay, just a little different with the I series, we get that consistency every single time. Well,

Garry 

let me ask you a question Chris on the drag compensation, do it if I’m on operating that machine operators doing it and he’s doing the same type of well, he’s welding a 40 foot stick right and he’s bringing another making that long string of pipe right? Does he need to do the drag calculation every time

Chris Greggs 

well, just like on a legacy machine, a typical job site if you’re if you’re setting up pulling pipe, okay, you’re gonna have one stick of pipe and a pipe stand, you fuse it pull the pipe at another single stick of pipe in a pipe Stan, fuse it pull it so you’re gonna have your drags really not going to be changing because your setup isn’t changing from joint today. If that happens to be the type of jumps out you’re you’re describing to me, then we do have the functionality to just use the previous drag just like you would on a legacy machine. Here you just push a button, say use previous drag, the machine is going to go automatically to the slip chat portion of the sequence is going to check for slippage. Make sure you grip tightly enough on the pipe and you’ll be ready to heat.

Garry 

If I’m doing level three it’s going to do drag calculation automatically correct level one two or three automatic automatically There you go. So highly recommended. Robbie. Very very very simple to use and yeah, I’m just kind of sweating here Chelsea I don’t know. Go through all that gymnastic gear.

Chris Greggs 

As we’re talking about these things, drag calculations shift sequence hydraulic lockouts. Andy, I know you probably haven’t experienced this in the field until you get your hands on an Iseries machine and you have The opportunity to interact with it for yourself, it’s really hard to appreciate fully the extent to which this fusion technology has evolved.

Andy Niblett 

I totally agree. And anybody who knows me knows I’m a big fan of technology. But I’m also a big fan of the tried and true, right. So I got some friends, Chris, you know, still walking around with flip phones, flip phones, walking around flip phones. Well, you mentioned those guys earlier. Oh, you got one.

Chris Greggs 

I just happened to have one here. So I know the kind of guy he’s talking about. Now, Chris does a level four. Work on this, this predates Macalik, I think

Andy Niblett 

you’re talking what do you tell the guy who loves the flip phone about the Iseries machine, I didn’t get him comfortable with this. Yeah,

Chris Greggs 

I think the Iseries has something for everybody. And as think of the the evolution of cell phones, from the flip phone to, you know, today’s, and whatever you had, may happen to to have, the technology gets better and better. But it’s also easier to operate. I was looking at this flip phone, I don’t know that I get to my pictures or you. Today, it’s all just right in front of you. It’s intuitive, you don’t have to buy your phone and read the manual to be able to operate. The Iseries is much the same way. And I am a little bit old school. Been here at McElroy for 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of water under the bridge, and a lot of track stars go out the door. But I can tell you, if that flip phone guy gets his hand on an Iseries machine, he’s gonna find something that’s going to make his life easier. Yeah.

Garry 

And we want I want anybody who’s out there, you know, part of this is, you know, you’re gonna see this machine, it’s coming. When you’re, if you’re renting a machine, or you’re going to be in the market to buy a machine. This is the this is the next generation, right? There’s no getting around it. So we want everybody to get comfortable with it. And it really is very simple to operate.

Chelsea 

Absolutely. Do you have something to mention handy? No, I’m all good. You seem you seem ready poised. But we do want to offer this opportunity for any of you to if there’s any questions that we haven’t tackled yet, go ahead and put those in the q&a box at the bottom of your screen. And we’ve got probably about 10 minutes so that we can answer any of those questions. We also have one final poll question that we want to ask all of you. And that’s just pertaining to whether or not you are considering an Iseries in the near future. So go ahead and ask that while we talk about a couple other things here. Andy, who, as I mentioned is on our rental team, wants to tell you a little bit about what we’re doing here at ISCO to make the Iseries more available for our customers. So Andy, take it away. Absolutely.

Andy Niblett 

Yeah, so I mentioned it a little bit earlier. And I’d like to hit it again. You know, we have a series of equipment coming into our fleet. By you know, in the next year, most of our large amateur fleet will be on Sirius technology, we’re really proud of that. Just want to remind you, if you’re working with us, we’re going to make sure that you understand what what you’re working with. And we’re going to have qualified people on your job site to help get you comfortable and demo of that machine. I mentioned also earlier that we’re going to be doing in partnership with McElroy in market demonstration. So we’re going to come to markets around the US with us series and invite people out for lunch. And and hear directly from us. And from McElroy about our series equipment. The next one we have coming up is April 12 in the Orlando area, so be on the lookout for that. Real quickly. While we’re waiting for the poll to wrap up, I want to tell you a little bit about ISCO’s equipment offering so in case you don’t know we have a nationwide fleet of rental equipment to meet all your Fusion needs, covers everything from PPR equipment Acrobat line to you know, to t 1200s. And everything in between really, we’ve got electrofusion covered squeezed tools. It’s a nationwide fleet but available local anywhere in the US. I mentioned earlier to another thing that we’re extremely proud of is we have a well maintained fleet with an average age of five years across our whole fleet. What that means for you is less downtime, less problems, less failures with the equipment and that’s something that that we keep front and center. Another thing we offer along the lines of support is a 24/7 fusion hotline. We have macro and master mechanics spread out across the US answering that from seven to seven Eastern and then we have an answering service on the off hours that gets those messages to our qualified technicians to get you an answer. We also have the ISCO Mirage and fusion fundamental platform support supported by QR code on select equipment throughout our fleet. And lastly, we have a nationwide team of fusion technicians to support rental and training, I would throw our regional sales managers into that too. A lot of those are qualified to come out and do a demonstration for you. But really, our fusion technicians lead the charge on the training initiative here at ISCO.

Chelsea 

All right, thanks so much, Andy. And we do have a couple of questions that we do want to go over and hit here real quick for Chris and Garry. But before we do that, I want to call out that Andy couldn’t remember what a QR code was called. So he had to make a little note for himself here. So we got a couple questions here. Do you need to have a DL seven for the automatic drag calculation? That’s the first question.

Garry 

Well, the automatic drag calculation is part of the Iseries machine and to operate the Iseries machine. It does require a DL seven. So they go hand in hand, you can’t do any fusion of any kind without the DL seven on the ice. You

Chris Greggs 

can you can do everything else on the Iseries. You just can’t use any without the data loggers.

Garry 

Job Site, driving around but yeah.

Chelsea 

All right. And the other question we have is how many different models of the Iseries are there right now? Well,

Chris Greggs 

it depends on what you’re asking, really, we, the TrackSTar Iseries is available in 630i, which is a 24 inch equivalent, a 900i, which is a 36 inch TrackSTar, and a 1200i, which is a 48 inch TrackSTar. It two of those three are also available in different carried cylinder configurations, depending on what part of the world you’re in, and what type of stamp fusion standard you have to be using. And then each of those machines are also available in different carb compliant configurations for the diesel package, stage five and stage three A. So if you have whether you have high, high sulfur, diesel, or low sulfur diesel, so any combination of those, so there’s actually quite a few in three basic size platforms. So

Garry 

I’ll ask the question that probably everybody’s wanting to know, when are the next sizes coming out in Iseries? Chris, I’m gonna put you on the spot. Yeah,

Chris Greggs 

you’re putting me on the spot. And I really can’t, I really can’t say when Okay, Garry, or if. But I can tell you, we’re focused right now on the launch and integration of the Iseries technology in the field, and making sure our customers are successful with the range that we offer today. And I think based on what we’ve seen so far, there is more to the Iseries technology more that can be done. And I to look forward to seeing how this continues to evolve. Yeah, absolutely.

Chelsea 

All right. Thank you guys so much. We really appreciate it. And thank you all for joining us. I know it’s St. Patrick’s Day and tournament going on. There’s a lot happening today. So we appreciate your time with us. Just want to remind you that the ISCO insights podcast is our webinar is also available as a podcast. Now you can find us on Spotify, anywhere that you listen to podcasts, or you can scan this QR code Andy, right here on the screen. He’s so happy with right now. And you can for some of these presentations like the one today, which is so visual, we’re doing a video podcast so you can both see and hear what we’ve been talking about today. If you had to jump off for any reason, or if someone missed the presentation. You can also find us and a link to the podcast and future insights episodes on any social media site. We’re on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. We’re everywhere. So if you want any information, reach out to us on any of our social media pages, or you can go to our website is CO dash pipe.com/insights to see upcoming episodes coming in April, we’re going to be talking about PVC and HDPE having a deep dive in that conversation. So we look forward to hopefully seeing you there as well. Thank you so much for joining us. Be safe today, and we’ll see you next time.