Steve Byrnes, President of Guyson Corporation discusses how the Saratoga Springs Company has pushed the boundaries on Blasting Systems Technology and changed how people view the industry.
Steve Byrnes, President of Guyson Corporation, states “We provide a machine that really is the best value on the market today. I’ll use the analogy of a person that buys an automobile that is less expensive, but it doesn’t get very good mileage and needs a lot of repairs. You’re going to be paying a lot of money for that vehicle over time. It’s the same thing when you buy a machine tool, you have the initial investment, and you have your annual expenses and that’s where Guyson Machines really shine. They are really productive, sometimes doing the work of multiple machines that our competitors make. Our machines use less energy to perform more work, they really are the best value on the market today.”
Guyson is a combination of an old school company and a technology company. They have been around in the United States for over 60 years, and have a history of building standard manual machines. But now, they have learned to turn those machines into the most sophisticated robotically programed machines in the world.
“What I brought to the table when I became president in 2005” states Byrnes “is my background with CNC machines. This included the robotic servo style machines that are in use today.”
In the last 60 years, Guyson has done a lot of testing, and collected a lot of data, which has guided them in making their blast cabinets more effective and precise. This information has led Guyson to produce machines that send more material through the system, with less energy at a faster speed.
According to Byrnes, it’s all just physics, “force equals mass times acceleration. Making it work, comes down to engineering. Guyson has made a better gun, a better reclaim system and a better dust collector, that is all done through engineering.”
Guyson is known as a world leader in the surface finishing and preparation business. But sometimes being too far ahead can bring it’s own set of problems.
“The challenge that we have in today’s world,” says Byrnes, “Is really being able to provide information where people can make an educated, good decision. For a long time we were the only ones applying the technology in this field. People didn’t know what to make of it, if the upfront costs were worth it.”
Over time the facts and the data made it clear that this was the future of blast technology. Guyson machines have become the best overall value over time on the market. When you take into account the cost of running your compressor, the cost of electricity, the cost of maintenance and replacement parts, Guyson machines are more affordable over a 3-5 year period depending on how much you use the machine.
Byrnes goes on to state “the rule of thumb is one horsepower will give you four CFM of air. On average a nozzle or one gun might take 40 CFM of air. If you have large machines with 10 guns, that’s a lot of air. That’s a lot of horsepower, which is a big investment in the compressor, in electricity that it takes to run this large compressor. If you can reduce that amount of air by either lowering the blast pressure, or if you could reduce the number of guns, that’s a huge savings. The Guyson gun, on average, is 30 to 50% more efficient than our competitors guns. On a large machine those costs alone can top 50 thousand dollars a year with a lot of usage.”
If companies really paid attention to their cost, Guyson machines can provide overall savings when compared to their competitors. The challenge is really educating people about what they are buying. Often times, people running the machines, or the shop foreman know more about the cost of running and maintaining a machine, but, they aren’t the decision makers when buying the blast cabinet.
