Rottler Manufacturing: The Unsung Hero of Combustion Engines (100 Years of Made In America)

with all our other engine Factory videos you've seen the machines that are actually doing the machine work on the engines and if you've ever wondered where they came from this is where they came from we're going to show you how they get put together I'm Ryan welcome to Rottler I'm the lead applications engineer here rottler's been around for a hundred years so let's see how it's all going down and where it started this is like one of those manufacturing Inception videos like where do the machines come from that make these things answering all the important questions I mean we're starting in the lobby and this is uh for Rottler this is Genesis I mean this is where it all started Rottler started in 1923 making manual boring bars we're gonna go mock up the original boring bar from the 1920s on a block in the shop here I want to know what your theory is on how the heck this ends up in Seattle those think about 1923 Seattle yeah there's no Interstate there's barely railroads out here there's dirt roads this is going to Portland at all this is pre-model a you know this is before the model A was out this is this is working on model T's was there anybody even rebuilding engines at this time and I think of Seattle like it's some remote island like New Zealand where we need to be resourceful way out here because you're isolated from Detroit I don't have access to pistons and parts and things so you have to fix them back in the time where this first became available people did not remove the box from the car the engine Block's still in the car bolted it to the top of the engine blinded up put this manual uh T handle on here and this is the way an engine block was bored in the very beginning manually moving this down very slowly very slowly they call it a boring bar because this was a boring job we've always joked about that it was broughtler manufacturing used to be called Rottler boring bar company and eventually we got into many other machines so we changed it to Robert manufacturing if you go back to 1925 or whatever this is if your block was bad your car was bad it wasn't just removing there was no option so if you couldn't fix this your car became garbage like we buy a new laptop people would have to buy a new car yeah so this is a big deal this one repair means okay now I can save the whole car this is our main office um kind of the Hall of Heritage here we have a lot of cool diagrams hand drawings done by uh the entire Rottler family really I mean going back Andy Rottler is the current owner and he's a third generation owner which is something very unique in kind of all business Industries it always was the Rottler boring company making portable boring bars up through dual-headed monster boring bars progressed into Surfacers CNC machines and and going from kind of small block General engines to production remanufacture and all the way up to large industrial Diesel and gas with the f-80 series and that came out in the mid 80s so Clarence Rottler started Rottler back in 1923 Don Rottler Andy's father took it over in the mid 50s I believe and then currently today we have Andy Rottler running as our president this is our kind of wall we any members that stay here will make them a little plaque and uh like to keep it a very family feeling company we've got just under 100 employees today let's start here at the first apartment this is the home Department I know he's been featured in your video back here is where our h80 series gets built we have the h85a h85ax and axy machines automated hold a hole around 1970s is when Rottler originally started getting into the honing business we started with the old swing arm machines and uh directly competing with sun and ck10s and progress through that era up to this most modern era so which model is this going to be when it's done it's like it's going to be an ax so you know by the motor so the X means it moves in x-axis so we we do a rack and pinion design which allows these to be CNC controlled and go pull the hole for each engine so is it basically like you got a couple guys putting on one machine at a time yeah so they'll build them about like this for we can do four to five at a time uh usually one Tech will build the whole thing through and through we'll swap out and help out for some things it is probably the most U.S made machine that I know of most of the components are coming directly out of Washington so the whole tank and everything is just is in Washington state we machine all all the components ourselves here for the finish work other than the motors themselves is pretty much everything on this thing is is U.S made and manufactured and assembled and that's something that I know Andy is very very proud of what amazes me on those is how sensitive they are like where there's like some type of measurement system in here built in to find like the high spots and low spots yeah so that's what made the Rottler unique is is with our control system and being you know we're running a full computer on this machine and so we have our current graph here and that's exactly we do is when that machine is honing it's sensing that pressure that current load on the motor and it can tell exactly like you said is it tapering is it a high spot is it a low spot and and we can get bores round and straight within two tenths all day long what is the air filter for I've seen that on other machines you're in shops you've got a lot of cast iron dust in the engine industry and we don't want that getting inside we also usually you'll see fans on a lot of our electrical boxes and they're not actually to bring air out of the electrical system we we run them the opposite direction to push air in so it becomes positive pressure uh so all of our electronics are assembled in this corner so we bring the cabinets in everything's flat packed and then he's assembling the entire control system so we build the entire control system here and then go and put all those boxes you've seen on every machine is going to get installed whatever configuration whatever circuit boards that they need for the power requirements and then this is our engineering side so this is where engineering's been for at least last 10 years testing out of bicycle suspension doesn't know we're looking at them yeah when I print things out here I'll look it all right yes that's my that's my mountain bike buddy he's like damn they just filmed me bouncing on my seat yeah he's like dang it yeah so we run a full CNC shop now um again just like anything it's evolved to keep up over the years Rottler was running manual machines in here all the way up through the 90s but Andy Rottler has always been very very into CNC technology he was kind of the one to really push this company into our own cnz controls and so scaling up and just getting everything we can to be able to do production so you got machines making machines right here machines making machines that's how you do it and we run our own like we have our own em69 ATC so that's our four axis block work machine uh come on in we run it this was actually the first one we built and you know you got to test things so we set it up in here and they've just been making Parts on it for probably the last five years so this machine is making parts for itself yeah basically yeah so it's been a good way to you know test the machine to get in a daily use environment where it can run 10 hours a day is this like the machine that does cylinder headboarding uh it's the kind of the I guess the little brother of it it's the block work machine but built on the same frame as the HP um the HP is the 5x it's the only difference you have a five axis articulating head and that's in the back but they're all built all these machines are built assembled right back in uh the left corner here this is one of our last manual machines um for the Rottler f80 series mid 80s we went into the big diesel market and we've always had a traveling column our large format machines with uh highly Precision ground spindles and so we've kept this manual grinder in t here always does a fantastic job of hitting every number and we track each spindle which is really cool so we have an inner and outer spindle assembly and we'll track each dimension on every machine that it gets assembled so whatever that got ground at and we record that information because we make our own tooling our own right angle drives this is a piece here if I if I rattle it there's a little here that little yeah you want to you want to make sure that you hear that all the time because what this does is when this thing's boring this this makes it so the cutter head doesn't chatter which was a again a great simple little design it made the machines better and when a customer wants to order a new right angle drive because it clamps on that spindle we have to have that number that that diameter of their machine to uh to match it so see the master of using this machine he is the master of this machine how long have you worked here I'll ask him hey T how long have you been with Rottler 19 years 19 years because you're the master of the spindles that's what we're talking we're talking you up that's all I got here that's right thanks Steve you can get right angled rise from the general Machine Tool industry but none of them will fit in to an engine block to allow you to line bore them so again very unique product it's taken years to develop our ways that we used to do it was to have a Long Bar that went through that whole block and you'd compensating for bar say down the block and it takes a long time and a good operator to set it up right with this it repeats within one ten thousandths of an inch every time it goes right back to that same Center Line and so you know blocks like this that have been under you know High operation you know you may have to do in a line board because because the one of the boards got hot you might also have to do in a line board because it even torsional fatigue on the Block because it's been loaded up and just has some misalignment I don't know that there's anybody else in the world there's nobody's doing that okay I got an important thing here this is Andy's daughter they have another generation kicking around here I thought I would introduce Karen who's been with us what had or a year and a half about a year about a year yeah all right corn it's been wonderful having you down here thank you do you think that she likes working for you more than you like working for your dad no boy that's a story I've told a couple times anyway and um when I first came down to work here I never saw my father I I think for probably the first 10 years I don't think I ever went to lunch with him I was out working in the machine shop I started doing field work and sales work then my father and I went from never seeing each other to traveling around the U.S in an airplane he was a pilot a hotel room and then into the rental car traveling to customers side by side and we did that we had a lot of fun doing that for probably about 10 years I my boss is just the manager you know so I'm glad that we still have that like father-daughter relationship and not just you don't have to report directly to him yeah so these are the hone tanks they come in as a weld mint uh east of the mountains here and this is how they are fully finished and then we will finish these on again we use one of our own machines the Rottler f-106 was our biggest machine uh now we do the 107 and 109s so we've moved this machine over here because it's again a very large machine and it works really well for finishing out our our home tanks and we also do our uh our boring bar castings on this as well I just think that's so funny that this machine was made in here yeah and now it's being used to make other of itself and little brothers and that's it it's kind of unique because everyone thinks Rottler you know engines and that's what we do that's our Niche I mean 100 through and through engine is that um but it's a good probably no one ever sees that you know you've got a Rottler doing other machine work General machine work that uh that isn't as common he did and we had the old green machines that was that was his thing Andy moved it to the white and red stripe ones not too long ago we have the next Changing of the Guard whenever everything changed from green to White yeah that's right that's where I got uh involved I was here during that time absolutely against it I couldn't believe you're going away from Demento green that's the Rottler color and he wanted white and I'm thinking no don't do that you were right it's much better I can't imagine man alive we changed our image I guess a bit that way and tried to brighten things up for the shops how long after you became in charge did it take for the green to go away oh man that's a mean question I can answer that he might answer it wrong it was within three years that this conversation started you're okay probably right you're probably right yeah I have a story about your father that I'm not going to share oh oh yeah oh God interesting enough I do see Rottler green the classic old Rottler green I told you that Andy purged the place of Rottler green there's parallels right there oh really let's see this is kind of our staging area we'll bring the slugs in a lot of this is for Locators fixturing rottler's a Solutions company um and so we're trying to provide that entire Solution that's what makes Rottler unique you not only you're buying a machine but you're buying the machine to do engine work with all the fixturing everything comes all in one so somebody could call you and say I need a machine to do this specific thing and you will figure out how to make it do that that's what we that's what we try to do we try to make sure that we're working with them directly and you know we have solutions for a lot of the engines and a lot of the common operations and if you've got something that uh is unique or that we're not doing will work directly with you to design something make sure that we get you uh you know the best fixturing the best process so that you can you can meet your demand so back here is our Flagship uh the 100 Department in the mid 80s Rottler started with the f-80 series machine which was you know going after the target of you had high horsepower diesel engine rebuilders supporting mining oil natural gas and Marine this is our largest machine today which is awesome to see running here they're just finishing up alignments so the em-109 is is you saw the 106 in the machine shop this is the evolution of that this is the biggest one you have biggest one we have so we can go out and take a look at a cat 3600 Block in the back parking lot at some point and that would be the size of block that you're putting on this so before we had this whole expansion where this whole this is all relatively new and we blew it out there were buildings in the back corner and I still to this day I have no idea how they assembled them and then got them all the way out to the shipping docks when you build one of these or when it shows up we actually put the work head on the table and then we'll ship that all and so this machine has to be assembled at the customer's facility right because there's just no way to fit that in a shipping container yeah on a truck so we'll bed will go separate the column everything goes separate and then we have some great service techs who come and do the installs and they will assemble and hopefully you have a crank big enough you should be if you're doing engines that size so so yeah for the ones this big you have someone go out there and like assist with the installation and everything yeah what about the smaller ones do you have reps that go out and set those up too yeah I mean we'll do a factory install um and even down the smaller ones we'll have distributor sales reps who will do the smaller machines you know like with these you have to put anchors into the floor so that you need a 36 inch concrete slab you're not just gonna get one of those you're building your facility to accommodate oh yeah this thing yeah and it's really cool it's really cool some people will they'll actually sync it and they'll do a pit and then they'll put the concrete and then your your machine that bed will end up being level with your concrete you just walk right on it let's go see one of the blocks that would go on this yeah let's do it like give the scale yeah what it's really doing so yeah this is the caterpillar 3600 blocks are used for stationary power generation and this would be the block that would be remanufactured on a on a em-109 um stationary you don't say yeah yeah you really don't know how you move there's probably a few Marine applications but try and trying to imagine how you put that in a boat that's right I feel like a like an action figure like I've been shrunk down because it you know it looks like a regular engine block it's just it's just enormous and you keep all these different types of blocks here for your like your own reference of making machines yeah we'll work directly with you know caterpillar and and Cummins and MTU and and we have Partnerships that are willing to you know donate us cores or let us kind of keep them to to uh test and do fitment stuff on the machines and and prep the machine again you know before that 109 goes out this block will go on there and it'll it'll be tested on with this block to make sure that it can do it what do you have in here that moves this a large forklift pick it up with Bam Bam what are these little blocks uh that's a project I've been working on actually for a compressor remanufacturing company so uh our newest machine that we unveiled at epe the em45 is getting a custom fixture to uh do all of these and just reborn I think people really realize how many piston driven engines are Yeah in our world move around stuff like I mean if you is there have you actually like done any research on that to figure out if what has more is it road going automobiles or is it industrial stationary like you know ships trains man that power generation I would say it's probably cars so they just pump them out and they're cheaper but that's a great question like what's the ratio I feel like I feel like this kind of stuff has to be there could be a lot of that though I mean how many you guys I mean every compressor that's the that's the doors versus Wheels conversation I don't know yeah so here's our em69 department so this is where we do three machines back here we do f-69s that's targeted at the performance Market um em69 ATC which is an enclosed version of this and that's kind of targeted at pers and then our em69 HP which is our five axis porting machine these per Performance Engine Rebuilder yeah race cars yeah why is 69 every number that's a really common number yeah you know we started with the f65s and then it's worked its way up f68 and then f69 um so yeah here's the the HP so that's your five axis articulating headboarding machine so full alignment we digitize on machine so these are the ones you see with a cylinder head and they're doing all this kind of crazy stuff correct so you put a porting tool lollipop boarding cutter we use the Rena shop probe we have our own proprietary software we digitize on machine which is what made this whole product line unique to Rottler so you can put an LS head in there and you can go around and the probe touches each point you can digitize in an hour and then you can write a tool path in 10 minutes and you can just every head you load after that will be exactly the same so explain to me what you explained yesterday about the Rottler methodology versus a standard CNC machine right so a standard CNC machine will use G-Code they use Mastercam your your you have a cam software it gets posted in the G-Code you upload G-Code Rottler what we've always tried to do is say we want to cater to…