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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
March 2022 #14272 Page #10
Sixty Years of Machines Part XXVIII: Perfecting the Concept Joe Kannapell
fter an impressive debut and ten sales on the BCMC Show floor, the fate of the Alpine Linear Saw (ALS) was still up in the air. Few knew that the ALS was the product of a 105-day crash effort (see “One Hundred Five Days in 2002,” by Dave McAdoo in the December 2021 issue), and that the saw wasn’t “finished” until 3 am on the day it had to ship to the Show. This was a gutsy gamble – sending such a highly sophisticated machine to market without field testing. The Auto-Omni, for example, wasn’t exhibited until it ran successfully in daily production at Villaume Industries. Even still, Alpine did test the ALS stealthily during the three days of the Show.
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When Dave McAdoo himself, Alpine’s Director of Engineering, was feeding boards through the saw at BCMC, it didn’t seem to raise suspicions. But what he was doing was remarkable, conducting Alpha testing when his handiwork was almost usable. That enabled him to discover software and hardware glitches in the course of demos. Though they occurred while customers were carefully scrutinizing the ALS’s operation, its remarkable capabilities masked their impact. However, McAdoo was able to recognize their significance, preplan corrective measures, and to avoid pitfalls on the demos that followed. The ALS made good on its “cut everything” claim at the Show but was also a lot more complex than the “simple” TCT across the Show floor. And there were a dozen TCT users that would back up its reliability, underscoring how crucial Alpine’s Beta tests would be. But even before they were conducted, the 2002 BCMC put the linear saw on a fast track and established the complementary roles of the TCT and ALS. As evidence, Dave McAdoo invited Jim Urmson and his wife Shirley to Alpine’s booth, “and we had a nice discussion about the future of the linear concept. No animosity. No one upmanship. Just a professional discussion about the challenges and possibilities of the concept.” After the Show, and with the ALS being reworked in McAdoo’s shop in Texas, Randy Yost was roving around Florida seeking the right testing grounds. Surprisingly, he didn’t approach one of several hot ALS prospects that he identified at BCMC. Instead, Yost reasoned smartly that they might demand too much of the saw. Instead, he went to a highly regarded plant, Production Truss and Fabrication, that didn’t need to rely too heavily on it, and would be a willing and patient development partner. Continued next page
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