Celebrating American Manufacturing with Barn Light Electric
We’ve had lots to celebrate in the last week with the launch of our streamlined website and new branding scheme. If you missed last Friday’s post with all the details, you can check it out here.
We’re rolling on with the celebratory mood as National Manufacturing Month kicks off in October. It’s a time to celebrate modern manufacturing and the growing demand for quality, American-made products.
We’ll be sharing much about our manufacturing facility in a series of blog posts this month. Today, we’re checking out what’s happening in the machine shop where the handcrafting of every light fixture begins. It’s loud in here with lots of activity from the forklift zipping back and forth to sheets of metal being loaded into the water jet machine. The noise you hear in the video above is the sound the spinning lathes make as metal is forced into shape.
Every light begins as a flat disc — either copper, brass, aluminum or steel. Our porcelain shades are crafted from steel while aluminum barn light shades are finished with powder coat.
Glenn, who was profiled in this blog post, is our master water jet operator. This machine handles multiple sheets of metal and cuts them using crushed garnet and water. The set-up includes a computer-aided drawing program which Glenn uses to calculate the size and number of blanks that will be cut from each sheet of metal.
These blanks are picked up by our metal spinners who mount the flat discs onto a lathe.
With a lot of dexterity, brute strength, and a keen eye for detail, these discs are forced into the desired shape around a mold.
Gooseneck arms are also bent into shape in the Machine Shop, while Sammy, our welder extraordinaire, takes care of putting parts together with precision. Sammy was profiled back in April in this Behind the Scenes post.
We’ve come a long way from the small shop and handful of staff we hired almost 10 years ago. Our current facility spans more than 60,000 square feet and hums with activity from more than 120 employees. These dedicated men and women take great pride in creating lighting that is easy to customize and crafted to last for years!
