Waterjet cutting is a precise and eco-friendly technology reshaping manufacturing. A key attribute is its sheer versatility, cutting literally any material—from fresh vegetables to ceramics to titanium—with high-pressure water.

For this episode of Manufacturing Matters, TECH B2B Managing Director Winn Hardin caught up with Brian Sherick, president of Flow International, and Nino LaDuca, CEO of Shape Technologies Group, at IMTS.

Shape Technology owns several inventive, globally recognized brands in ultrahigh-pressure waterjet cutting technologies, including Flow International. Sherick and LaDuca touch on the advances driving faster and more economical waterjet cutting, and provide advice for getting the right machine for your application.

Winn Hardin: [00:00:07] Hello, everybody. My name is Winn Hardin. Thanks for joining us on “Manufacturing Matters,” where we talk about the technologies and trends that are reshaping the global manufacturing environment. I’m here in Chicago at IMTS International, and I’m lucky enough to be joined by Brian Sherick, who is president and global vice president of Flow International, and also Nino LaDuca, who is CEO of Shape Technologies Group. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today.

Nino LaDuca: [00:00:31] Thanks for having us.

Brian Sherick: [00:00:32] Absolutely. Good to be here.

Winn Hardin: [00:00:33] I appreciate you taking some time out of the busy show floor today.

Brian Sherick: [00:00:35] For sure.

Winn Hardin: [00:00:36] Beautiful. So before we get into it, tell us a little bit about… We’re mainly going to talk about Flow International today. Brian, can you kick us off and tell us a little bit about your product lines and where you fit in the market.

Brian Sherick: [00:00:46] Absolutely. Yeah. Happy to. So Flow International is a American-based manufacturer of waterjet technology. We’re headquartered out of Kent, Washington, just outside of Seattle, and we’re celebrating 50 years, our anniversary, this year. And we make a diverse range of different waterjet technology and products and shape-cutting systems.

Winn Hardin: [00:01:04] Beautiful. How’s the weather been up in Seattle lately? Are you guys near any of the fires or anything interesting up that way?

Brian Sherick: [00:01:10] It’s been a great summer. Beautiful. Summer in Seattle is the place you want to be. The rest of the year? You know, questionable.

Winn Hardin: [00:01:15] For the three weeks. It’s just absolutely gorgeous.

Nino LaDuca: [00:01:17] And very little rain.

Brian Sherick: [00:01:18] Very little rain.

Brian Sherick: [00:01:18] Summer is great. Beautiful.

Winn Hardin: [00:01:21] Wonderful, wonderful. Nino, Do you want to tell us a little bit just about what your position is in the larger scope of things?

Nino LaDuca: [00:01:27] Absolutely. I’d love to. So I’m the chief executive officer of Shape Technologies Group. So Shape is a management company that invests in what we’ll call unique premium brand technology companies. Shape Process Automation, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, is our flagship robotics and automation group. We have a group called Shape Waterblast Group, which does a lot of industrial and surface preparation cleaning.

Winn Hardin: [00:01:52] Okay.

Nino LaDuca: [00:01:52] And then we own some of the most unique global recognized brands when it comes to ultra high pressure waterjet cut technology. H2O Jet and KMT [Waterjet] are two, but the flagship is the Flow International Company, which is a global company that has headquarters in Kent, Washington, like Brian explained. But also we have presence in Europe and Asia Pacific as well.

Winn Hardin: [00:02:18] That’s a beautiful booth up there… When I saw it earlier. Fantastic demos up there, and you guys have put a lot of effort and resources into that.

Nino LaDuca: [00:02:24] Thank you.

Winn Hardin: [00:02:25] Has the flow been pretty good? Sorry!

Brian Sherick: [00:02:27] I like the wording there! Yeah, it’s been flowing well. We got four live machines there in the booth. And traffic’s been really good the first couple of days, so we’re having a good show.

Winn Hardin: [00:02:37] Fantastic.

Brian Sherick: [00:02:38] Yeah.

Winn Hardin: [00:02:38] So I understand that Flow International is celebrating 50 years of waterjet success this year.

Brian Sherick: [00:02:43] Indeed.

Winn Hardin: [00:02:44] Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you guys are celebrating?

Brian Sherick: [00:02:46] Absolutely. Yeah, we’re a very proud waterjet company with—— some of the original invention came from Flow with the abrasive waterjet technology. Matter of fact, Doctor Mohamed Hashish is in our booth today speaking. He’s one of the original inventors of the process. But yeah, it’s a great company, great culture. People are very committed to the success of the organization with great tenure. We have some people that have been there over 40 years. Average tenure is 15 years at the company. And, you know, we’re super proud of our 50 years of history, and looking forward to 50 more.

Winn Hardin: [00:03:17] That’s beautiful. Fantastic. So, tell us a little bit, if you would, what’s some of the new stuff that’s up there? What are we talking about this week?

Brian Sherick: [00:03:24] The four different platforms we have in the booth, we call it our “mach series of machines” that we have there. And we have our new Mach 150 on display, which is a great kind of R&D, small envelope, you know, our economy line of equipment, all the way up to our Mach 500, which is on display——so the large, more production-style machinery. We also have an EchoJet there, which is a fully enclosed waterjet, which has become very popular. A lot of the CNC shops really want quiet, enclosed, clean equipment.

Winn Hardin: [00:03:54] Right.

Brian Sherick: [00:03:54] So the EchoJet is a great machine as well for us.

Winn Hardin: [00:03:57] Fantastic. So the new 150? This is kind of an entry-level element in there, as well as you said R&D, right? So is it throughput—— and is that a big part of that?

Brian Sherick: [00:04:06] It is. It really is. Like, a lot of tool rooms or R&D shops or universities, education facilities—— they’ll use the Mach 150. You know, it’s economically priced. So you can get the technology affordably, and then, you know, kind of scalable from there.

Winn Hardin: [00:04:21] Oh, I came up with another pun. So you can get your toes wet.

Brian Sherick: [00:04:24] Get your toes wet. Exactly.

Winn Hardin: [00:04:25] I bet you that’s not the first time you’ve heard that one.

Brian Sherick: [00:04:27] No, no it isn’t. No. For sure.

Winn Hardin: [00:04:30] Okay, so if you could kick us off a little bit and tell us a little bit about waterjet technology in general. What are the best applications for it? When are the best uses for it? I know it’s a powerful system that can reshape all types of materials.

Nino LaDuca: [00:04:43] That’s a great question.

Brian Sherick: [00:04:43] The main advantage of a waterjet is its versatility. I mean, and I mean this literally, it’ll cut any material type. And that’s almost hard to kind of wrap your head around at first. But literally we can erode any material.

Winn Hardin: [00:04:57] Okay. Even like titanium, the hardest…

Brian Sherick: [00:04:59] Titanium—— there’s a lot of applications in aerospace for titanium is a good example. Inconel, ceramics, but even soft goods—— there’s a lot of plastic and insulation and food products. So, the application is so broad and diverse within waterjet, which is fantastic as a manufacturer, because there’s always some industries that are in demand that have a need for the equipment and the waterjet.

Winn Hardin: [00:05:23] I’m assuming when we’re talking about food applications, where {they’re] probably not a lot of additives to the water stream, right?

Brian Sherick: [00:05:27] Correct.

Winn Hardin: [00:05:27] We’re just using the pure force of it to cook meat and process  raw materials.

Brian Sherick: [00:05:33] A lot of chicken products, a lot of cakes, a lot of vegetables, obviously use the pure waterjet. You know, we don’t put the garnet sand in there. That wouldn’t be good for the food products.

Winn Hardin: [00:05:44] I believe that, yeah. I’m not sure how garnet tastes, but…

Brian Sherick: [00:05:48] Not good.

Winn Hardin: [00:05:48] It looks like paprika, but I don’t think it’s…. ha! So you mentioned Doctor Mohamed…

Brian Sherick: [00:05:55] Hashish.

Winn Hardin: [00:05:56] Doctor Hashish. And he’s going to be giving a presentation along with another engineer of yours, right?

Brian Sherick: [00:06:00] Yeah. We have several presentations that are going on in the booth talking about the different factors to evaluate when you’re looking at waterjet equipment, whether it’s pressure, kind of some of the history of waterjet, different applications… So we have a number of different speakers throughout the week that are talking in the booth there.

Winn Hardin: [00:06:17] Okay. And you have another presentation that’s a little bit forward looking talking about future applications or…?

Brian Sherick: [00:06:23] Certainly. We kind of, you know… Always looking to the future. You know we’re proud of what we’ve done, but it’s all about what can we do next. Whether it’s, you know, higher pressure achievement to cut faster, more economically, less garnet abrasives. So we’re always trying to make the process more reliable, faster, and less expensive for our customers.

Winn Hardin: [00:06:40] Okay. And we talked… That the Mach 150 is a good entry-level point for folks who are exploring this technology, perhaps for the first time, right? But is there a set of general consideration——that I got a feeling is probably covered in that presentation upstairs——that if new customers are coming to you, they’re looking at evaluating this material-cutting technology. Are there certain criteria they should consider? You know, floor plan, power, throughput… Where is the sweet spot or…?

Brian Sherick: [00:07:06] Yeah, for sure. And as I talked about earlier, you know, there’s such a diverse range of applications. So it’s kind of specific and unique to each individual customer’s needs. But at its core, you got to buy a machine that is the right size, first and foremost. You’ve got to be able to cut the product sizes that you need. And then a lot of it comes back to the pump technology that we build. The pressure that we create is what really does the cutting. So the highest-pressure-possible pump technology will cut the fastest possible product.

Winn Hardin: [00:07:35] Of course.

Brian Sherick: [00:07:35] So it’s size and pressure. Those are key factors.

Nino LaDuca: [00:07:38] And can I add one thing? Because pressure is so important. If you look at the brands that we have within Shape Technologies, two of the waterjet brands that we have have always been first to market with pressure milestones, whether it was the 60K, the 90K technology. And soon, we’ll hopefully launch some higher pressure, which Brian just indicated. Flow has always been one of the two companies that have led the market to those milestone achievements. And then, the other feather in the cap we always give ourselves is Flow, in our opinion, invented abrasive, waterjet cutting. Another portfolio company of ours invented pure waterjet cutting, Flow was the one that invented, through Doctor Mohamed Hashish, invented cutting with abrasive.

Winn Hardin: [00:08:22] Gotcha. Okay. And when you said earlier that size is important, we’re talking about the work envelope. Right?

Brian Sherick: [00:08:28] Right, exactly.

Winn Hardin: [00:08:29] So basically to be able to accommodate the part, any kind of movements of the part that needs to be happening.

Brian Sherick: [00:08:33] Yeah. You know, the sheet size of——you know, whether it’s metal or plastic or stone or whatever it is——you know, five by ten is a very common size, for example, five feet by ten feet, or even up to, you know, we do it in metric as well, four meters by two meters. You know, those are the most common size platforms.

Winn Hardin: [00:08:49] Are these units… do you have like fully automated systems where you’re putting in material handling in there other than just, say, batch?

Nino LaDuca: [00:08:55] And this is where the Shape Process Automation division comes in to complement what we’re doing at Flow.

Winn Hardin: [00:09:00] Gotcha. So, if you’re thinking about building a system… We’ve got work envelope, we’ve got speed and throughput and——as well as the material considerations——and, you know, sanitary cutting, pure water, or if you’re going to use an abrasive addition. How much do you need to think about, say, oh, I don’t know if it’s going to be an ERP integration system or if conveyance or others? Is that something that you… Would you give advice, you know… You might get into your first experiences using the Mach 150, but as you go up to a higher product flows, you really need to be taking this into account. I mean, is there any other guidance you can give folks?

Brian Sherick: [00:09:37] Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can tell you that software is really a key element to this. You know, the good software that models the process of the cutting, the jet itself, is critically important to a quality part that we produce. You don’t want to have to have an operator that has years of experience that knows exactly which feed rate to cut every material, different geometries… Your software needs to be able to do that for you.

Winn Hardin: [00:10:00] Absolutely.

Brian Sherick: [00:10:00] That’s a critical piece of cutting good parts with a waterjet.

Winn Hardin: [00:10:03] I would assume that’s also a key component, as we have labor shortages across every every part of manufacturing right now, right?

Brian Sherick: [00:10:11] For sure.

Winn Hardin: [00:10:12] And are there any particular vertical industries that are clamoring the most or maybe have… For example, we saw a lot of food packaging adopt automation during during the pandemic time, right? Have you had any other surprises like that? Are they are they going all in? Have they always been an active customer in terms of, say, food processing?

Brian Sherick: [00:10:34] Food processing has historically been a really strong part of our industry that we serve. Yes. So whether it’s food cutting or packaging or food equipment manufacturers, all three of those pieces of the food industry are really big customer bases for our technology.

Winn Hardin: [00:10:49] Okay. Is there a lot of robot integration when we’re talking about waterjet?

Brian Sherick: [00:10:54] There certainly is, yeah. Pick-and-place robots bringing materials on and off machines, loading raw material on and off of waterjets. We’ve created a lot of cells where you work throughout a kind of a cellular format where the robots are loading and unloading materials.

Winn Hardin: [00:11:10] You know, we used to call that flexible manufacturing, but I’ve been hearing the term fluid manufacturing more in this case these days.

Nino LaDuca: [00:11:16] Yeah. Interesting.

Winn Hardin: [00:11:17] Where the work cells are not even stationary, right? I mean, the work cells themselves can be reconfigured for high customization, high variability products, or probably——and you mentioned aerospace, I think, earlier——that seems to be an area where you want to have the human, the assembler, perhaps in one single location, but, I mean, the number of assembly steps that they’re going through is, you know, hundreds and thousands of different steps, all requiring different materials.

Brian Sherick: [00:11:41] For sure. So, yeah, I mean, lean manufacturing in aerospace is, you know, is a big concept. And having that cellular format where one operator can move throughout multiple machine processes and operate multiple steps in the process is really important. Yeah. The way they configure the equipment kind of in a circular format and they can just move amongst those different machines.

Winn Hardin: [00:12:01] Right, right. The next step might be to use some of the AMRs to start bringing those, and the human doesn’t even have to move at all, right?

Brian Sherick: [00:12:07] Exactly right.

Nino LaDuca: [00:12:07] Winn, I know that the conversation’s about Flow International, but our other division, Shape Process Automation, does cut almost identical materials as Flow does. But we have a waterjet cutting head on the end of a robot. So it gives the customer a little bit more flexibility if they’re looking for a 3D cutting versus 2D x, y cutting.

Winn Hardin: [00:12:26] Now, how would you compare the complexity of doing that versus, say, a laser cutting system or standard plasma?

Nino LaDuca: [00:12:33] That’s another great question——Brian?

Brian Sherick: [00:12:35] Yeah. I mean, you know, the laser and plasma and waterjet are really complementary processes. They each kind of have their specialty or their niche in the market. Waterjet is unique because it’s a cold-cutting process though.

Winn Hardin: [00:12:46] Okay.

Brian Sherick: [00:12:47] Those are both thermal processes that are going to melt materials. So they have material limitations. Not all materials can be cut in that manner. And so, again, like I said at the beginning, the versatility of what we do is really our specialty, where they’re a little more specialized in specific areas, [with] a narrower bandwidth of what they’re capable of.

Winn Hardin: [00:13:05] And some materials just don’t respond well to intense heat or light, or you have ablation in the case of lasers, which is maybe not going to give as clean a weld.

Brian Sherick: [00:13:12] That’s exactly right.

Winn Hardin: [00:13:13] I’m sorry,”cut” in this particular case.

Brian Sherick: [00:13:15] Yeah, but even post-processing of cutting, whether it’s finished machining, whether it’s welding, whether it’s bending, you know, that heat-affected zone can be a real problem, especially in aerospace. Aerospace does not like heat-affected zones on their materials. It has to be removed.

Winn Hardin: [00:13:29] No, it needs to be consistent across. Do you ever have to do any kind of conformal coatings or anything else to protect, you know, certain materials from the water, like a pre-processing step before?

Brian Sherick: [00:13:38] Not typically. That’s pretty rare, honestly. I mean, we’re just using fresh, clean inlet water that we filter a little bit for particulates, but we’re not putting any additives or any extra fluids or, you know, hydraulics or anything like that into it. And then we’re using garnet sand. So we don’t typically pre-treat any materials that we’re cutting.

Winn Hardin: [00:13:57] Is garnet sand a completely inert material, basically chemically not active?

Brian Sherick: [00:14:01] It is. Yeah. It’s just a natural element, you know, garnet abrasive. Mined out of the ground.

Winn Hardin: [00:14:08] There you go. So, we’re here pretty much smack in the middle of IMTS right now. Have you gentlemen had any opportunity to get outside of the booth and away from the army of folks who are walking…

Brian Sherick: [00:14:20] A little bit.

Nino LaDuca: [00:14:20] We have. We walked around. I mean… So, first of all, we have a lot of great suppliers or partners, as we like to refer to them as, within the company. So we always like to spend time with them and visit them. FANUC robotics is one certainly. So there’s several of them and it allows——

Winn Hardin: [00:14:35] They have a small booth. I think I saw it, it was back in the corner.

Brian Sherick: [00:14:38] Yeah, right, ha!

Nino LaDuca: [00:14:39] They have a big booth, but… No, it allows us to not only, you know, host customers that come to the Flow booth and see what our customers are up to, but it really gives us an opportunity to go visit our partners and thank them for the partnership and see what they’re up to as well. So.

Winn Hardin: [00:14:54] So are your presenters just in booth or are they giving any technical presentations?

Brian Sherick: [00:15:00] We did both. Yeah. Yesterday we actually gave a technical presentation about 3D waterjet cutting. Had a pretty good audience there. I think there was 50 people that attended that. One of our associates gave the presentation. It went well.

Winn Hardin: [00:15:11] Beautiful.

Brian Sherick: [00:15:12] And then every day there’re multiple presentations in the booth, as well.

Winn Hardin: [00:15:15] Is 3D watercut jetting a relatively new thing? And forgive my ignorance in this case, but I’ve always just figured it’s best to ask questions we don’t know the answer to and don’t try to act like an expert.

Brian Sherick: [00:15:24] Yeah, I appreciate that. No, I mean, typically we cut flat plate. That’s the most common application. But, in fact, we’ve been cutting three dimensionally for the whole history of the company. So it’s been around a long time. It’s just there’re more applications for flat plate applications. But yeah, three dimensional cutting has been around and very popular.

Winn Hardin: [00:15:42] It almost seems like it’s the complement to an additive manufacturing.

Brian Sherick: [00:15:46] It can be. Yeah, I mean, you know, additive is kind of the hot new trend or… it’s not necessarily new, but it’s certainly becoming more of the business——

Winn Hardin: [00:15:54] Right, the larger envelopes and a little bit better throughputs. Still, I think primarily on prototyping, except perhaps in aerospace with a laser centering type stuff.

Brian Sherick: [00:16:03] I think automotive is using a lot of additive as well these days.

Winn Hardin: [00:16:05] Agreed. Agreed. So, where I was going with the question about whether you got out a little bit was, what have you seen at IMTS that was impressive? That stuck with you?

Nino LaDuca: [00:16:16] Go ahead, Brian.

Brian Sherick: [00:16:17] Oh, I was just going to say… I mean, my favorite part of IMTS is the networking. Like Nino said, dealing with all of our partners and getting to see all the people. I’ve been coming here for 25 years, so it just seems like there’re so many faces that I run into every two years here at IMTS. I love that part of the show. And then obviously it’s a great selling event for our business. And getting to interact with all of our customers again. But, you know, IMTS is just a flagship show that we go to every two years and and really enjoy it.

Winn Hardin: [00:16:44] How about you, Nino?

Nino LaDuca: [00:16:46] Yeah, I mean, look, it’s a big show. All four halls are, in my opinion, completely full. And it’s neat to see, right? Because there’re so many people coming to the show, whether they’re just North America-based or from Europe. But to Brian’s point, the networking is important. Getting around and seeing some of the new technologies and just seeing what everybody is doing out there is… It means a lot to be here all week.

Winn Hardin: [00:17:07] Yeah, and it’s interesting because even though this is one of the biggest shows I’ve ever been to, other than some fairs in Germany and things of that nature, you don’t—— and it’s spread out, but there are no gaps and there’s so many different events going on just, you know, at 5:00, right after the show floor closes, you’ve got keynotes in the primary hallway… So it just seems like it’s well connected, you know.

Brian Sherick: [00:17:30] Completely agree.

Winn Hardin: [00:17:31] Since it goes five days, you actually have the opportunity to see everything, which you pretty much will need most of that time.

Brian Sherick: [00:17:40] You need the whole time.

Winn Hardin: [00:17:41] If you’re a customer segment you’re going through, but at least they’re starting to organize it really well into, into like… The robotics automation component, I think, was relatively new this year, putting them in a central location, so…

Brian Sherick: [00:17:51] You definitely need to do a little planning when you come to the show. It can be a little overwhelming if you just kind of show up and expect to figure it out. So a little pre-planning is probably wise.

Winn Hardin: [00:18:00] I completely agree. It’ll also save you a pair of shoes, so…

Brian Sherick: [00:18:05] True.

Winn Hardin: [00:18:06] So, are there any particular… You mentioned partner FANUC. Are there any particular technologies——and we talked about the people and the networking——but are there any particular technologies that you’ve seen out there this week?

Brian Sherick: [00:18:20] I think it’s robotics and automation. I think that’s the big movement in manufacturing right now in general. You know, being able to automate and use robotics when possible is so much more efficient [of a] way to do things in a factory or in a shop.

Winn Hardin: [00:18:35] Yeah.

Brian Sherick: [00:18:36] And I think that’s the next, you know, big movement in the business.

Nino LaDuca: [00:18:39] Yeah. Actually I like the word you said earlier, Winn, which was fluid——not flexible, but fluid. I haven’t heard that. But it’s interesting you say that because I see that now. And to Brian’s point, robotics and automation has always given customers flexibility. But now, with all the latest technologies around AMR and additional AI, I think it is becoming more fluid rather than flexible. So that’s that’s good to hear.

Winn Hardin: [00:19:02] Yeah, we’re starting to see, in the last year, you know, I’ve seen robots that are starting to program themselves based on large language models and actual verbal descriptions, not just pull it point program, point point, you know, program yourself, which was already awesome. Just gesture-based or physical movement. Taking the engineer out of the loop for retasking. A lot of the cobots in particular, and even the industrial bots, but we’re also putting those arms on the AMRs now, you know, for the first time, it’s been something we’ve been talking about for ten years. But from what I’m hearing, you know, from talking with ABI research and other folks yesterday, that that’s a true missing link and it’s probably going to be mainly in greenfield installations, right? Versus the 80% that are primarily brownfield. Just because it’s such a unique——that fluid manufacturing is such a unique environment. But, it’s kind of one of the last steps on the way to a lights-out manufacturing environment in certain ways.

Brian Sherick: [00:19:57] I think another element of that is connected machinery. You know, really using… We have a technology called Waterjet Connect where it’s the IoT capabilities, internet of things, where we can connect to machines from any remote location. Shop managers and owners can see how their machines are performing. We, as an OEM, can also do the same and help them be predictive in their maintenance——

Winn Hardin: [00:20:18] Yeah.

Brian Sherick: [00:20:19] ——and not just preventative, but actually predict when maintenance intervals need to occur.

Winn Hardin: [00:20:23] So do you see… You know, we’ve always had that SPC—— statistical process control——element machine vision. We’ve got CMMS systems out there for doing predictive maintenance. But, you know, it seems like the capability has been there, but so many of our customers don’t really leverage that data.

Brian Sherick: [00:20:41] I would agree, I would agree.

Nino LaDuca: [00:20:43] I think they’re starting to now. I think with maintenance groups shrinking, becoming smaller——

Winn Hardin: [00:20:49] Yeah.

Nino LaDuca: [00:20:50] Certainly when it’s, you know, smaller customers with limited resources. I think they are relying now on the OEM to sort of tell them when maintenance intervals should happen, when ‘spend,’ in terms of spare parts and service, should happen. So I think the customers have become much better educated and the quality of the product has improved over the years. So I think it’s just the right time now.

Winn Hardin: [00:21:14] That’s interesting that…  Well, it’s great for you guys, right? Because you’re the experts on the machinery. So if there’s going to be any kind of recommendation related to, you know, preventive maintenance to avoid unplanned downtime, you guys are going to be the experts in the space. Is the cloud kind of being a key component for you guys in implementing that?

Brian Sherick: [00:21:32] Certainly.

Nino LaDuca: [00:21:33] It is, yeah.

Brian Sherick: [00:21:34] Our IoT capability, as I talked about a second ago, is all cloud-based technology. And we’re building sensoring into the actual hardware now, where we can really see what’s upcoming in its maintenance intervals and get in front of it.

Winn Hardin: [00:21:49] To me, it is awesome, essentially, that manufacturers have finally gotten past that fear of letting the data go beyond their walls. You know, because this is really… This  connectivity and convergence and everything in technologies, I think, is what’s going to help us. It’s going to greatly accelerate. I think we can agree the technology, automation, technology development and deployment in so many different industries and applications, including in material removal and handling.

Brian Sherick: [00:22:13] Yeah, absolutely.

Nino LaDuca: [00:22:14] We agree with that. Absolutely agree with that.

Winn Hardin: [00:22:15] Wonderful. So, gentlemen, we’ve had a great talk here. We talked a little bit about what’s going up, just around the corner up at the booth. And I hope everyone who has seen this——I’m sure you’ll be able to find those presentations online after the fact, in case you weren’t able to come to Chicago this week. Are there any kind of closing thoughts, you know, or that you want to share with us in the audience?

Nino LaDuca: [00:22:37] We certainly appreciate the opportunity to do this, Winn, and thank you. And again, we’re always trying to look for new technologies out there. We’re always looking for… Whether it’s new partners, certainly new customers as well, and really appreciate everybody stopping by the Flow booth and giving us an opportunity to showcase the Flow product line. So thanks, Winn.

Brian Sherick: [00:22:56] Absolutely. Same. You know, we’re a——Flow is a proud manufacturer of waterjet technology. Anybody out there that has questions or is curious or wants to do any research at all, reach out to us. We’d be more than happy to engage with anybody around the world. Like Nino said, we have global locations, so you know, let us know what we can do for you.

Winn Hardin: [00:23:14] Great. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Nino, Brian. I really appreciate you taking some time out of your day to come sit with us. Thank you.

Winn Hardin: [00:23:21] I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions for Flow International or any of the Shape Technology Group companies, please just reach out to us at Manufacturing-Matters.com. You can find all of our previous episodes on your favorite podcast platform or application. Until that time, just remember that manufacturing continues to matter in this world and we look forward to seeing you next time.