Reel Turf Techs Podcast
Reel Turf Techs Podcast
Episode 126: Jerry Goman
Welcome to Episode 126 of the Reel Turf Techs Podcast! This week, we're honored to chat with Jerry Goman, Senior Principal Design Engineer at The Toro Company, who recently retired after an impressive 39-year career. Jerry's journey began on a dairy farm, leading to dual degrees in agricultural and mechanical engineering, and ultimately to a pivotal role at Toro. Over the years, Jerry worked on numerous product lines, with a significant focus on greens mowers. In this episode, we dive deep into the design and engineering of cutting units, exploring topics like rifling, blade pass frequency, the development of DPA and EdgeSeries reels, bedknives, and more. If you're into the technical details of turfgrass equipment, this episode is a must-listen! Don't miss out on this insightful conversation with one of the industry's greats.
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welcome to the reel turf techs podcast for the technician that wants to get reel follow along. As we talk to industry professionals and address hot topics that we all face along the way we'll learn tips and tricks. I'm your host, Trent. Manning let's have some Welcome to the real turf tax podcast. Episode 1 26. Today, we're talking to Jerry Goldman. Senior principal design engineer or the Toro company. But just recently retired. Jerry served two tours of the Toro company for a total of 39 years. He started in March of 83 and retired in March of 2024. With a two year leave of absence. Jerry worked on many product lines during his tenure at Toro. Let's spend a lot of time on greens mowers. Let's talk to Jerry. Welcome Jerry to the RealTurf Techs podcast. How are you doing today, Jerry?
Jerry Goman:Just fine. Thank you. Trent. That's nice to be here.
Trent Manning:Yeah, yes, sir. Thank you so much for joining us here and I'm really excited to hear your story. So yeah, tell us how you got to the Toro company.
Jerry Goman:well, you know, I I started at Toro probably like A lot of people start at most jobs and that I graduated from college had a dual engineering degree, one in agricultural engineering, one mechanical engineering. And I happened to be lucky at the time when I graduated, there was a glut of engineers. They didn't need anybody. So I had filled out paperwork to go on to grad school to go into a mechanical engineering graduate program and a friend of my dad worked at Toro in Tomah, Wisconsin, and said that they were just looking at starting to hire again. This was shortly after Toro had their financial woes in the. and they had just started to open up again. And so I went and interviewed at Toma, which was a manufacturing facility which is only about 35 miles from where I grew up.
Trent Manning:Oh, that's awesome.
Jerry Goman:And so it was kind of just down the road, if you will. And I went and interviewed and I got the job. Hired, and I was the first person to be hired at Toro and Toma after they had the, like I said, the financial setback. So. So I was happy to get into the door and my title at that particular point was I was a quality manufacturing engineer. So I did quality work and for the manufacturing facility. And not, not not an auspicious start of, of looking specifically at Toro it was an available job I was fortunate from the standpoint with my degrees, I had originally planned to go into the ag industry and design ag equipment, farm equipment of some sort come to find out that the equipment that Toro does is is a close cousin.
Trent Manning:Yes, it is.
Jerry Goman:and so it worked out quite well for me and the advantage of working at Tomah to start is you know, I could bring my knowledge from the farm, you know, grew up on a dairy farm and dairy and beef. And so I had all that ability it's one of those things where. Working in the field, you figured out how to get the unit running with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers or you're walking home.
Trent Manning:Right. Right.
Jerry Goman:I kind of have that, you know, innate ability and started at the plant and was involved in a lot of problem solving and got to see the manufacturing side of it. And when I started, Toma was building everything from cordless electric battery powered trimmers. Up through the HTM hydraulic transport more and so it was a huge range of equipment. built snow blowers, rear engine riders, we built GM 72s, we were building greens masters, sand pros, super pros, if anyone remembers any of those. 70 pros from a walk Greensboro standpoint, we were building both series four and series five greens masters. The series 5 changed over into the greens master 105. So, a lot of history there. So a lot of equipment spent a lot of time on the floor spent a lot of time in welding to try and understand how the fixtures work and that sort of thing. So, I spent seven years at Toma and Felt that I kind of wanted to change and there was a design. Position that way we're interviewing for at Bloomington in Minnesota at the corporate headquarters. So I went up and interviewed for that and got hired. That was about 1990 when I transferred up to Lindale.
Trent Manning:Okay.
Jerry Goman:And my product responsibility at that point in time was the old RealMaster 335. It had just been, just been introduced and it was the, the rough mower, et cetera and so forth and, and it needed some work. So I, I got into it feet first on working on some issues on the pump and some other issues and this sort of thing and trying to resolve some issues in the cutting units. So it was kind of my first foray with. Cutting units and off tempering and, and those sorts of things in terms of the heat treatments and, and, and other things and was then transferred, not really transferred, but the group I was working with got assigned a new product. So, rather than doing product maintenance. I was involved in a new product design, which was the 455D.
Trent Manning:Okay.
Jerry Goman:455 was to take the 335 tractor and convert it to a rotary. And we were on an extremely short timeline. There was a number of things that I wanted to change that I was told we didn't have time.
Trent Manning:Mm
Jerry Goman:there was some frustration on my part in that there was a lot of things that Were within our grasp to fix in my mind, but we weren't given time to do that. When that product was completed The product group was kind of, disseminated and I basically transferred over to Greensmoor's
Trent Manning:Okay.
Jerry Goman:and started working on Greensmoor's and I had product responsibility for the current products at that time would have been the GR 300. And the the first diesel units of this sort of thing was converted to the 3, 000 of course, as it changed through there. And the first product, the new product that I worked on there along with the product responsibility was the 3, 200.
Trent Manning:Okay. Yep.
Jerry Goman:And working on the 3, 200, it was my my section of it was the suspension. Cutting unit suspension and cutting units.
Trent Manning:Okay.
Jerry Goman:was, that was the first time I get a full new sheet, clean sheet design of the cutting units. And I was fortunate enough to talk to a lot of people who, when I got up on Greene's Moors, there was a. A lot of history people that were there for a number of years. And so I did my darndest to pick their brain and say, you know, what's the right thing? What do we need to do? And, and a gentleman that had been working on Greensboro cutting units, the old single point adjustment and 4 bolt cutting units that went way back,
Trent Manning:Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:his comment to me was whatever you do, make the, overall construction stiffer, make them more robust.
Trent Manning:Okay. Yep.
Jerry Goman:So, so when we went in and did the 3200 cutting unit, we did that. We made the bed bar pivots larger. We made the reel shaft tubular and larger diameter with hollow so that the, the overall weight of the reel went down, but the stiffness to bending and torsion went up just because you had a larger, larger section. And bed bars were heavier, we made everything a little heavier. That unit was still a single point adjustment. But up to that point, we had always had problems with single point adjustments prone to rifling. I'm assuming your, your group is familiar with rifling,
Trent Manning:well, I don't, well, I don't, let's just in case let's yeah, let's describe that a little bit for the listeners. What, what is
Jerry Goman:Yeah. Well, rifling, the way we define it from an engineering standpoint is when the cutting and it goes into a vibration mode, and the Bed bar goes into what we call first order bending vibration, which means that where the bed bar is, is connected to the side plates are your pivot points and the center of the bed bar is deflecting up and down. So it's like, it's a single node. bending. So it's just up and down. It's, it's flexing and the center is going high and low. And what happens is obviously as that starts to get into this vibration, it begins to increase the contact with the reel and the reel starts to move as well. And so you get excessively high contact pressures. Between the reel and the bedknife, and of course where the reel is the stiffest is where the spiders are connected to the shaft. And so what it does is the stiff part of the reel, where those blades are, erodes the material out of the bedknife. And you get this scalloped look of the bedknife, and if you look down the end of the bedknife, it looks like it's a rifling mark you would see in a barrel. And that's why it's called rifling.
Trent Manning:Okay. That's awesome. That was a great explanation. I
Jerry Goman:So, you know, up to the point of the 3200 Cutting Unit, we had always had difficulty maintaining stability. And part of that, of course, is that the, the Toro methodology is that we recommend running light contact. And we you know, we expect those reels to run in light contact. And when we completed the 3200 cutting unit, that unit was stable at all speeds and all contact with the stiffer reel, the stiffer bed bar pivots, everything being a little bit heavier. I went through the design analysis of all the components on that. To make sure that there was no component that had a natural frequency in the blade pass frequency. Let me explain that a little bit. What you have is based on the reel RPM. So let's say the reel is running 2000 RPM. And you have 11 blades. You have, basically, that unit is hitting, the blades are hitting the bed knife at that point in time, at 2, 000 times 11 is what, 22, 000 cycles per minute.
Trent Manning:Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:You divide that by 60, you end up with a frequency. That's called the blade pass frequency.
Trent Manning:Okay.
Jerry Goman:blade pass frequency changes by virtue of the number of blades, if it's 8 blades versus 11 blades, or 14 versus 11. And if the real speed changes anywhere from 1200 RPM up to 2200 RPM. So all those things connect, it's all based on how many times the bed knife contacts the real blade. And that's what your frequency is. That sets up a vibration mode in the structure, the frame, the real, the bed bar, bed knife assembly, everything gets a vibration mode based on that frequency. So what I did is during the design of the cutting unit, we went through and calculated. Natural frequency of all the components, which would be the bearings, the shaft of the wheel, the bed bar cross section with the bed knife bolted and unbolted even the adjuster spring for the SPA adjuster to make sure that nothing had a natural frequency where it would want to vibrate. Or go into a vibration mode anywhere in the range from a thousand RPM to 2, 500 RPM with all the different real blades.
Trent Manning:Wow. That's a lot to cover.
Jerry Goman:Yeah, there was a lot to cover. There was a lot of, and that was prior to when we could do it on the computer. So that was all hand mass. So it was a little ugly, but we got through it. And there's lots of pages of mathematics that I still have stored on. But but anyway, the the real ran extremely stable. I mean, all speeds, all contact, and we actually complete a rifling test at Toro. It's one of the parameters to make sure everything passes, and what we do is we will take a reel and bed knife an actual cutting unit, and we will run it in contact and polish it until everything is a snug, perfect fit, the light contact is there, everything's straight, square to the world, we spend a little time a couple of hours getting everything polished in, And then what we do is we run it several clicks past the normal contact
Trent Manning:All right. Can we, can we time out right there and you tell me what is normal contact
Jerry Goman:Okay.
Trent Manning:Yeah. A deep. Yeah. Let's since I know we're in history a little bit, but let's talk about the DPA for just a minute and tell us what's a normal contact. What does Toro like to see?
Jerry Goman:yeah, the adjuster, the adjuster right now on the on the greens mower for each click moves the end of the bed knife toward the reel by seven tenths or seven ten thousandths of an inch, a little less than a thousandth of an inch point zero zero zero seven. And what we have always you know, Over the years, I've developed a touch and a feel and an ear for it, but that's, of course, that's, that's my requirement, you know, and it's difficult to explain that to someone else. So what we actually recommend is that we send with each new cutting unit, there's a piece of shim stock in there, and it's a two thousandths piece of stainless steel shim. And what we recommend is that you bring the knife and the reel up to where you have just slight drag, where as the reel blade goes over, it just catches and gives a very slight drag on to that piece of shim stock,
Trent Manning:hmm.
Jerry Goman:you're basically spacing it like you would with a feeler gauge.
Trent Manning:Right. Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:At that point in time, we say three clicks. It's a two thousandth shim. You bring it in two thousandths and one. Okay, you know what I mean? And so what you should end up with is what we consider like contact where you hear the real blades just contacting the real, or not the real blade, real blades contacting, I'm sorry, real
Trent Manning:Oh, that's all right.
Jerry Goman:the bed knife, and yet you still have a very nice smooth flow, And as you pull on it, it doesn't tend to restrain or slow the reel to any significant amount. So we're talking light contact within less than half a thou, for sure.
Trent Manning:Okay. No, that's great. And I think that's really good information for a lot of people. And you know, one thing I learned from another gentleman, John Patterson been in the industry a long time, and he's been doing this a long time and I've been doing it a long time. And he's telling me that he uses a filler gauge to set his 2000 clearance. And then. He was a PGA national and they had a tournament and they had a bunch of Toro stuff. So Toro engineers were down there and they told him just what you just told us, the two thousands and plus three clicks. And, but the thing that really got to me was as long as John's been doing this and I look up to him and you know, he even said, I thought I was as good as anybody just cutting paper. But when he started using a filler gauge, he realized he was off a little bit.
Jerry Goman:You know, it can throw you off. The paper is different. You know, there's a different feel here and there. The reality is, and the fortunate part of it is, and you know, we're getting into the weeds a little bit on the details. But the cutting units now the new DPAs and all these new cutting units are stable enough that if you're off a little, You know, let's say you still use the paper and you go with that and, you know, I've heard, you know, or two, you have two pieces of paper and, you know, and, and or the paper is either in line with the knife or perpendicular to the knife. There's all kinds of different ways.
Trent Manning:Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:The reality is, is the cutting units are stable. They will mow fine at that point. And they will even more with no contact. I know there are people that, that are prone to that as well. Even though we, we prefer contact and recommended, but I know it works for some people and, and if the practice works for them, that's fine. It's just going to change overall. Anything that deviates from, from maybe I don't want to use the term perfection or whatever, but now that's not the point. If your adjustment is slightly off and it works for you, it just may change the required amount of maintenance. Then what you could get out of it, but it will run fine. And so that there's, there's advantages to that from that standpoint, that there's stability there.
Trent Manning:Okay. Yep. I mean it makes perfect sense to me. Can you tell us what led to the DPA?
Jerry Goman:Well, you know, going back to the history, right after we had done the the 3, 200 the next project at Toro for me was the flex walk greens mower. And we went in and did a design on that walker where we had the, obviously the flexible links connecting the reel and, and the pitch arms connecting the reel to the tractor, allowing the tractor to flex or move relative to the cutting unit so the cutting unit could follow the ground. That cutting unit design is really the basis for everything since then, and that was done in the late 90s, 98, 99. All the geometry in the flex cutting unit is what is exactly that geometry is in the DPA cutting unit right now. The bed bar pivot locations the roller locations, the adjuster points, everything was done on that particular cutting unit. And that was done specifically to make sure that the cutting was consistent over time. And we spent quite a bit of time going through, again, the stability with the tubular reel shaft. The, you know, all the, all the adjustments were stable. You know, the dual point adjustment actually originally came from the old GR1000 walk greens mower.
Trent Manning:Yep.
Jerry Goman:And We adapted we changed it a little bit in terms of the components, but the concept was carried from the GR1000, which was introduced in 89. And we brought that over to a standalone cutting unit for the Flex because we had seen the stability and the ability To get rid of the parallel adjustment of the bed bar to the reel on an SPA you always ended up having to go in and have one end of the bed bar had to be slightly adjustable up or down in order to ensure that you had the bed knife parallel to the real.
Trent Manning:Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:So one end was a pivot. The other end was adjusted up and down. In the case of the greens mowers, it had a cam that you would rotate, and that would allow you to rotate that point to get it up and down, just a pain. I mean, let's be honest, it was a pain, right? And, and it was a pain. And so one of the things that we did on the flex was to take the change in the approach. We had always used welded real frames prior to that. Where you had the center section and two side plates that you bolted on or welded onto the center section. And when you welded those plates on the steel plates, they would have a tendency to wart. And so flatness was an issue. And so one of the things we did on the 3,200 carrying the same concept forward is we spent. A specific amount of time to get plates that were much flatter and stiffer than what we had previously on the old 4 bolt and the SPAs. That again helped the overall stability of the cutting unit. And we changed the bearings from the tapered roller bearings to the self aligning ball bearings. Again, giving the reel more stability if things were not aligned.
Trent Manning:Mm
Jerry Goman:When we went to the Walker we decided to go away from the weldment and we had a bolt together cutting unit, where the center section on the original flex 21 instead of a casting like you see on the DPA was an extrusion. An aluminum extrusion, and the two side plates that were fully machined before they were bolted on were bolted on and they were keyed to the extrusion so everything was aligned when you started. So you didn't have to worry about the frame not being square.
Trent Manning:Okay,
Jerry Goman:We also stayed with the ball bearings, but instead of a self aligning ball bearing, we went to a standard deep groove ball bearing with a slightly Increased clearance inside, internally. There is if you were to order or buy a deep groove ball bearing off the shelf, the normal clearance is what's called a CN, C normal. That's just the term that's used in the, in the bearing industry.
Trent Manning:okay
Jerry Goman:The clearance level that we used was a C3, which a C normal clearance on a deep groove ball bearing is somewhere around 3 to 5 tenths clearance between the inner race, the balls, and the outer race. Total clearance in that bearing. In a C3 bearing, that's 8 tenths.
Trent Manning:Okay.
Jerry Goman:that's some difference, it's not a lot. The reason, the reason we did that was, we knew even though we were bolting the frame together, there would still be some possible misalignment, and we did not want to pre stress the bearings too high. Now, when we went through the initial testing of that particular cutting, we found that the deep groove ball bearing we would have stability issues where the reel would want to move slightly because of the clearance in the ball bearing. Believe it or not, that 8 tenths was more clearance than what we wanted. So what we did is we went in and we added a wave washer on one end.
Trent Manning:Okay. Yep.
Jerry Goman:By adding the wave washer on one side plate, and the way it goes through is it loads the outside race to the inside race on the one bearing through the reel shaft to the inside race. Back to the outside race on the other bearing. So all, both bearings are slightly preloaded, which is what's done on all high speed spindles in the world for these high speed machining centers, et cetera, and so forth. That's been up to 10, 000, 12, 000 RPM. It's the same mechanism. What that does is that forces the balls to, to shift and everything moves so it has a single path, so they're not wandering around inside seeking a, a rotating path. It puts everything on line and everything rotates in a true circle. When we had the tapered roller bearings, because the welded frames were never stable they were never as square as we wanted them to be, you would end up with the Bearings running on an oval, they would be at a slight angle. So what you would end up with is with a, with a tapered roller bearing with the roller, you have one end of the rollers called the heel and the other end of the rollers called the toe. And you would transfer as it would go around because it's not running in the true circle. It's running at a slight angle that it would go from the toe to the heel, back to the toe, back to the heel, and it was running an oval instead of a circle. And that's why those cuttings were never as stable as we wanted them.
Trent Manning:Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, all this, you know, is making a ton of sense. You're blowing my mind here. I love it. It's
Jerry Goman:So the ball bearing, so the ball bearing with the preload now allows you to run a true circle, and it preloads everything so it finds a single node. So what you do is you define. The strength of the preload is high enough to take all the clearance out of the bearing so that when you're done you have a, a bearing setup that's even tighter than the CN, just because everything's preloaded and it follows a path. So there is no clearance in the system when you're done. It's very tight, very clean, and that's why they're stable. We've run those reels well over 2, 500 RPM and they're just as stable as you, as you want. So there's no problems. And
Trent Manning:awesome.
Jerry Goman:So that was one of the things that we learned. The other thing that we went through was, again, you know, you had mentioned some interest in how we got to the bed bar pivot and, and you know, the bed bar pivot, obviously. The issue that we had seen with the older cutting units where the bed bar pivot was twofold. One, the bed bar pivot was low and had a tendency as the reel would wear that you would adjust the bed knife up to the reel and you would start to get contact of the rear of the bed bar down in the grass. So it would be riding on that bed bar. In fact, a GR1000 gets part of its support from the bed bar. And so the problem with the GR1000 was that when you were mowing and you had a worn reel, you were never sure what height of cut you were getting because you had, the bed bar was riding into the grass. So it, it affected things. So one of the things that we wanted to do was to get the bed bar pivot up out of the grass to make sure that the bed bar was never a support structure and never something that you couldn't quantify. the other item is we were looking ahead for this cutting unit in other usages, but what we wanted to ensure that If you had a mixed fleet, and in the case of using it on a triplex, if you had different levels of grain, so the reel was a different diameter, they needed to cut the same. We, we had learned during the 3200 development that the behind center distance the point where the bed knife contacts the reel, Is a huge contributor to how aggressive the cutting unit is, the cleanliness of cut, the amount of marking. We spent months, months and countless hours in the grass with, with those cutting units in order to learn all these things where we could change one thing and predict what it was going to do. Once we had gotten to the point of predictability, then we felt we were ready to design. So, at that point, we wanted to make sure that the cutting was stable over its life. And so we wanted that behind center distance to remain unchanged at the, at a set height to cut, regardless of the diameter of the reel. And what that means is if I'm mowing at an eighth of an inch, and I have one unit that has a reel that is brand new at five inches, And one that is almost worn out at four and a half inches. That behind center distance needs to be the same. So they cut the same.
Trent Manning:hmm.
Jerry Goman:Historically, what happened is that as the real war. That distance would actually grow and the unit would become more aggressive. And so it would now have a completely different look in the grass because it was cutting more aggressively, it was leaving less stragglers, it was actually cutting a little lower here and there, it was doing all kinds of things differently. And it would look entirely different. And that was where part of the issue that I remember talking to people with triplexes that if they went out and mowed with their old triplex on a green it may hit something. They had to pull that reel to grind, they would grind all three, to make sure that they all matched, otherwise it would look different.
Trent Manning:Yep.
Jerry Goman:And so with the bed bar pivot, now at a point where it is higher, to one get that bed bar up out of the grass, and rather than just pivot the bed knife upward, it also pushes the bed knife forward. Because what happens is you do the adjustment on the front roller, That tips the cutting unit forward, so the reel tends to move forward. It's going to pivot around the rear roller. Sorry, I'm getting into the weeds
Trent Manning:Oh, no, I love it, man. This is right up my alley. I love it.
Jerry Goman:So it pivots around the rear roller, and as you lower the adjustment, because the reel is wearing to maintain that eighth of an inch, let's say. That reel moves forward. It pivots forward. Well, the bed bar, as you're adjusting it, if it moves just upward, it's not keeping pace with it. So we actually have it so it swings forward, so that regardless, like I said, whether it's 5. 06 brand new or 4. 56 worn out, That behind center distance is the same within a thousand, one one thousandth of an inch.
Trent Manning:Wow. That's incredible. That's yeah, that's
Jerry Goman:So that, that maintains stability of that cutting unit. The after cut appearance stays the same. Everything stays the same throughout the life of the reel. So it's clean. And again, that was initially designed into the Flex 21 cutting unit. At that, at a later point in time there was a project to look at A design of a new cutting unit for the triplex. And I did not have that particular product directly. But I knew the designer that was working on that and recommended to him that he take a look at the. Cutting on the flex 21 as a possible answer for that, because I told him that all the geometry was there and he had been spending months looking at all different things and trying different things and couldn't get it to work. And he put a set of flex cutting units on the machine and they were perfect. They worked right out of the box.
Trent Manning:Hmm.
Jerry Goman:So the D so the DPA then when it was first designed, the reality is the, the change between the DPA and a flex was we used to give him a designer on that project, a little grief in that he changed seven parts instead of the extrusion on the back, he went to a casting. Instead of sand castings on the side plates, he went to die castings. And so, I mean, the reality was there was very few changes in terms of the actual cutting unit. Certainly no changes in geometry, but different changes in terms of manufacturing because of the higher volume of the cutting. And therefore, you actually, he did improvements on that because the, the processes that he picked were more stable than what we were using because he could afford to go to the higher cost processing.
Trent Manning:Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So when did the Edge series come around? And, and what led to that?
Jerry Goman:series, you know, we were getting feedback from customers that we weren't getting the edge retention that they were seeing from some of the competition. We were hearing some things and obviously Baroness was pushing the, the main part of that, that vote at this point. They were doing a number of things. Of course, a bare ass bed knife was fully machined all the way around and was a huge amount of money. But on the other hand, it held an edge extremely well. We had one of the tests that we do there is, we also do a a destruction test, where we We'll be spinning the reel, and we will stick a three quarter inch diameter steel shaft up into the reel while it's spinning.
Trent Manning:Wow.
Jerry Goman:And our intent is that nothing comes off. Nothing gets broken. And, and, so we always had safe cutting units. Fact is, we were, you know, doing some things with some of the materials For the European market, on the heavier reels, we were using lost tempered knives. So that you could literally go in and you could hammer them back into shape because they were using those large reels for cutting road ditches. And they always used to talk about anecdotally that they would run into a bicycle frame because someone had lost a bicycle
Trent Manning:Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:and they didn't want anything broken. And so I was, it was a big push on our part to make sure nothing would break. Well, when you do that Hardness begins to suffer at that point. You go to more ductility than hardness. And we were getting to the point where, yeah, everything held up really well. And when you put a baroness reel on our stands, You would have shrapnel come out, and you know, real blades would break, and bed knives would break, and, and It was our feeling that somewhere there should be an answer in between. And we knew, and, and the gentleman who was working on that is still working at Toro is Scott Coffin. So if you see Scott sometime at the, at the, at the golf show, say hey,
Trent Manning:Okay. I definitely
Jerry Goman:But he he was spearheading that at this point. He was working on fairway reels while I had greensmoor reels, and of course he was getting a lot of feedback on the fairway reels where they were not lasting, you know, long enough and, and less so to the greensmoors, but still an issue there as well. And so he started working diligently on trying to come up with different materials and different You know, some of the knives were big enough that you could put an insert into them instead of having the whole knife, that heavier duty material. And there's a tremendous amount of testing done at Toro for wear, where we developed a test where we would actually run these different knives against an abrasive panels. And we were checking that. And then we also have an impact test where we had qualified it rather than having to build up a reel. And run it and insert a state calculations were done on what you needed. And we had a drop hammer test where you would bolt a bed knife in and you would put a drop hammer on it and you would, you know, and you would check all your materials. And so I'd be willing to bet that the design team with Scott probably looked at. Hundreds of materials
Trent Manning:Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:until he'd gotten to the point where we are today with the with the material, it seems to be from a durability point seems to hold up to most impacts. You can still lose a piece now and then but that's kind of the trade off for the extended wear and not having to grind as often or replace as often.
Trent Manning:No, I think, I mean, it's great. And my personal experience with it. I, I love the age series. I think it's the best thing out there. I hadn't tried the Baroness to be fair, but versus the other competition. It's it's, it's night and day different.
Jerry Goman:Yeah. Yeah. And, and I know there's a number of companies I, I forget the name of A company that does a lot of bed knives. They're pretty big into it and they were pretty solid competition there for a while, but we've managed to move past them as well. So, we're fortunate. We've always been fortunate in that the Toro management group has done the right decisions in that they go in and even if times get hard or whatever. They never cut back on their engineering budget.
Trent Manning:Well, that's something I don't, I don't know, you know, I hadn't been on your side of the fence, but what I see from the other manufacturers, your competition, you know, or Toro's competition, I don't see them putting a lot of R and D and engineering into, I mean, cutting units and that's kind of our bread and butter. You know, I mean, at the end of the day, that's, that's what we're doing. We're trying to mow grass. Mm
Jerry Goman:well, yeah. And the thing is at this point, you know, the the the cutting units group and the the greens more and fairway group, there's, there's three groups that are involved. Cutting units are mostly folded under greens mowers. But there is a, you know, there is a group that does fairways as well, but there are teams, complete teams that are involved with all this stuff. And. You know, there's this constant work on what can be improved, what can be made better, you know, something as simple as the old grass shields used to be galvanil material, which would rust and cause problems and this sort of thing. Now it's stainless, you know, I mean, as, as, as, as small of an item as that is. It's still a major item long term in the durability of the cutting unit in that I remember seeing cutting units, the older cutting units where the grass shields were rusted through and this sort of thing because people didn't clean them, whatever. It's that's life. That's the way people are. There's different variations and how people handle things. The new grass shields, you don't hear that. You don't see that, you know, so even little things like that make the difference long term, you know, stainless steel bearings, stainless steel, this, all the castings are stainless steel now on, on the height to cut adjusters, you know, the groomers, all that sort of thing, that long term durability is a big. Big issue for us and we're always looking for a way to try and do an improvement and and you know We're not a hundred percent, but we keep trying.
Trent Manning:Yeah. And I mean, everything that I don't know, I'm, I'm a big Toro fan and I own quite a bit, or I work on quite a bit of John Deere and it's a fine product, you know, can it mow grass? Yes. But if, you know, if it was left up to me, I would be buying a Toro
Jerry Goman:Yeah. Yeah, I find, you know, I I worked with John Deere equipment and and they have some neat concepts and some neat things and and I I know a lot of those guys that designed that equipment and a good group of people. But I think Oh When you get to the bottom line I hope we do a better job than they do. Our, our adjustments are more convenient. They're more stable. The overall geometry is just cleaner and better just because I think we have a longer history with it. And you know, we have people, you know, not, not unlike myself that have been with cutting units for 30 years. And, and so we understand how all that stuff works.
Trent Manning:I think, I mean that has to make a huge difference in, you know, having a group with a long tenure that's been in cutting units. What I love about task tracker is they're constantly innovating and listening to their users. They've added dozens of updates to make our job easier. One new feature is the ability to upload manuals to the equipment. All you have to do is scan the equipment. QR code. And you have the manual and all other information at the tip of your fingers. You can even create links to those manuals and the work orders. And it goes directly to the page that you need. Make your life a lot easier and check them out at AASB task. tracker.com. Let's get back to the episode. Let me ask you another question on, we won't get too far away from cutting units. How about bed knives? So I know Toro has an extended bed knife and I just found out last week that you have a short bed knife. Yeah.
Jerry Goman:Yes, sir. Yes, we do. Well, part of that was specifically, you know, the last project that I worked on was the new walk greens mowers. And one of the things that we wanted to do, I know there was, there was a time period where we were offering different bed bars for the greens mowers. And my response to that was, It's just from the standpoint of you're trying to identify the bed bars, you're, you know, some, they're supposed to be painted red, they're supposed to be painted black. And honestly, that whole concept initiated with the GR 1000. Back in the late 80s, early 90s, there was a standard bed bar and what they called a deep penetration bed bar, which took the bottom of the bed bar. And moved it up. So it wasn't a support structure in the grass. Well, that particular machine, because of its length and its weight and this sort of thing, it made a huge difference. I mean, it would change the height of the cut by at least 15, if not 20, 25 thousandths. I mean, it was dramatic. I mean, it was dangerous is what it was. And I think if you were, if you were mowing at, you know, 140 and you put this deep penetration bed bar on there. It got yellow in a hurry. I mean, it was just it was ugly. And so, when the original flex came out, the original flex was actually set up aggressive as an aggressive, relatively aggressive mower, and it was actually did an excellent job there. But some people were concerned. We had there was 1 customer that had come back with feedback that he'd had a rainy session for 3 weeks and, and all of a sudden his greens, he was showing some marking on the greens. And there was a group that was handling the walkers at that time. I was not, I was working on a different product. They decided to go back to a, what we call the standard behind center distance. So they made it less aggressive.
Trent Manning:Can you elaborate on what the standard behind center distance is?
Jerry Goman:Well, you know, the, the old statement how do I want to say this? They always used to talk about. Hypha cut and behind center distances. There's some relationships there and that sort of thing. I guess I can't give you a hard, fast number. I would tell you, you could certainly measure it off of a cutting unit if you wanted to. But what we really try to control is. How far the reel will rotate below the bed knife into the grass as it's trying to pull the grass in.
Trent Manning:Okay.
Jerry Goman:So, if you look from the side of the cutting, if you were to do a section, and you looked at where the, you had the unit sitting on a surface plate or on the grass or whatever, and you'd see where the knife is, the knife is behind center. So that means that the reel is actually slightly lower than where you're cutting the grass, as it swings through, as it goes through that arc. If that arc becomes too large, obviously the unit becomes too aggressive. If the unit is if that arc is too small, the unit does not cut well.
Trent Manning:Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:And so what we found was that people were playing with that to some degree, and the thought process was to give them specific components, And that's where the bed bars were supposed to give them those different points where if you had a condition where it was giving you marking because it appeared to be too aggressive, you could go to this different bed bar. Well, the reality is, is it was my impression. That doing the bed knife was a cleaner fix than doing the bed bar. That way you could have an assembly up on the shelf with a bed bar and a bed knife, you could drop it out, drop it back in. You could have that change done in just virtually no time, instead of trying to do a whole bed bar, et cetera, so forth. And just, and, and the ability, you know, obviously to have the extended knife, which was actually a request from believe it or not, the Swedish in In the 90s, they were seeing issues up there close to the Arctic Circle where the grass was not growing well, that they needed a knife that was, like, not aggressive at all. They needed a, a unit that would cut not aggressive, and of course that was at the time with the GR1000, so there was an extended knife that was requested by them in order to resolve that issue.
Trent Manning:Okay.
Jerry Goman:That, that particular knife was carried along and that concept has been carried along specifically in walkers for years then. So that extended knife. And then we went in and we did a shorter knife then at this point in those conditions where you want to be quite aggressive. Part of the design of the last walkerine's mower was to make that a worldwide machine. What we found was that the walkers that we were, we were offering such as the GR 1000 for the fixed head Walker was not very popular in the far East. Because it was not aggressive enough, it did not cut the way they wanted, and they were just unhappy with the overall machine. It did not fit their, their mind set of what the machine should be.
Trent Manning:Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:So we went in and we did the design, and of course we were looking at the GR1000 as getting gated because it was a heavy machine, it handled heavy it was obviously that particular cutting unit was, When it was designed, it was optimized around a height of cut of 0. 156. Obviously that height of cut is not realistic anymore.
Trent Manning:right, right.
Jerry Goman:Especially for a walker. When we did the Flex 21 in the late 90s, we optimized that around 100. And so the new, the new walkers are optimized at a hundred or even lower. So, I mean, they were built so that you could cut low, low, low with them, but the issue was, and of course it was made. So it was, it, it handled lighter. It felt lighter and easier at this sort of thing. But there was still that concern from the far East. That they wanted to be able to be very aggressive. And the reason for that is, is their practices are slightly different. Greens for the most part are relatively flat. They are very hard. And they use a kukui grass or some other form of that, which is a very abrasive, very difficult grass to cut. So they tend to run very aggressive. So behind center distance, that they run on a baroness in Japan, Is like 400, 000. It
Trent Manning:Okay. That's way back there.
Jerry Goman:It is way back there. So what you look at here in the walkers right now and the walkers are set up that with the three different knives and you've got the two drum positions on the fixed Walker. I don't know if you're familiar with the new Walker and
Trent Manning:No, I hadn't experienced the new walker. So it has two drum positions.
Jerry Goman:That's correct. Yes. So you can put, you can put the drum in the forward position for lower heights of cut. And with a standard knife and the standard drum position, you're behind center distance at an eighth of an inch is somewhere, it's in that range. It's somewhere God, it's going to be. 150, somewhere in that range. I would, I, I don't remember. Obviously, Trent,
Trent Manning:Oh, no worries No worries.
Jerry Goman:I'm not going to give you a hard number on that anyway, as to what that is. But it's, you know, it's something you could measure. But I do know that the one that is set up that for these Asian markets, you can move the drum in the opposite position, put a short bed knife in there and you're behind center distance is 375 to 400.
Trent Manning:Wow. Okay.
Jerry Goman:you can, you can configure that machine and if you put an extended knife on there, the behind center distance with the drum in one position is almost zero. So you can go from zero to 400 behind center distance on that machine at the same height to cut.
Trent Manning:Wow
Jerry Goman:so it allows you to get any range of what you need to do in order to get that grass cut at this point. The other thing that the walker does with that second drum position is you can rotate to the second drum position. Raise your height to cut to 7 eighths of an inch, put a short knife on it, and it cuts very effectively. Because your behind center distance now is back where it should be, and you've lifted that whole machine up. So as you're cutting that well above a half an inch to 7 eighths of an inch very effectively. Whereas with the other walkers, as you keep racking them back, you can't move the rear drum, and you just keep moving that upper height to cut. You know, the unit's leaning way back, and the knife goes forward, and your behind center distance is Not very efficient. And you have a tendency to flail at the grass rather than the wood. So,
Trent Manning:hmm. Yeah, I talked to a friend the other day and he was Trying to, they were trying to motives at whatever 800 or something with a 1000. And, you know, it was not working and I don't, I guess do y'all sell a kit or something to you? I think he said something about a clip kit.
Jerry Goman:Well, the clip kid has a tendency, all the clip kit does is throw, show slow the reel down. And so it doesn't really change that. The behind center distance is where the real issue comes in, in terms of how efficiently it cuts as well. So, it will cut, but not very, not very well at those high heights. So,
Trent Manning:So what do you call when the real dips below the bed knife into the turf? What do you call that?
Jerry Goman:oh, I don't know if there's a, there's, there's a real term for that.
Trent Manning:Well, I've heard others call it dip, which kind of makes sense, but I didn't know if there was an industry term.
Jerry Goman:no, there's no industry term. I did a, I did a presentation you know, I've done it for a few people and I, and I demonstrate that that's a calculated number. The fact is I've got a spreadsheet that you can plug in, basically the behind center distance that you have. The diameter of the reel and it will automatically calculate that distance that it goes below that point and and We really you know, I guess you can call it whatever you like, you know, but there's no specific term for it So,
Trent Manning:All right. Good enough. I was just, just curious
Jerry Goman:yep. Yep.
Trent Manning:was a something out there or not that I hadn't heard about. Can you got, how are you doing on time? I
Jerry Goman:don't even know what time it is. I don't have a clock in front
Trent Manning:don't, we've been going almost an hour. So,
Jerry Goman:okay.
Trent Manning:but I do have a couple more questions, I think. So the next thing is bed knife attitude. So this is something recently that I've been, yeah, looking at a lot and it doesn't really match up to what I learned in the book that bed knife attitude is.
Jerry Goman:I'll tell you I'll tell you what attitude is. Attitude is a misnomer. It's it's not even a term that in my mind should be used. I don't care what the angle of the bed knife is. It doesn't matter. It makes absolutely no difference to the performance. It's the behind center distance that makes the difference.
Trent Manning:That's what, I mean, I'm, I'm with you and that makes, it makes sense, but I definitely think a lot of people have been taught the wrong way over the years.
Jerry Goman:Well, and, and the reason it was taught that way is that it had some semblance of fact in that when you wanted to make a unit more aggressive and both the rear roller and the front roller were adjustable, right? You would lower the rear roller, you would, you know, push the, push the rear of the cutting unit up and put the front of the cutting unit down and you can make the unit more aggressive. And what that would do is it would put the cutting unit at a steeper angle. And so people would call that an attitude, but, you know, I put it in an angle. It's, you know, and then it's, it's got an attitude at this point. Well, all they were doing in essence is they were swinging that real forward, pulling that cutoff point between where, or the knife contacts, the real they're pulling it back further. So the behind center distance got larger. And so, and so the reality is, is that that unsupported real, where it goes below that point, that cutoff point. Got larger. The reel went deeper into the grass. The deeper it goes into the grass, the more it pulls up. And if the grass is in good shape, it can handle it. If it's not in good shape, it does not handle it. And so everyone got stuck on attitude because that was kind of the general vernacular. And because the bed knife and the bed bar didn't work together, now with the new cutting unit, the DPA, that point stays the same. Whether the reel is worn or not, so it doesn't change the attitude of the cutting unit, even though the cutting unit is leaning more and more because you're adjusting it down because the reel is getting smaller. The fact of the matter is on a DPA cutting unit, when you start with a brand new cutting unit, the angle of the bed bar to the grass at, again, using 1 inch height to cut,
Trent Manning:Mm
Jerry Goman:is about 7 degrees. It's seven degrees. The back is higher than the front when that real is, excuse me, nine degrees. And when it's fully worn out, it's seven degrees. It doesn't change because of what we do, the way we change it. Now you could take a GR 1000 and that angle would change from like one or two degrees to seven or eight degrees. It would go the opposite direction. But the GR1000, as the reel got smaller, got much more aggressive. But the angle was actually going the wrong way. And so, it, it, it's that attitude or angle of the bed bar, people have a tendency to measure that because it's easy to measure. it really doesn't mean anything. It's that behind center distance that's key. Now, we actually built some tools for that. If you were to take the old, the old Hythakut bed bars where they had the adjusting screw in there, if you take a piece of angle iron, a thin piece of angle iron that can reach up to the real center line, and you bolt that on there. Now, you put that up to the rollers, slide it up through that piece of, the leg of the angle iron up through the real blades, And slide it back until it contacts the face of the reel shaft.
Trent Manning:hmm.
Jerry Goman:On the latest DPA cutting units, there are areas of that reel shaft that are machined. And so, and so you touch those particular areas. And where that comes down, you measure that distance from that angle iron to the front of your knife. And then you calculate the radius of the real shaft, and you can, you know what your behind center distance is at that point.
Trent Manning:Gotcha. So yeah, can you tell us what the rate or the diameter of the shaft is?
Jerry Goman:I don't remember that, Trent. Honestly, I don't remember that.
Trent Manning:No worries. I was thinking, you know, I thought that shaft was like inch and three eighths, but where the datums are, I think it's maybe 20, 000 smaller or something like
Jerry Goman:yeah, I don't remember what that is. I know Mr. Coffin would know that. And you know, if you contact Jeff, he could get through to Mr. Coffin and get you that number.
Trent Manning:Yeah. And, you know, I don't know if that's something they won't want out in the, in the public or not.
Jerry Goman:Well, yeah, and, and I don't know, I don't know if it's, I don't think that's necessarily a, a, a, a specific detail that's that secretive. It just, it's a turn diameter that is something that is put in there specifically. So, not only can you measure the behind center distance accurately, you can measure to make sure that the reel isn't cone shaped from that particular area by simply dropping a, a caliper. You know, right through there and measuring that and make sure that you don't have a real, it's cone shaped. I know some people like to use the pie tape or whatever you know, but that's another methodology that's there and it was put in there specifically for that so people could go in and do analysis on their own.
Trent Manning:Okay. So it wouldn't, I kind of assume maybe it was for Foley since they gauge off the shaft.
Jerry Goman:well, I think there's part of that there. But, you know, once you have the datum there, there's all kinds of things you can do with it, right? And, and so going in with a caliper is a very quick way to measure them and say, Hey, this is what we've got and this is where we're at, you know? So it gives you some, some quick numbers there. And yeah, some people will use it to gauge off of when they go to do a spin grind or whatever. So the datums there, it's good for any information. You know, I'm a firm believer that, that every shop should have a granite surface plate in it. And in order to, to go in and check the parallelism of the reel to the rollers and, and another methodology there, checking the cone shape to the reel, all those things are, are critical to me and, and a granite surface plates, a few hundred dollars and, and it beats the aluminum plates, or as some people I've seen, they say, well, gee, there's a steel flat on their grinder and they put it on that. I have no idea what that is. cheap granite surface plate is flat within tenths. You know what I mean? And it's just, it's such a, it's such a slick way to measure things then at that point.
Trent Manning:I agree. I, and so I'll tell you my story. I found, and it was a stare at pink granite and it's four by three
Jerry Goman:Yeah.
Trent Manning:I found it on Facebook marketplace for 600 bucks.
Jerry Goman:Isn't that
Trent Manning:Yeah. Six, you know, six inches thick weighs a thousand
Jerry Goman:just, And it's just one of those things that once you get it in the shop, you're using it all the time because it's easy to measure off of and it's easy to, to gauge from and, and you know, when you put something on there, you know, between a, a granite, a chunk of granite, and it wouldn't have to be that big. Right. I mean, you know, it's just gotta be longer than the widest cutting unit you're working on. And that and a piece of bar stock that's ground, ground. Right. That you can slide under the reel up against the face of the bed knife and you can check parallelism with front rear rollers right now. I mean, it's with a sheet of paper, you know, or you can even just look at it. So
Trent Manning:Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So, What about, I know Toro sells the an eccentric kit for the rear roller. What do you think that should be standard?
Jerry Goman:no, I've never seen the need for it. Standard. Every time I've ever put one of those cutting units on a surface plate. We, we always check it with a sheet of paper, which is less than 3000 I've never had one be able to slide under a roller yet. It's, it's just I, if, if there are some out there that need it, I'm surprised there, if they are very few. And, you know, there are some people who get wrapped up and say, well, it's not zero. Okay, I get that. It's but. You know, how round is round, you know, at what point do you stop and, and you know, some people are getting into the habit where they're turning the rollers because the run out in the roller is, is 10 and they want it to be zero. You know, that's all well and good and I understand your concerns, but the reality is, is we are working with grass. We're working with a surface that is not flat and the way those particular dimensions are projected out over length of the circumference of the roller or any of those things. You either the eye can never see it.
Trent Manning:Right. No, I'm, I'm, I'm with you there. Yeah. And I do think people get in that too deep in that rabbit hole sometimes on trying to make everything perfect to take it out to a fairway or a grain that's not perfect.
Jerry Goman:Well, and the other thing is, you know, this is, this always surprises people when you do the math, but, you know, there's that old statement that says that the, that the clip should be equivalent to the height of cut. Well, you know, that's, you know, That's not, I've never found that to be true, but that was always the old numbers, right? And, and, if you run and just draw a triangle, okay? Let's say you have a cutting unit that is set at an eighth of an inch height to cut, and your clip is an eighth of an inch. So now you're going to have a triangle. That is basically an eighth of an inch on the bottom and an eighth of an inch high in the center. Draw a triangle. So you draw a line straight down the center of that. Okay, so you end up with a right triangle that is 60, 000 on one side and an eighth of an inch on the other. Now, The bed knife pushes the grass forward, the reel pulls the grass rearward. The shortest grass is going to be right where the knife was on the reel contact. The longest grass is going to be the hypotenuse of that triangle where the knife pushed it forward or the reel blade pushed it back. Okay, so you end up with, you end up with a triangle that says it's 125 at the shortest blade of grass. It moved 062, and the hypotenuse of that is 17 thousandths longer than 125.
Trent Manning:Okay. Did you, did you just do that math on your head or on paper?
Jerry Goman:I've done it on paper enough that I remember the number, okay?
Trent Manning:All right.
Jerry Goman:But the reality is, is that grass is cut as a scallop. And between each cut is 17 thousandths variation, okay? So, and the only reason your eye doesn't see that is because it's a helix and it blends out all over, okay? So your eye cannot see 17 thousandths over that distance. If you have a roller that has 20 thousandths run out, that means it's plus or minus 10. Over their circumference of the roller, which had a two and a half inch roller is what six or seven inches. What's the possibility you seen 20 thousands over seven inches when you can't see 17 over one inch.
Trent Manning:Well, right. Yeah, no, I mean, that's, that's a great point. And I'm so glad you said that. And I hope anybody that's listening really lets that soak in.
Jerry Goman:You know, the reality is, and I understand that, you know, Obviously, you don't want rollers that are all around, you don't want reels that are all around, I get that. And, and, and I'll be the first to support that. But, there's a reason that we give you the numbers that we do. Toro has gone through and spent a lot of years designing those things, and if you're within our print specification, You're going to get very effective performance and, and to, to come back and say, Oh, I just don't think that's good enough. Well, maybe for you it's not, but I think you're going to struggle to see where it's any improvement in the grass. So
Trent Manning:Right. No, I'm, I'm, I'm with you. Yeah. You can throw dollars at pennies if you want to,
Jerry Goman:that's the truth and, and, and, and I know some people now, does that say that we have all the answers? No, I, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even attempt to say that,
Trent Manning:Oh, well,
Jerry Goman:we do,
Trent Manning:Yeah.
Jerry Goman:but we do have a lot of years in the grass and we spend a lot of time with it. And we you know, we are probably as close as just about anybody on getting things where they need to be. Can there be improvements made? Absolutely. And, and some people may have conditions that they've made improvements by doing things. And I'd go, cool, good for you wouldn't have been my first response, but I'll be honest with you, nine times out of ten, when I go out to look at a quality of cut issue, the first thing I do to, to diagnose what's going on is I put the machine back to stock. All the adjustments and everything back to what we recommend as it comes out of the box.
Trent Manning:Mm hmm.
Jerry Goman:Now, when you go out and mow, you can look at that grass, and because of the years that I've had experience, and, and anybody that's done that can look at it and say, okay, if I make this change, I know what it's going to do. I get there and there's been seven things done. I don't know what any of those are going to do. So I start at stock and boy, a lot of times that's all it needs is it goes back to stock and it looks really good. So,
Trent Manning:One. Yeah. Have you ever seen where maybe a customer makes four changes because they were having a problem instead of just one,
Jerry Goman:oh yeah, that happens all the time. Yeah. Where people, the people, they say, well, you know, let's do this and this and this and this and see what it does. And, and you really don't know what any of those are going to do. Whereas you have to kind of approach it. One step at a time. And, and I was at a particular customer that had some issues. We put everything back to stock. They had changed knives. They changed this, they changed that, they changed all kinds of things. And what we finally found out was going out his his turf conditions were a little bit sensitive and we went from a Wiley roller to a full roller with everything else stocked and it looked perfect, so it's just a matter sometimes of understanding where you are. So,
Trent Manning:Yep. No, that's that's really, really good stuff. Can I ask you maybe some fun questions?
Jerry Goman:okay, I guess.
Trent Manning:So is it true that most brilliant engineers use pencil and paper instead of computers?
Jerry Goman:Well, I, I would say there's a combination of what gets done honestly not that, not that I put myself into that, that particular class, but I like to run things on pencil and paper and then do it on the computer and see if the numbers come out at least similar.
Trent Manning:Okay. Yeah, yeah, no, it makes total sense.
Jerry Goman:I don't like to just expect the computer to give me an answer and just take that answer for granted that without understanding the problem. So I have a tendency to do some significant mathematics by hand and then say, Hey, I should be in the ballpark. There are some things, for instance, You cannot do cleanly on a piece of paper. You know, I talked about doing the, the natural frequency of all the components. You know, that took me weeks to do that. Now you can do that on the computer. You know what I mean? But you should at least have an idea, but I look at it a lot of times in terms of, of strength of, of components. Where I'll run a beam calculation, strength of the beam or whatever, where I'll put a simplified section in there, where I make it like a rectangle or a circle or whatever, and run a quick number and say, hey, I'm putting, This many pounds on the end of that shaft, is it going to bend, or is it not going to bend, or is the stress too high, or is the bearing stress too high, or whatever. And I have those numbers in my head, and then we go over and we do the actual computer work, and we run the FEA analysis, and the FEA analysis Usually agrees with what I have and I go, yep, I feel good about that. Then, you know, I've got that in my head
Trent Manning:Right, right. No, that, that makes sense. Hmm.
Jerry Goman:course, that's that's really prevalent more prevalent. I would say for people that are doing more new product design if you're doing more stuff where you're doing product support of material that's out there. Maybe less so of that is required because you're working on a problem that you've got a known set of parameters on as opposed to extending the technology. So there's, so for me to tell you that, that the good engineers use only pencils, I, I can't say that. I think the conditions are, you know, it depends on the set of circumstances that they're in. And it depends on the, on the person. I'm old school. You know, I've done this for a lot of years. And, you know, when I started the technology was we still, we had just retired the slide rules and we're using electronic calculators and we the CAD systems were so expensive that they were More people to run them than there were available. So they had to do it on a timeshare basis and and the technology to transfer information from one person to another electronically was by fax machine. So, You basically off of that you learn how to run dividers and compasses and circle templates and and sketches. So that's kind of what I grew up with. So,
Trent Manning:No. And so one reason I asked that question when I saw you at the show and Phoenix and I asked a question, you pulled out your notepad and your
Jerry Goman:yeah, yeah,
Trent Manning:So, and I loved it. I mean, I think it's awesome.
Jerry Goman:my notepad is still when, when the big one hits, you know, when, when it's still going to be functional at that point. So as long as I am functional, it is
Trent Manning:I gotcha. Yeah. Well I have a really good friend. He's, I don't know, mid seventies I guess. And he's the same way. He has his notepad in his shirt pocket and a pencil no matter where he goes or what he does. As soon as he gets out of bed and puts his shirt on, that's going in his pocket. So, what was the other one? Do you know who said to invent, you must need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
Jerry Goman:no, I'm not aware who made that statement.
Trent Manning:I'm not either. So that was one of the questions I had though. Somebody, somebody sent me.
Jerry Goman:I do know that that what was his name? God, I'm losing my mind here now. Invented the light bulb.
Trent Manning:Edison?
Jerry Goman:Yeah, he made the comment that that most people miss opportunities because it looks like hard work. You know what I mean? So it's just, so, there's some, there's some statements there that he made were, which were kind of interesting. So.
Trent Manning:Well, you, you got the answer correct. I just looked it up. It's Thomas Edison
Jerry Goman:Okay.
Trent Manning:the one that said that. So very good. Very good. Got it by default. What about some rapid fire questions? This is this is kind of the fun part.
Jerry Goman:Okay.
Trent Manning:What's your favorite movie?
Jerry Goman:Oh, wow. I'd supposed to kill a mockingbird.
Trent Manning:Ah, great. Yeah. What would be your last meal?
Jerry Goman:Oh probably grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soups.
Trent Manning:Oh man. Yes. I love it. That's good. What are you most proud of?
Jerry Goman:Oh, wow. Well, you know, obviously, you know, that's a pretty all encompassing question. And I don't mean to dither, but you know, you got your family and your accomplishments over the years. I've got pushing 30 patents, which worked with a good group of people, but I think probably the most things that I'm, I'm proud of is over all the years of working on cutting unit suspensions and different peoples and different groups and all this sort of thing is that A lot of people I worked with have always said that I was the best person they ever worked with,
Trent Manning:Oh, that is awesome. Yeah. How great is that? And how rewarding is that to hear from your colleagues? I would think that's pretty great to hear.
Jerry Goman:Well, yeah, it's you know, it's, it certainly makes you pleased that, that you hit that point, and, and it's not something that you were trying to do, it just, it just comes by virtue of, of the way it is, so that, that was good.
Trent Manning:No, that's awesome. So out of 30 patents, do you have a favorite?
Jerry Goman:Oh, gosh. I, I don't know. There's you know, so many, none of those patents come alone. You know what I mean?
Trent Manning:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jerry Goman:alone. There's, there's a group involved and you look back at all the work that was done through the group, you know, all the people that were involved and all the people that brought pieces to it. And I was fortunate enough to be there at the time and be party to that and, and help when, when I could. And so those things were all great. And I would say probably some of the most technical stuff that, that people don't realize is the, the Triflex suspension. There's so many aspects to that that there's so much detail to that in terms of how we push the cutting unit and the angles and the lift and the, you know, the, the changes here and there. And, and so maybe that's the most, most satisfying to some degree, I guess, but just by virtue of. of the technical aspect of it. I guess I, I, beyond that, I don't know if I could say there's a, there's a favorite on any of those.
Trent Manning:Gotcha. No, I mean that, yeah, it makes totally makes a lot of sense. And the tri flex is truly amazing. And I remember helmet coming out to a local course and kind of doing presentation on it, you know, and inside, and then we went outside and looked at it right after it'd come out and I remember the geometry and how everything. Goes down to a V basically in the center of the cutting unit and I
Jerry Goman:Yeah, there's all, you know, there's all kinds of things that you do to try and not to put an external force on a cutting unit that's not, not required. I mean, and it, you know, that, that affects it in the graphs. And so you try to push close to the CG of the cutting unit. You're trying to allow the cutting unit to move freely. You know, you lift on the outside edge when you make a turn so that it compensates for the tendency to push the cutting unit over as you're doing that turn, there's so many details, you know, the, the caster angle at seven degrees and all those things that are added in there that make that stuff work. So it was one of those things where we were kind of allowed to do. What we felt was the best optimization for that suspension, for that usage. And we went in and we kind of did what we, we felt was the right thing. And I think results kind of show themselves so
Trent Manning:Yeah, I've not heard anybody complain with Any anything really on the on the Triflex? I think it's a really great unit solid unit Well, I think I've taken up enough of your time and I really appreciate you talking to us and going so in depth on cutting units. We might've got in the weeds. Some people might turn us off, but that's okay. It really is good. It was super interesting to me and other nerds in the cutting unit world. I think we'll really, really enjoy this. So I can't thank you enough, Jerry. I really appreciate you coming on.
Jerry Goman:well, I appreciate the opportunity, Trent. It's not, you know, I mean, it's not one of those things where. You know, now that I'm out of the industry, if you will, per se, it's kind of like, you know, who wants to talk to that codger? You know what I mean? So it was fun. You know, there's a, there's a lot of people that I owe my success to both that are currently still at Toro or that retired from Toro and, and I can't minimize that because we all build off of what comes in front of us. So.
Trent Manning:Very well said. thank you so much for listening to the Reel turf techs podcast. I hope you learned something today. Don't forget to subscribe. If you have any topics you'd like to discuss, or you'd like to be a guest, find us on Twitter at Reel turf techs.