Flatley Begins Work on the Processor

Flatley Dental Hires an Engineering Firm

I had been particularly excited because I thought that I was going to head-up the project, and I would be working with professional engineers, paid for by Flatley Dental. My imagination bristled with ideas. What we going to come up with was going to be unimaginably good! Then, Jude called me into his office a few days after our agreement signing. He had an engineering schedule for the processor on his desk from George Long Inc., a firm in Pennsylvania. Victor, who lived in Perkiomenville, Pa, wanted to take over the project, so he and Jude picked out this firm to do the final design, and get the processor ready for manufacture. George Long Inc. was near Victor’s home in Perkiomenville. I was to be cut out of the design process, the first of many times Flatley Dental was to remove me from the project. Wouldn’t they want the leading expert on the planet on this project to head it up? I didn’t get their thinking; and it turned out to be the first of many big mistakes made by Flatley Dental. Jude asked me to ship my prototype back to George Long, which I did. Flatley Dental flew me back to Pennsylvania to meet George and his team. Victor picked me up at the airport, and we went to George’s place of business. It was in Doylestown, a very small town about an hour from Philadelphia. It was February of 2000, so the weather was very cold, the sky cloudy. George’s engineering shop was in a huge basement in his house. (My first thought: a big UH OH.) When I walked down the stairs into the basement, sitting in the chair at the bottom was George’s dad, who appeared to be around 95, and possibly not alive? There was a whole bunch of old engineering equipment all over the basement. George looked to be an old-time engineer, about 70, tall and thin. Victor kept saying, “Don’t worry, he’s and excellent engineer. He has completed many great projects for us. He is top notch!” Despite Victor’s assurances, I was very worried. Victor, George, his engineering “team” of four, and I went out to lunch to discuss the project. Each of his engineers had a specialty (plastics, electronics, CAD, etc.). I didn’t like it, but I was a little more hopeful. The guys on the “team” seemed pretty knowledgeable. After I flew home, George inundated me with questions via fax. I tried, in my answers, to be encouraging to George, but I wasn’t happy with the questions. One that stuck in my mind: “Where do we find these people that make plastic molds?” What?? If he didn’t know that, the project is dead. I sent a letter to Jude, and let him know that I thought George had no idea what he was doing, and that I had great concerns. My letter was ignored. I started trying to schedule meetings with Jude, because, as time went on, I was more and more concerned that George could not handle this project. Jude canceled at least five meetings with me. My concerns fell on deaf ears. Victor was happy as could be with the job George was doing, which meant Victor didn’t know what he was doing. It was the ignorant leading the ignorant, and me complaining to no avail. In the meantime, Jude called me every few weeks to tell me that the per/unit cost of the processor was skyrocketing! I calculated that the parts should be around $1,000. George’s estimate was around $2,400! I told Jude that something is very wrong; let’s meet. The meetings never happened.

I Fly to Doylestown to See What Is Happening

In November of 2000, eleven months into George’s engineering saga, I decided to fly back to Doylestown to see exactly what was happening with my processor. Flatley Dental said they would fly me back periodically, but that never happened, so I went on my own. The prototype that I sent George (upper left) was made of cut and glued clear acrylic tanks. These are only for proof of concept prototyping; not for manufacture. Glued acrylic would be prohibitive in cost, and prone to leaks. It shouldn’t even be considered for this project. The tanks needed to be molded and seamless, which would make them 80% less expensive, and leak-proof. The model I sent George was the shape of an 18” cube, and it weighed about 35 lbs. When I saw the model George made, I was astounded. Just about as astounded as I was with Ed’s pressed-board model. All of the parts were made of cut and glued acrylic, just like the model I sent. (above center and right) He just copied my proof-of-concept prototype! It was huge; about 50% larger than the one I sent him, and it weighed 85 lbs! No wonder his model was $2,400 per unit; mystery solved! At first look I thought this model was a prototype. It wasn’t! George proudly said this was the final model, ready for manufacture! The dryers were pink travel hair dryers mounted in PVC sprinkler ELL’s. On the floor George had ten chassis covers that he had had thermoform molded and that didn’t work. (upper right photo) The mold itself must have cost at least $15,000. Anyone that knows anything about thermoforming would know that a thermoform mold can’t be more than about 12” deep. The mold would have to be very “teepee” shaped so the part could be removed, and the plastic would thin out, crease, and warp. The chassis covers on the floor were at least 18” deep, thinned out, teepee shaped, and distorted. George didn’t know what he was doing, and neither did his molder; a complete waste of time and money. It is unbelievable that a person who could build this mold would not know enough to tell George that the mold will not work. Amazingly, George was kind of proud to show me the covers, as if he tried some difficult engineering, and it just didn’t pan out. George told me that the mold and parts had to be discarded. I think I had that figured.

I Desperately Try To Talk To Jude

When I returned to Laguna Hills, I immediately called Jude. George had to be stopped. Any more money or time spent with him was going to be a waste, and the cost of lost sales would be enormous. I called Jude, but my calls weren’t returned. I tried to schedule meetings, but when I did get one scheduled, it would always be canceled. I left messages about this pending disaster, but the messages were never responded to. I gave up. I decided to let Jude find out on his own, since I was persona non grata at Flatley Dental.

In February of 2001 amazingly I was asked to be a sales rep at the Flatley Dental booth, and sell the Vision-DS2. Vision-DS2 was the new name selected for the processor. I said of course I would, certain that this would be an interesting experience. The night before the opening of the convention floor, we had a meeting with all of the sales people, Jude, Victor, and Fred the Vice President. In front was a model of the new George Long processor. Victor introduced the Vision-DS2 to the sales group using great superlatives.”This was the greatest film processor in existence. It does so many things that the others cannot!” George had put a rather nice looking cover on it (above) since I last saw it in Doylestown. Part of the cover was made of aluminum, which, of course, would corrode horribly when in actual use. But the cover looked good for the show, and it hid the horrors underneath. The sales reps were excited. At the end of the meeting, I caught Jude walking out the door, and I told him I needed to speak to him. He was friendly, but basically brushed me off, and said that this was now Flatley Dental business, and that I should let them take care of it. I could have no serious conversation with him regarding the Vision-DS2. “I’m busy now, so good bye.” And that was it.

The next morning I walked into the convention sales floor just before opening. There was the Vision-DS2, on its own pedestal, looking big but pretty good. Flatley Dental had put together a beautiful brochure. Everything “looked” professional. George had placed a clear window in the front of the processor so people could see water flowing into and out of the storage tanks as it worked. Victor lightly touched the window, and, oops, it fell inside the chassis opening. So, there it was, loosely sitting there, with glue showing. We tried to tape it back in place, but anything we did looked worse. It was decided to leave it as it was. When I took my first Vision-DS2 to conventions, I put a special section in the program chip so that I could run the processor with water in the storage tanks only; the fresh wash-water and drain part of the cycle was skipped. I didn’t want to have to hook up water and drain lines to the booth, which would be prohibitively expensive. I had suggested this to George, but I guess he forgot. Flatley Dental had paid for a water line ($1,500) and a drain line ($1,500) to the Vision-DS2. We turned the water on at the valve, a hundred or so feet away. Water started billowing out of the Vision-DS2, and leaking everywhere! Something inside wasn’t properly tightened. This is really a nightmarish experience when interested dentists and assistants are standing there, marveling at this great new processor. It was working more like a RainBird! The marveling went away real fast when the water was spraying everywhere, and so did the interested people. In order to fix the leak, Victor and I took screwdrivers and tried to remove the cover, something you don’t want to do on a busy convention floor. It just doesn’t look good. We removed thirteen screws! We still couldn’t get the cover off. We jimmied, pushed, pulled, and shook that cover. Nothing worked. It was decided that we would describe how the unit works, and not run it at this convention. We turned on the unit. The display started blinking, and a beeper started beeping. That didn’t work. So we decided to just keep it shut off, and try giving interested people a real good description and let them know the advantages of the Vision-DS2.

We Draw A Lot Of Interest

Amazingly, even with all of the glitches, we were inundated with interest. Dealers wanted to sell the Vision-DS2, a dealer in Saudi Arabia ordered 50 units, dentists and assistants were impressed. The Japanese dealers liked it but said it couldn’t sell in Japan because the offices are too small for something this large. I told them that that future models would be smaller. If we could get the problems resolved, this was going to be a successful product. But the problems were daunting. At a quite moment, I asked Victor why George had used regular travel hair dryers to dry the film. “Was that going to be changed? It just doesn’t look professional.” I proceeded to get my head taken off again. This was a moment reminiscent of my first meeting with Victor. “Dammit Steve, why don’t you just mind your own business. Go play golf. Let us do the engineering. Do you always have to control everything?! Blah, blah, and blah!!” Victor yelled so loud that we began drawing a crowd again, just like the first time I had met him. You never see two sales people in a booth yelling at each other. And I was getting yelled at, big time. I quietly walked away. Later Victor came to me and apologized for his yelling, but he still wanted me to stay out. I agreed, but I knew I couldn’t, or this project was going to flop.

I Finally Get a Meeting With Jude

When I got back home, I got a call from the VP, Fred Murray. He had George’s CAD (technical) drawings for the Vision-DS2, and Jude wanted me to take a look at them, in case I had any suggestions. I couldn’t imagine why, since they wanted me completely out of the loop. I went over and picked up the drawings, about a hundred pages worth. When I reviewed them I discovered dozens of failure possibilities. George’s Vision-DS2 was more of a catastrophe than my wildest expectations. I immediately started redesigning the processor on my CAD program on the computer. I got circuit board, plastics and sheet metal phone estimates. I met with suppliers. I digitally assembled an entirely new version of the Vision-DS following the original prototype that I had sent George. I knew that I would have to convince Jude that George’s model had to be scrapped, and that I could design a new one. I wrote a list of goals for the new model. It would cost about $1,000 per unit, it would weigh 35 lbs., and be an 18” cube. When I had the design completed, I called Jude and insisted that we meet. He again was standoffish, but I forcefully demanded a meeting. He finally agreed, and we set the time at 1:00 the next day. I put together a very professional booklet with technical drawings and pictures of my new model, along with a Bill of Materials for about $1,000. I marked up George’s technical drawings, and pointed out items with sticky notes, showing where failure points were. I arrived at Flatley Dental a little before 1:00. Jude wasn’t there. I sat and waited. 1:15 came, then 1:30; no Jude. Then the secretary got a phone call. It was Jude. He wanted to know if I was still there. She said yes, and she put me on. Jude said he was still at the restaurant finishing lunch, and would be there in fifteen or twenty minutes. I said fine, I’ll wait. Jude finally came in at about 2:00. We went into one of his large and official looking meeting rooms, with lots of red leather and wood. I placed my materials on the table. Jude, with an angry demeanor, said, “Steve, before you say anything, I have announced the introduction of the Vision-DS2 processor to the dealers, in the dental news journals, and on the internet. The unit is designed and ready, and no matter what you say, we are going to start selling next week. So what do you want?”

I said, “Jude, if you bring out that film processor, you will have the biggest catastrophe that Flatley Dental has ever had. You will lose a fortune.” Jude coolly said, “Go on”. I took out George’s technical drawings. I had placed sticky notes in all of the places where I saw failure possibilities. As I went page by page, and explained the failure points, I could see Jude sink farther and farther in his chair. His demeanor completely changed. He started realizing what I was saying, and, finally, he was listening to me, at long last. When I was finished, Jude was distraught. He said, “What can we do?” My next words were, “Not to worry.” I showed him my redesign drawings, (above left: the new Vision-DS2, above right: the Long processor) what the costs would be, and how it can still be an incredibly successful project. I brought samples of molded plastic, and showed him how the Vision-DS2 will perform with my new design. I told him it will weigh fifty pounds less, and be 50% smaller than George’s model, and cost $1,400 less for parts. Jude seemed excited and relieved, and told me to start right away; that he would back me 100%. I couldn’t believe it! The project was back in my hands. I knew I could do a better job on the redesign than any engineering firm could hope to do. I was excited, energized, and ready! “But first”, Jude said, “please write a letter to George Long and delineate your concerns to him. Let him know about all of the failure possibilities.” Oh boy. I get to redo the project and also take care of firing George. That should not be my job. I didn’t hire him, I warned Flatley Dental about him for almost a year, and now I get to give him the ax? That didn’t seem right. A good leader should take care of that. However, I figured that was a good trade-off. Jude called George and told him not to do any further work until he heard from me.

I was given a George Long Vision-DS2 unit to take home and analyze. I plugged it in in my lab. I tried to get the program to run, and it didn’t. The program would stop, or things would turn on that shouldn’t have. Later that night Karen and I were in the den watching TV when I heard the machine running in the lab. It had turned on all by itself!

I was told that George fixed the program, and put a unit in an office in Doylestown as a beta test-site. He had used tank/chemical heaters that were meant for metal tanks. They could overheat to over1000 deg. F if they weren’t immersed in liquid; George had a glitch in his program, so when the office went to change chemicals which required emptying the tanks, the heater did not shut off, and it melted the storage tank, nearly causing a fire. Luckily the staff caught it before it ignited! I tried placing George’s heater in a plastic tank in my lab and running it dry, and the tank caught fire in just a few minutes! George didn’t make a processor, he made a bomb! It’s incredible to imagine what could have happened if Jude went ahead and began selling processors!

I wrote a four page letter to George detailing all of the failings on his design. I’m sure this caused great commotion with the design group. Thinking of the pressure that they were now under: George took over a million dollars in fees for a completely failed piece of junk. He was very stuck, and I am sure he had many sleepless nights. He couldn’t return the funds, because a great deal of it had been spent on salaries for the group, and fees from his suppliers. He couldn’t reverse his design. He was finished with this project, and any that he might have had in the future from Flatley Dental. I got a long letter from the group in return attempting to address the issues that I had described. They could change the aluminum on the outside of the unit to stainless steel. They could change this, and move that. They could look into molds. But, it was all nonsense, and too little too late.

I Take Over Project Design

I began working on an advanced prototype. For my first model I again used cut acrylic for the tanks. I followed the dimensions of the unit that I had designed in the computer. My first model was going to be simply to test the dimensions and tank placement that I had selected. It went together quite smoothly. It took me about a month to finish. I have two garages attached to my house, a two car on the right, and a large one car on the left. Early on I converted the one car garage into a lab which is where I had always done my prototyping and assembly. Every few days Jude and Fred would drive up in their big Mercedes Benz, and walk into my lab to see how things were going. It seemed kind of funny to have the CEO and the Vice-President of such a large company coming over to my messy lab/garage. Jude humorously labeled the lab “Flatley Dental, Building B”. I placed a “Flatley Dental Inc. Building B” sign over the door for the next time he came. He got a big kick out of it. From then on, we always talked about meeting in Building B to go over the design.

After I had been working for several weeks, Jude called me and asked me to meet with them at Flatley Dental. I said sure, and the next day I was sitting with Jude, Fred, Victor, who had flown out, and Jeff Yamamoto, who I had not met. Jeff was a Japanese engineer who I was told had been one of the lead engineers at General Motors. His job there was to make equipment and devices more compact, so as to save weight and space. Jude wanted him to look at my prototype, which was functional, but not quite completed. I was to explain everything I could, and really give Jeff an education on the project. I said sure, and the next day Jeff was in my lab, and I spent the good part of a day explaining to him about dental radiology, and specifically how the processor works. He was not very fluent English, but we communicated pretty well. He thanked me, and he left. I couldn’t imagine what Jude had up his sleeve, as the size of the tanks was determined by the size of film and the quantity of the liquids used. There was simply no way to shrink that down. The developer was just about as small as it could be; and it was small compared to the roller processors on the market. The day after our meeting, Jude called me and informed me that I was to stop all work on the developer until further notice from him. Was I puzzled! I just couldn’t imagine what Jude was thinking. He had been so positive, and now this? Was he turning the project over to Jeff, another person who had absolutely no experience with film processors? I said OK, I would stop. And I did. About a month later, Jude called me and said that he wanted me to continue my work, and he was 100% behind me, and he had complete confidence that I was going to make a successful processor. I restarted my work. Several times in the next year I asked Fred and Victor about Jeff. What happened to him? What was he doing? Was he working for Flatley? Fred said he didn’t know. I put Jeff out of my mind.

I continued working on the prototype. I had Jude check and approve every step. He and Fred made numerous trips to “Building B”. Everything was working well, as I had hoped. The one good thing George had done is give me the idea of using travel hair dryer coil/blowers for my dryer, even though he put it together in an unprofessional way. Previously I had used squirrel-cage blowers and heater coils, which were quite expensive and large. Using the hair dryer coils in a chassis that I had designed worked extremely well, and provided a huge amount of air flow and just the right amount of heat to dry the film in less than 90 seconds. So George wasn’t a complete loss. A friend of mine, Steve “Bookem” Danno, introduced me to a Chinese importer who was able to connect me with a company that would assemble coils with just the right temperature and airflow for drying the film. The problem (there is always a problem) is that they had a minimum order of 10,000 units. We worked around that with a little negotiation and were able to order 500 units. But the minimum order was always going to be a looming problem.

A month or so after I restarted working on the new Vision-DS2 project, Jude asked me to meet with George Long and review my misgivings with him. I really didn’t want to, as I was sure we would be spinning our wheels, and maybe get into a heated argument, but I agreed to meet. George was flown out with Victor, and we met in Bldg. B. George was cordial, we were both a little uncomfortable, but we had a nice talk. I showed George the prototype that I had been working on. He, of course, noted how much smaller it was than his. He said he absolutely didn’t believe that I could make it for $1,000 per unit, since his was $2,400. I had already priced all of the parts, and I knew that I could, so I didn’t argue that point much. We talked for about an hour, shook hands, said our good-byes, and that was the last I saw of George.