So what's the deal on this new "Titan" guy

Hi All:
I just received the latest Haas CNC machining magazine and read the article on Titan Gilroy.
Seems he's got quite the story to tell and has morphed himself from a pretty troubled guy to some sort of new machine shop messiah.
Got his own machine shop show on TV and everything.
What's the consensus...straight up guy or yet another Orange County Choppers queen?

Whenever I see blistering hype like this I get a bit of a chuckle.
When I hear copious amounts of bubbly praise, it gets a little harder to take.
When I hear Haas machines extolled as comparable in performance to high end Japanese machines my bullshit radar starts to beep (but to be fair that might be the Haas shills much more than Mr Gilroy himself).

Anyone seen the show?
Anything worthwhile to see there?
Any magical magic?
Any obvious bloopers?

As always all comments, even the snarkies will be greatly enjoyed.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining
Clarus Microtech

implmex said:

Hi All:
I just received the latest Haas CNC machining magazine and read the article on Titan Gilroy.
Seems he's got quite the story to tell and has morphed himself from a pretty troubled guy to some sort of new machine shop messiah.
Got his own machine shop show on TV and everything.
What's the consensus...straight up guy or yet another Orange County Choppers queen?

Whenever I see blistering hype like this I get a bit of a chuckle.
When I hear copious amounts of bubbly praise, it gets a little harder to take.
When I hear Haas machines extolled as comparable in performance to high end Japanese machines my bullshit radar starts to beep (but to be fair that might be the Haas shills much more than Mr Gilroy himself).

Anyone seen the show?
Anything worthwhile to see there?
Any magical magic?
Any obvious bloopers?

As always all comments, even the snarkies will be greatly enjoyed.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining
Clarus Microtech

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I think he is a joke, and give real machinist a bad name.
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/cnc-machining/tv-show-about-cnc-machining-293793/

Reality Television is joke. Being that the show is about machining (or I guess it is) if I stumbled across it I'd probably give it a look but I've never seen an advertisement or listing to when and where it is on.

It would be very hard to get BS by a machining community such as the PM crowd so I doubt I or many here would like it.

If you work at Walmart he probably looks like a hero. We would argue he's not doing it/anything correctly. Just my 2 cents

Brent

I havn't watched the show, but I would hire him to stare at the guy who takes 3 30 min dumps a day on the clock.

If he's from Gilroy, CA, he has garlic breath! A machinist doing TV shows is likely good at neither. Pick one career or the other and stick with it.

rklopp said:

If he's from Gilroy, CA, he has garlic breath! A machinist doing TV shows is likely good at neither. Pick one career or the other and stick with it.

Click to expand...

Easy killer

He sounds like a guy that has too much damn money and doesn't know what to do with it all.

I managed to catch a part of an episode on YouTube via Autodesk (ugh, really guys?) and was not impressed. A shift knob out of Inconel. Great.

On a 5-axis machine. Greater.

I got real sick of hearing "MADE IN AMERICUH" over and over too. The stupid hurt my brain. Even if it's an act, it's just painful to watch.

I was going to start this thread myself a few days ago. I watched one TV episode where they made this shift lever out of Inconel and Titan is a far cry from any machinist I have ever known. I worked in a machining facility that made turbine blades out of super alloys for all of the major aircraft companys and a person with Titans antics wouldn't have lasted one day there.

Link to previous topic about the show below. I've seen about four episodes and the only way I can get thru one is to just look at it like a cartoon show for children. I look anyway for the occasional machining and CMM shots...and the humor of just how bad it is. Wife and I form a sort of Mystery Science Theater 3000 comment banter while watching



http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/cnc-machining/tv-show-about-cnc-machining-293793/

Milacron

I have seen a few of the episodes. Yes it is over the top but looking past that it is nice to see something thats highlights being made in america. The background message being that we have lost so many jobs overseas and why cant we bring them back here by doing it different than in the past. Not all bad.

I haven't seen it, but don't really want to either. I think 'Titan' was first profiled several yeras ago in the Haas "CNC Machining" magazine (he is profiled again in the most recent issue). I guess I don't really have a problem with him/it, but it does strike me as a false reality, because its clear (he has as much said so) he's leveraged/financed his ass to the hilt to get the equipment/shop he has. To each his own, but as has been discussed here many times, over leveraged debt has been the downfall of far too many American shops and businesses in general. He seems to be a clear example of 'living beyond one's means" - part of the problem he rallies so much against. Again - I know some can do it and do it well (take on massive debt), and more power too them, but I'm not about to feel bad for the fact that he almost lost is ass once - or may do so in the future.

That said, to echo Milacron comments, I love some of these reality shows for the absolute bullshit that they are. My favorite, and honestly, I think its more real than most, is "Gold Rush". It has provided a great bonding experience for me and my father. I live on the east coast, and he lives in Utah. Our ritual, every Saturday morning, after we've both seen the latest issue, is to go through and point out how much horse-shit went on. The amount of knuckle headedness is almost hard to imagine and we absolutely love to point out one stupid idea after another.

For those of you who haven't seen it, I heartily recommend pouring yourself a glass of wild turkey (don't feel bad if you need to pour two - I usually need tow to make it through it myself) on Friday nights (when the new season comes back on in the fall) and enjoying the show - because it really is one hell of a show in idiocy. I love it. Makes me feel smarter than I am.

Maybe I should watch Titan - maybe it will make me feel like more of a machinist than I really am..

Brent

Haven't seen the show but read the article.

Never seen a guy so good at failure with that kind of confidence. Reminds me of a quote from Bertrand Russsel about fools and fanatics.

Don't get me wrong, if you haven't failed you're probably not doing anything special but geez. How does a guy like this get machines given to him? By being the idol of other fools and fanatics I guess.

implmex said:

Got his own machine shop show on TV and everything.
What's the consensus...straight up guy or yet another Orange County Choppers queen?

Whenever I see blistering hype like this I get a bit of a chuckle.
When I hear copious amounts of bubbly praise, it gets a little harder to take.
When I hear Haas machines extolled as comparable in performance to high end Japanese machines my bullshit radar starts to beep

Click to expand...

imo the only way you can make a TV show about something 99.9% of the population has neither has a clue about or gives a crap about is with BS. Look at OCC and hotrod shows. Nothing about anything technical just the low life drama and stupid chics trying to surprise their dipshit boyfriends.

Who can stand to watch it? probably not anyone with at least enough intelligence to find machining of interest.

He looks and sounds like this redneck numbnard I worked with who broke a $10,000 press die thinking it was cool to smash a quarter with 100 tons.

After watching him for a few minutes I'd say he is the guy you hire to be a helper in shipping and receiving to fix broken pallets.

This is a short part of the episode where they make an Inconel shift lever. On the long version of the show they check the threads with go-no-go gauges and after it passes they put it up on a comparator for some reason. It is only for a screw on shift knob in the real world. Btw, there was another part on the full length show where Titan explained Inconel that I would have liked to show. At least all his employees seem normal. My first question to one of his employees would be 'does titan always talk like that'?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0nBs566KlY

This shows more of his speaking "uniqueness".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNFrY47G9H8

Bluechipx said:

This shows more of his speaking "uniqueness".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNFrY47G9H8

Click to expand...

Oh my... I could not stand to listen to him for a solid minute.

I think this is just another case of a TV show only being interesting to people who are completely ignorant of the subject matter. (And I don't intend that as an insult - ignorant isn't a bad thing, as we've discussed before here.)

That said, I think it would be fair to say he's more of a salesman/con-man than machinist or manager. How else can you explain this guy getting someone to finance all his equipment, and then talking a TV network into paying him enough money to not have to declare bankruptcy? Because there is no way he's turning out enough parts to pay the bills if the activity in his shop when they're filming is any indication.

This will probably turn into another OCC where this guy walks off with a personal fortune from branding himself, while screwing all of his suppliers when his shop declares bankruptcy.

It looks like Haas is actually using him as some sort of marketing idea. The aircraft turbine blade company I worked at wouldn't let him near their customers as any kind of representative. This may come back to bite Haas if there is any truth to it.

The history in the HAAS article made him sound like a dangerous guy in most shops..
Lets just turn up the speeds and feeds, and see if anything breaks..

What about tolerances, repeatability, finish, tool life, etc?