A metal fabricating veteran talks about the bends of his career path

A stint in commercial construction in Houston and an extended stint working for an angle roll manufacturer in Italy paved the way for David Donnell to own a machine tool distributorship.

The metal fabricating world is wide open in terms of opportunities. The path one takes to get there is rarely direct.

David Donnell once thought he might spend his professional life in the construction industry. That was meant only to be the opening chapter of his work history, however.

More than 30 years since the founding of Carell Corp./Eagle Bending Machines, a distributor of angle rolls, plate rolls, section benders, tube benders, and ornamental barworking machines, Donnell looks back on his career and reminds us that it’s not the end of the world just because things don’t go according to plan. It might be the beginning of something special.

The Fabricator: How did you get involved in metal fabricating?

David Donnell: I was working in the commercial construction industry after obtaining a hybrid degree from Auburn University in project management, which basically was an architecture and engineering crossover. I had worked in Houston for six years after graduation, and I had married an Italian lady. Well, we moved from Houston to Coral Gables, Fla., and then to northwestern Italy, where her parents were. I had gotten a job there with a civil engineering construction company.

When we got there, I was told that I had to move to Turkey and stay there for 90 days, then come back for couple of weeks, and then go back for 90 days. The deal with those folks was that I would not travel because I had been traveling constantly. But they had a situation where an American engineer got killed in a tunneling project in Turkey, and they wanted me to take over.

So I said “No,” and we went our separate ways. I then found a company that manufactured angle rolls through some friends, and that company was looking for an engineer. I had an affinity for the things, understood how they were built and what they did, so I went to work for them.

It was important for them that I spoke English, but I also learned Italian fluently within a few months. I then traveled all over the world with these folks, as a product manager, installation engineer, sales engineer, wearing many hats.

After five years there, I had family issues that needed to be attended to, so I came back to the U.S. Around this time, some of the people that I had met that manufactured other types of equipment, such as tube bending machines and plate rolls, said that I should import and market their machines.

I said, “OK. You guys pay me to do a business plan and a market survey, and I’ll go and see if this is something that’s viable.”

The Carell Corp./Eagle Bending Machine facility is located in Stapleton, Ala.

Early in 1993, I did that survey and business plan. It seemed like it was a very good time to bring in another group of manufacturers. At that time, there were really no small machines, angle rolls, or even plate rolls available. It was a good time to do that, so I did.

I started out in September 1993, just by myself with no book of business and no customers. I borrowed a card table from my mother and bought a $75 word processor from Walmart. I also had a telephone.

Today, we have a successful business with 14 to 15 employees, depending on the time of year, and a 30,000-sq.-ft. building.

Fab: How many machine installations do you now have?

Fab: When you were starting out, did you ever feel like it could grow into what it is today?

Donnell: I had hoped, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

When we first started, that’s when other companies from places like Turkey began doing FABTECH shows and cultivating distributors. A lot of folks started to look at the U.S. market. They were from Taiwan, China, Portugal, and Spain, for instance. In 1993, we had a handful of competitors. By the year 2000, there were lots of competitors.

So, we’ve always had to be better at selling quality over price and understanding how our competitors work. I also had decided early on that I needed to manufacture my own tooling for all of these angle rolls. I do all the design, and we have our own machine shop here in-house. That has helped us greatly.

Fab: How did Carell Corp./Eagle Bending Machines try to stand out from competitors?

Donnell: We have always been application-specific. We require or ask for a lot of information from people that contact us. They might be aggravated that we ask so many questions, but we want them to get the right answer. We ask, “What are you doing?” because we have the expertise to find the right model machine for the job. We’re not selling a sack of potatoes for a dollar cheaper at the next grocery outlet. We’re selling a product that’s supposed to solve the issues that the customer has.

The next thing we ask is, “What are you doing on that model machine you have now, and what is it that you don't like about the results?” If we don’t know what it is that they are unsatisfied with in their current machine, then it’s hard for us to tell them that what we could offer would be any better. We could provide them a machine that is going to dramatically improve their results. On the other hand, they might be trying to do something that’s just not doable.

Fab: Do you think the fact that some people buy a machine without truly knowing if it can solve their production issues contributes to the belief that fabricating processes like tube bending and plate rolling are “black arts?”

Donnell: To some extent, you’d have to say yes to that. But another major issue in the U.S. and in other countries is that the older folks are retiring. We just don’t have an experienced workforce or a work ethic like we had from the 1940s onward. We do not have in the U.S. the type of apprenticeships programs for young folks to be motivated to get into metalworking. We don’t have the educational system here.

As a result, folks are less able or willing to think about tackling any mechanical or technical problem with the means that they have at hand, and instead they just pick up the telephone and demand that somebody fix their problem. And because they lack any technical ability of any sort, they find it difficult to even explain properly what the issue is.

Fab: What has it been like to witness the evolution of angle and plate roll technology?

Donnell: The technology has come a long way. Most people now are familiar with PC-based controls, and these machines have high-quality PLCs, more sophisticated hydraulics, and servomotors. There definitely have been great strides in technology.

Machines these days weigh less than those that had machine frames that were castings. The electric motors on those old machines also were very inefficient. So what you could do with a 50-HP motor back then, a 30-HP motor will be sufficient today.

So, yes, the quality has improved on all of these different components across the board.

Fab: What about machine control technology?

Donnell: In general, technology, as far as controls go, can be sort of a smoke-and-mirrors game. One machine manufacturer might say, “All you have to do is put in four pieces of information and the machine will spit the part out just like that.” Well, that’s not true. You need to explain that to the customers.

Fab: Do you view operator involvement being as critical as it once was with these modern machines?

Donnell: You still have to have operator involvement. You probably don’t need a person that has 50 years of metal forming experience, but you still have to have an intelligent person that has a gut feel. It is a black art.

You have to understand what happens to this piece of metal when you’re putting it under the stresses of deformation. You need to understand where the neutral axis is, what part is in compression, and what part is in tension.

As a piece of material moves through a machine, you’ve got to use your head. You just can’t sit back and ask the computer why the material isn’t coming out right.

Fab: How would you describe your tenure in the metal fabricating industry, particularly as one who kind of stumbled into it?

Donnell: Well, there actually was a little bit of overlap when I was in commercial construction as a project manager. I wrote contracts for structural steel and miscellaneous metals. So I was around steel.

Even back in the 1980s, the architects were putting curved and softer, more appealing architectural elements into their building designs. During that time period when I was involved in commercial construction management, I was looking at bent steel, watching steel be erected and welded and bolted. When I fell into the opportunity of becoming involved on the machine tool side of things, I had a pretty good feel for what the stuff was all about. It seemed intuitive to me.

This industry is a perfect fit for the way my brain is wired because I can focus on several different things. I’m not an engineer looking at and designing structural buildings and doing a bunch of calculations on beam loads and moments of inertia all day long.

The wonderful part about this business is that all the applications are different. There’s something new almost every day. Today we have wind farms and solar panel arrays going up. We have electric vehicles. We have super-lightweight, high-strength alloys. It’s wonderful to produce parts for all of these applications in this modern, industrialized world.