Hi Mike-
I am fascinated by your discussions of how the design process worked at Weber.
I was wondering... how did UL/CSA approval regs (or any other regs/laws) affect the design? Or to put it differently, how might the grills be different if you weren't looking for UL/CSA approval?
THanks!
-Tom in SoCal
Well the design process..
At the time, about 6-8 years ago, it seemed rather informal. Someone would have an idea and you’d have a sketch and maybe they’d say you can try it out. If it functioned well, if it cooked well, then maybe pursue it.
Erich (a true gentleman, quite humble who invented so many of the Weber products we all enjoy) and I would make field trips to the stores to look at competitor items. Weber would often buy things, try them out, dissect them.
They had an outside industrial company/golfing buddy that would come in every 7-10 days with ideas and concepts. Maybe it was a few posters showing various trends, shapes, colors –hot items with other outdoor products, outdoor active lifestyles, etc. Can these be incorporated to the customer appeal of a grill or accessory?
R&D, the outside industrial engineer, the owner, a few others such as from manufacturing -there were regular meetings with marketing and they were bringing in feedback from service, the field, customers, end-users. From there, there were directives on what projects were to be pursued.
The outside company had a hand in that silly 22” I helped design, that’s mostly how it came about. It was intended to be the TOP OF THE LINE. The one with the 2 side tables and the large handle in the front, the bail on the back. Was that the deluxe or something? (I had a family member hounding me, concerned if the tubing can be formed into those shapes. Umm.. had he ever seen a bicycle before?)
I was a lurker on the VWBB, a few other forums, taking note of trends, cooking methods, mods, thoughts on what people were doing, what they wanted to see.
Things like giving handles to a customer that are attached to the center ring is dangerous. Most people can move it safely. But you get someone who is tipsy, someone with small arm grasp, naturally weak: You have 5 gallons of water (40lbs) plus 20+ pounds of meat, the unit itself, and it’s 300 degrees; that can make for an accident waiting to happen. As it is, there are safety concerns with a fully loaded unit, its center of gravity, and it tipping over if you bump into it. We did a lot of work on leg styles for the 22. (As the 18 was informally called “the bullet,” we were calling the 22 “the bomber.” Perhaps a bit insensitive for the public which I understand.)
But the larger 22 was developed and the smaller 14 (Erich Schlosser’s original) was updated. They saw little or no market for the 14. I pushed it hard because you can have a small family. Or someone that always is camping. Sometimes cooking an 18 is TOO big if you want to smoke a half chicken.
While is seemed they were very open and easy going, there was a lot of fear. Fear of, “letting out the secrets of how to cook with fire.” They were very cautious and concerned about rocking the boat and having a radical design out there. They were concerned with, “Well this works, why should we change it?”
One thing that bothered me was getting a good seal and safe design with the original cutout and door of the 22. As you’ve all experienced, the fit was always an issue. The door must be of a compound radius. It remains constant at the bottom where it rests on the center ring. But when you latch it, it compresses and forms around the center ring. It can’t butterfly out or anything like that.
The doors are stamped out of metal and the original die for 18” door was modeled by hand. I forget his name, but he took a piece or hard maple and sanded it to shape. They made a few doors and checked fit. Then they sanded some more. They did this until the fit was perfect. Ah.. the good old days.
Well by the year 2006, we were using Solidworks to design things. There are advanced operations and ways to possibly predict what will happen, but the door of this type really needed the old hand operation of making a few, testing fit, make a few more until the fit is perfect. They never wanted to do this no matter how much I pleaded. I have no idea why they were so hard headed and wouldn’t listen, but you all know what the result was.
For the door handle, they were just buying an off the shelf knob from a hardware store. The wanted an new look, one that my indicate if it’s latched, so me and the outside design guy presented a few concepts to the group, they picked one and that was it.
When I was doing the 26-¾ Kettle, of course the discussion of the legs falling out came up. We all are familiar with the various types over the years, thumb screws and all that. When I was there, they had the leg mount that had a dimple in it. The mount was oversized and the tube is inserted. When this happened, the dimple dented the tube and deformed it. Soon it would work loose because of heat and moving the grill. Certainly a safety issue when working with and moving a hot grill. And certainly a complaint with end-users!
The solution I had was a leg mount with no dimple. Reduce the inner diameter where the leg was inserted making it nearly a line-to-line fit. The metals can expand and contract together with heat, there was no deformation into the soft aluminum leg. Because the center of the leg and leg mount were always aligned (to exaggerate, not a small peg in a giant hole) they wound never work loose and always be stable. Safe, reliable.
And I proved it. First by grinding out some dimples and making some oversize legs (with aluminum tape). We had stability. The triangle was held in place constantly. Then I had some leg mounts made up to proper size (I think the leg was 1” OD) and welded to the bowl. Assembled a few legs, It worked. Great, right? Stability, Safety, Reliability! The 3 legs are held at the top securely with a snug fit. The placement and forces at the bottom of the triangle were also working to hold it in place because they weren’t rocking up at the top.
“Well how does it work? Don’t you need dimples to hold the legs? Won’t they slide out? It’s not what we do here, so no.” I don’t know what they do with the legs now. They could have done this simple change years ago making them safer.
When I invented the LED tank scale, I went out to Radio Shack and bought a 4-AA battery holder, a momentary push button, and a 3 color LED. I mocked up a prototype with some leaf springs on the original scale on a folded piece of metal to hold it all. Cool, it works. Then we mocked it up into a Genesis. Great.
Then the outside industrial design team came in to make it pretty. They didn’t want me to do the electrical design (?) so they found an outside source and supplier.
Marketing buys into its gimmick (as it doesn’t truly read weight, just the position of the scale underneath the grill. If that’s stuck, the LED will display the wrong color.) They decide on its value, what grill to put it on. Everyone decides where it looks good.
Then testing: All grills and smokers are wired up with thermocouples and are fed into a computer to track heat over time. The tricky part with the LED scale is the plastic, the internal battery, etc. and its location relative to the heat. You can’t have that melting or the battery exploding. More safety and testing to pass UL and CSA.
As far as other items relative to UL and CSA. Handles cannot have a certain temperature. But wood is the most excellent material for handles. They physically may be as hot as a nylon compound, but they have the illusion of a cooler temp as they absorb and dissipate heat differently. Depending on the plastic, it has to be farther from the grill. Taller handles, knobs further away. Color is the same way –the plain heat shields are different than enameled. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissivity)
An interesting thing about Weber is the gap at the back of gas grills. Say a Weber is rated at 36,000 BTU. A similar one by someone else is 60,000 BTU. How do they make grill that’s rated higher than the Weber. It’s the same size. If you look at the gap between the cook box and the hood along the back, a lot of competitor models have a huge gap where they are just dumping heat that’s not being used. The Weber has a very narrow gap, thus less heat loss –but you are using more of it, not just dumping it. But because of keeping that heat, the placement and height of handles becomes an issue to be carefully considered in meeting UL and CSA requirements.
