LC Power Tools, a new venture from Lake Country Manufacturing
LC Power tools is the brand behind the flagship UDOS 51E. It’s also the latest innovative division of Lake Country Manufacturing, a family-owned company with over 40 years of experience providing the paint, body and equipment industry with high quality polisher pads.
“Back in 2015, before we started work on the UDOS 51E” says Jay Schneider, President, “we were a lot fewer people, doing a lot more things. We had a lot of open offices… And now they are full.”
Scott McLain is an FAA qualified mechanic and the Lead Engineer at LC Power Tools (who at one point owned his own fighter plane). He is known for his original ideas at LC, but when he came to Jay with an idea for a new power tool, Jay was initially skeptical — but was intrigued.
“How can a Rotary or Dual Action be different?”, to which Scott replied "What if it were both?"
Scott ordered a few gears from a children’s kit on Amazon, and quickly came back with a working model that showed how one might combine a rotary tool with a user-defined orbital stroke.
The mathematical equations that showed how the dual action tool would balance itself were adapted from formulas used to balance wings in flight, and were scribbled on the wood backing of the mockup.
“When we showed our idea to our biggest customer, and their reply was “if you can make this, it will change the industry”, I knew we were onto something big.” - Jay S.
Balancing five different tools in one is a unique engineering challenge. Not to mention that you also have to optimize the user experience and the weight of the tool.
Over the course of five years we ran through numerous ideas and looked for feedback from potential users. Over time we finalized our design, and were able to balance the longer user-defined throws with the rotary tool, using a combination of one of our earlier prototypes and the new design with its own patent.
Clearing the Final Hurdle...
...and Arriving at the Starting Line
Our final breakthrough was combining the user-defined strokes with the rotary, which we were able to achieve after bringing in Chuck, a former GE Healthcare engineer, with experience in balancing high speed rotating CT scanner equipment.
“It’s been a challenging journey, but what excites me is that we are finally making this available to everyone. It’s really just the beginning. I’m looking forward to seeing people enjoying the tool, being better detailers, making jobs easier and making more profits in their business, because that’s ultimately what this tool helps people to do.”
