5 Things you probably didn’t know about Delta-13

 

Delta-13 is a family owned company.

Delta-13 Racks are produced at our sister company, Tag Team Manufacturing located in Parker, Colorado. Tag Team has been open for 30 years and the Taggart family has owned this very modern CNC Machine Shop for the last 17 years.  Terry and Michelle Taggart are co-owners of Taggart Enterprises Inc. dba Tag Team Manufacturing, Delta-13 and Tag Team Design. Their Son, Kyle runs the web design team, while their daughter Kristin overseas Delta-13. 

Tag Team specializes in machining CNC precision components for OEM's mainly in the aerospace industry and medical device industry.  Tag Team Manufacturing has experience in producing products made from a variety of materials including aluminum, plastic, stainless steel, carbon steel, brass, copper, and most alloys. As part of Tag Team’s continued path to automate and improve technology, in the last year they have added a high performance, smart, collaborative robot and two DMG Mori NHX 5000 Generation 2 machines, one with 21 pallets. Both of these machines Delta-13 rack rails and corners are now produced on.

 

Where the name, Delta-13 came from.

“DELTA” is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet which resembles a triangle and “13” is for Aluminum’s atomic number on the Periodic Table of Elements. Our rack is 85% made up of 6061 Aluminum.

 

How much time, energy and effort by the entire team goes into each rack.

First, the 6061 aluminum material for the rails and corners needs to be ordered by our Manufacturing Specialist.  Once in, a Tag Team Machinist needs to cut the material the correct size for our corners and rails. Next, the machine needs to be set up for either our Select rails or Elite corners and rails, this can take 6-8 hours. Since we have invested in a machine with 21 pallets in the last month, our racks will not have to be set up again, saving us 6-8 hours moving forward!  

Once the machine is set up, we need a Machinist to load the cut raw rails into the fixture in the machine and start the machine.  The racks will have to be flipped over to machine the other side once the first cycle is complete.  How many racks are produced every hour you might wonder. There are multiple operations and rails run at one time and there are two sides that need to be machined, so the best answer we can give you is about 2 racks per hour. When rails are complete, they come out of the machine and are then finished with deburr tools by either the Machinist or our Finishing Specialist. This takes 3-5 minutes to clean up the rail and get rid of scratches and burrs.  The parts are then wiped with alcohol and boxed up to send to be anodized.  They are usually at our vendor for a week. They either drop the parts back off or our Delivery Driver goes to pick them up over an hour from our facility.  

We go through a quality check and count process once we receive the parts back and then install heli coils in the Select rails and Elite corners and store them on our designated shelf.  When an order comes through, we use our Zing Laser Engraver to engrave our logo and url on one rail and if there is special engraving, we set up and engrave on the other rails.  We then assemble the rack using a power screwdriver, stainless steel locking screws and locking washers. This assembly process usually takes about 5 minutes with an additional 5-10 minutes on personalized engraving.

Once assembled, the Elite racks are checked on the CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machine) and the Select Racks are placed in our pizza box. The CMM has to be set up for racks and then each Elite rack will need to be checked before it goes out the door.  This process takes about 10 minutes with the set up. If the print out is all green, we are good to box up the rack and get it to shipping.  If there is red on the print out, we must adjust how we put together the rack and re-check the rack until the angels, perpendicularity and flatness are all in tolerance.  

In shipping, we wrap the rack and create a UPS label. Our order is then processed through our E2 system (Order, Ship, Invoice).  We then have a pick up place in our facility where UPS picks our packages up, so the package is placed here.  We save the tracking number and send that to our online customers.  So next time you wonder why our racks might be pricier than others or what goes into the rack you own, now you are educated and can tell others!

 

Tag Team Design, our other sister company, created our website and helps us with our marketing, SEO and website updates.

Tag Team Design was founded in 2010 by Terry and Kyle Taggart and is located in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Tag Team Design specializes in creating websites that engage visitors through graphic design and emerging technologies. Tag Team Design builds responsive websites with high conversion rates, which help drives user engagement and increase revenue. The Denver Business Journal recently named Tag Team Design top 15 Denver web design agencies.

Our new Delta-13 boxes were designed for the retail market.  

NICE BILLIARD RACK! If you have purchased a rack of ours in the last few years then you have seen our new and improved Delta-13 Boxes! Not only are they eye catching, but also informational.  These were designed to help sell the racks without a sales associate as all of the information you would need to know about our racks is on the box.  

We have created two “flaps” that can fold in, so you can easily display your rack, so customers can see what the product looks like.  We have one fold on the rail where the engraving is and one on the corner, so the customer can see the color, engraving and what the corners look like. We have also let our customers know which rack is for the recreational player and which one is for the professional player incase they were wondering the difference between the racks and debating on which one to purchase.