Key distribution changes reflects commitment to excellence and increased pace of business.
Mazak officials announced new distribution in Northern Ohio, Virginia, Southern West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. As of June 1, 2022, HEH Group subsidiary Motch & Eichele will provide sales and service support for Mazak customers in Northern Ohio, while HEH Group subsidiary Crotts & Saunders will be responsible for the Carolinas, Southern West Virginia, and Virginia. Long-time distributors Premier Engineering and Pinnacle Machine Tools will continue to serve customers in the Southeast Region, with Premier providing support to customers in Georgia and Pinnacle providing support to customers in both Alabama and Tennessee.
With these changes, Mazak continues its commitment to maintaining a balanced model of direct sales and distribution in North America. In doing so, the company partners with only the best distributors, reflecting its stead-fast commitment to continuous improvement, ongoing excellence, and dedication to customers.
According to company President Dan Janka, Mazak’s balanced approach matches the pace of Mazak innovation in terms of production requirements and increased customer demand. This strategic approach also optimizes core competencies in various areas, ensuring customers have access to the resources they need to succeed.
Headquartered in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, the HEH Group is a family of four companies formed to provide leading manufacturing solutions to the industry. With the combined strengths and resources of each of its subsidiary companies, the HEH Group offers a variety of products and services that’ll keep Mazak customers competitive in their markets.
In business since 1985, Motch & Eichele brings with it a team of dedicated field sales professionals and application engineers and automation specialists. The company will work closely with Mazak customers to deliver productive and cost-effective manufacturing solutions.
Established in 1956, Crotts & Saunders provides complete machining, automation, and inspection solutions. Its experienced team will ensure Mazak customers are equipped with solutions that improve the speed and quality of their processes while reducing overall production costs.
The HEH Group has formed a Technical Team to support Mazak users with rapid service and repair deployed from each distributor's territory. Their technicians are Mazak trained and certified to deliver dependable service.
“The addition of the HEH Group to our network of distributors will not only enhance service and support, but most importantly their application experience and expertise will play a key role in the support of Mazak’s recently launched SYNCREX Swiss-style machine line,” Janka says. “Mazak customers will also benefit greatly from the group’s strong aftermarket service, automation integration capabilities and from their technology centers that are second to none.”
Motch & Eichele and Crotts & Saunders both maintain fully staffed full-service state-of-art technical centers for training and engineering support. These facilities also feature technology demonstration areas for customers to experience the latest manufacturing innovations from Mazak in action and processing real-world components.
These new and existing Mazak distributors are keenly focused on excellence, growth and providing outstanding service. In addition to the facilities of its distributors, Mazak maintains a network of Technology Centers and Technical Centers across North America to ensure customers receive the industry’s best service and support. Among those centers is Mazak’s Southeast Technology Center and its Florida Technical Center, both of which provide customers in the region with component machining demonstrations, experienced applications engineers, and comprehensive training.
Learn how to use advanced 3D scanning techniques to solve additive manufacturing challenges.
About the presentation Companies are rapidly developing additive manufacturing (AM) capabilities within their digital transformation strategies because it helps make better parts faster while optimizing processes and keeping costs down. From aerospace and automotive, to consumer goods and medical, companies use 3D printing to increase production efficiencies, deliver greater customization, and achieve an overall shorter time-to-market. However, implementing industrial 3D printing comes with challenges such as transitioning from low volume to high volume production, increasing part complexity, and maintaining product quality when scaling a project to meet the industry’s growing requirements. This session reveals how advanced 3D scanning technologies resolve challenges and facilitate the development of strong digital manufacturing strategies to support AM. Audience members will learn how to perform efficient dimensional verification on the complex and free-form shapes 3D printing enables, including GD&T analysis and material thickness. Attendees will also understand how to achieve near-net-shape optimization using warpage and shrinkage compensation to create an accurate model for 3D printing, how to use 3D scanning technologies for 3D printer calibration, and how to leverage PMI/MBD within digital engineering tasks to streamline manufacturing workflow. In addition, this session explores 3D scan data use throughout all AM stages, from design and 3D printing, to post-processing and the final part. It also shows how to use accurate data to perform trend analysis and move from low and high-volume inspection requirements.
Meet your presenter Steve DeRemer is an application specialist at CAPTURE 3D, a ZEISS Company. Since joining CAPTURE 3D in 2010, he has helped diverse manufacturers, including automotive companies, aerospace companies, and additive manufacturers, solve critical challenges with 3D metrology solutions. With more than 25 years of industry experience, he understands his customers' unique needs in order to deliver the optimal tools to achieve a faster time to market.?He holds an MBA from Walsh College and a Bachelor of Science in Computer-Aided Design from Eastern Michigan University.
About the company We want to change the way you think about and experience measurement by providing high-tech 3D measurement solutions that deliver meaningful data to drive our customers’ success. We envision our technology in every area that develops, engineers, and manufactures products.
Small-batch medical shop embraces automation to capture market share, triple throughput.
The operations group at Ultradent Products Inc., a leading developer and manufacturer of high-tech dental materials and devices sought to increase production of its Valo curing light, used by dental clinicians to cure dental composites, sealants, and various other chemistries.
Valo curing lights are complex pieces of equipment, requiring numerous holes, finishes, and various geometries. In 2017, Ultradent required 45 minutes and three complex machining operations to produce one curing light housing.
Its original manufacturing process involved hand-loading raw materials and finished parts; a cumbersome process for a company with only three employees on the shop floor per shift. The manufacturing setup resulted in the occasional spindle crash, hindering operations and output.
“We needed more reliability and faster cycle times,” says Ryan Umpleby, Sr. CAD/CAM programmer at Ultradent.
Additionally, the company occasionally had to subcontract to other machine shops to meet rising demand, resulting in additional cost and Ultradent still had to perform additional operations to remove imperfections left by the subcontractor.
“We never end up fully outsourcing the part because their costs are too high, or they can’t match our quality,” Umpleby adds.
Realizing the need to reduce the part’s cycle time while increasing repeatability, Ultradent reached out to Methods Machine Tools’ sales engineer David Snow. After exchanging project requirements, the decision was to move forward with two custom automation cells, each comprising of an advanced RoboDrill, a FANUC robotic arm, and raw stock storage. Methods designed the system to hold 60 blanks – uniform pieces of raw material ready for machining.
Embracing automation At first, implementing a custom automation cell was a hard sell. Not everyone at Ultradent believed a smaller machine could outperform a larger horizontal machining center, one of the other options the company was considering.
“This small RoboDrill with a robot arm was a little intimidating,” Umpleby says. “It’s smaller than a horizontal, it’s automated, and it’s got a robot.”
“Anytime you introduce something new, people can be hesitant,” adds Kevin Marett, an engineering manager at Ultradent.
There was also some concern about possible steep learning curve associated with robotics and automation. Umpleby was tasked with programming the first automation cell and being relatively new to CNC machining at that time, he accessed Methods’ support network of experts – application, automation integration, installation – who helped him get the cell up and running.
“That was kind of an intimating task for me,” Umpleby says. “Between the help of a couple key people at Ultradent and all the support I needed from Methods, we were able to pull together a fantastic automated machining cell.”
The cell provided actionable data points, precise results, and reduced cycle time for a curing light housing more than half – 45 minutes to a 21-minute average. With only three employees on the shop floor per shift, automating the cumbersome process of loading/unloading material significantly improved the workflow.
Support on speed dial With 24/7 operations underway, Ultradent increased its throughput almost threefold while reducing machining costs associated with third-party processing.
While the second RoboDrill automation cell was getting the job done on time and under budget, Ultradent needed to expand the system, so they worked with Methods on designing a larger, third cell that boosted the blank capacity from 60 to 200.
Within a few weeks, Umpleby says they had a working concept, and after executing the idea, the company could automate an entire production run of 200 curing light housings.
“That was a pretty cool milestone for me, to see Methods pull through that quickly on such a huge change to the cell,” he adds.
Soon after, Methods added a fourth 200-capacity automation cell, bringing their total to four RoboDrills and four robotic components.
Repeatability in action The cells run unattended for 16 hours a day and lights-out on the weekends. In addition to increased throughput and machine uptime, the company has gained the desired repeatability thanks to the RoboDrill's rigid construction and precision.
Since implementing the RoboDrill and automation cell, Ultradent's quality assurance team has noticed a significant improvement in the machining accuracy of the curing light housing with perfectly threaded, 12mm blind holes.
“As we go through inspection data for thousands of units, we find that features don’t move within a half a thousandth of an inch. Part of that is tooling, part of that is how the tooling is held and how the machine is built so it’ll repeat from position to position,” Marett says.
Using automation to achieve growth Ultradent did more than just increase throughput machine uptime and improve repeatability – they captured more market share.
During the most tumultuous period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the automation cell, combined with Ultradent’s ability to secure raw materials, allowed the company to continue machining. This enabled the company to capture additional market share while competitors lost production time to sick leave or suspended operations.
“We’ve almost doubled our capacity since we came out of COVID, and we couldn’t have done that without our third and fourth RoboDrill cells for sure,” Marett concludes.
Learn how surface intelligence can be implemented at your company.
About the presentation Manufacturers struggle with intermittent failures around cleaning, coating, welding, and bonding operations. These challenges lead to issues with supply chain robustness, warranty risks, damage to brand image, dissatisfied customers, and frustrated employees. This presentation explores advanced inspection technologies, new methodologies, and expertise allowing manufacturers to implement a new type of data across every aspect of their operation – surface intelligence. Join us to learn how surface intelligence data will properly equip your R&D efforts, align your supply chain, guarantee mission-critical decisions, and enable advanced innovation. We’ll delve into real-world case studies that demonstrate how manufacturers remedied long-standing issues and unlocked breakthrough performance by leveraging this new surface intelligence data.
Meet your presenter Science's sales manager, Lucas Dillingham, has more than 15 years of materials science experience. He helped a variety of organizations create specifications, set up workflows, advise on surface preparation techniques, and discover non-obvious variables causing lost time, material, and undue warranty cost. Currently, Dillingham leads the Brighton Science sales team delivering surface intelligence to manufacturing organizations around the world.
About the company Brighton Science is a cutting-edge materials science-based company that delivers effective adhesion quality control for manufacturers who are concerned with adhesive bonding, painting, coating, printing, and cleaning.
Brighton Science equips manufacturers with the insight to reduce scrap, recalls, and rework caused by adhesion failure. Our action-oriented surface lab services, coupled with fast, easy, accurate, and non-destructive surface inspection products provide quantifiable, repeatable tests that produce results that allow manufacturers to fix adhesion problems.
Investing in your people also means investing in their work environment. Create a space that people want to work.
As a third-generation manufacturing business, we have the advantage of the long view. One important thing we have learned involves the value of investing in people. Without the right workforce, technology is useless. So, where do you start? We started by hiring outside human resource (HR) professionals because that’s not our area of expertise. What did they tell us?
The landscape has changed. The economic and generational dynamics have changed. Years ago, our parents had a willing labor pool of often trained, entry-level workers. Persons who would spend a lifetime working at the same job. Today, the younger workforce has different ideas and aspirations about work. They don’t want a dead-end job. They want stimulation. They want growth opportunities. They want a career.
As a result of the deep dive conducted with our HR professionals, we embarked on a top-to-bottom review of everything from wages to job descriptions to incentives and bonuses. Following that, we undertook a complete overhaul of our employee development track and now each person hired has a potential career path with the necessary training to advance to the next open position within the company.
At the core of it, if you want to experience repeat business, you must have a high level of customer satisfaction. If you want to achieve customer satisfaction, you need an engaged, motivated workforce. When a company can point to employees that started in entry-level positions and have risen through the ranks into management and supervisory positions, that company will prosper. That has become the culture of Exothermic Molding.
It all starts with recruitment efforts. We found that casting a wide net paid off and going beyond the traditional means of seeking out employees has paid off. In addition to one-on-one contact at job fairs, we have made direct outreach to the vocational-technical schools in our area offering student internships that can lead to full-time employment following graduation. Currently, we are working with the State of New Jersey to develop a certified apprenticeship program to develop future workers. We have welcomed and embraced a diverse multi-lingual, multi-ethnic workforce, as well. We invite recently discharged veterans because we know they have excellent potential for advancement with their military backgrounds and discipline.
Investing in your people also means investing in their work environment. Create a space that people want to work in – one that feels safe, comfortable, and pleasant. We have invested in upgrades to our physical plant making it more employee-friendly and enjoyable.
From our point of view, each employee must have an opportunity to progress and do better for themselves, and the best way to be sure that happens is by not just offering them a job. Offer them a career.
Paul K. Steck is president of Exothermic Molding Inc. in Kenilworth, NJ, a contract manufacturer of plastic parts for high-tech devices in a variety of industries. Visit: exothermic.com/careers