Jim Paas, vice president of Mistequay Group, Ltd (Saginaw, MI) knows that to remain competitive in the parts manufacturing market, investment in new machining centers with the latest technology is essential -- even if it means replacing machines that might only be a few years old.

Since 1991, Mistequay has provided diverse machining capabilities for automotive, aircraft, and off-highway industries. The company also serves varied customers in the hydraulic and foundry industries as well as the US government, offering a range of machining services from prototypes and experimental parts to small, medium, and large lot production. This variety calls for working in many materials to produce highly complex parts, machined from the solid or from castings.

To win an important contract, the company based its production contract quotation on replacing older Mazak VTC vertical machining centers with state-of-the-art Mazak VTC-200B VMCs. "The throughput of the Mazak VTC-200Bs allowed us to offer a more competitive price to our customers," said Paas. "We priced the job to reflect the increased performance and offered our customer a big reduction from what he'd been paying. Since we've been in production, the VTC-200Bs have met all of our expectations." Actual cycle time reductions were in the range of 50%.

Mistequay runs from 4,000 to 6,000 per week of the cast iron part on four Mazak VTC-200Bs set up in a work cell. A special dedicated rotary fixture is used to position and lock two parts in place at a time for machining multiple sides using various types of cuts, including drilling, milling, and tapping. Paas commented that the job really could have lent itself to a transfer line. In fact, another supplier was using a transfer line to produce a similar part.

"To stay efficient on the vertical machining centers, we are using a modified work cell approach," Paas said. "We fixture two parts on each table and program specific short tool path movements, taking advantage of the machines' high rapid traverse rates and quick chip-to-chip times. With the cell concept, and having each machine do only a portion of the overall process, we are gaining savings over cutting a whole part in one machine. Using this approach, we're getting much higher production than we had a few years ago.

"These VTC-200B Mazak VMC's haven't let us down. After a brief startup period, we are meeting the aggressive times we projected to machine certain operations on these parts. The tool change is impressive and the machines are very durable and reliable while capable of holding and repeating close tolerances."

Paas said that with the versatility of the CNC equipment and their rapid speeds and feeds, they are slowly replacing transfer lines. "When you have machines that can do what these Mazak VTC-200B's can do, you're going to see more transfer lines replaced. When machining speeds are so great, you don't have to worry about part loading times. And with bigger machine tables, you can get more parts on them.

"I think another thing affecting the change to CNC cells is car manufacturers that used to design a part for a car and it stayed that way for 10 years," Paas continued. "You could build a transfer line and it would produce parts for years. But the technology and design are advancing just like the equipment. So a part is designed today and a year later you might have gone through three engineering and three design changes that require nothing more than a program change on a CNC machine. To change a transfer line, it would be a major and costly undertaking. Also, we can be up and running for a year by the time a transfer line is built.

"Flexibility in our machine has been one of the biggest tools for us. Reliability, flexibility, and great service is what we get from Mazak. We have a 10-year relationship with Mazak and have over 70 Mazak machines in five locations and two states since we started in business. And in this business, that says a lot. Each year we have more machines than the year before. They are always there when we need them."

Why Mazak?

Paas said that they originally chose Mazak machines because of the ease of programming and the company's reputation. "They had new vertical machining centers and lathes when we started the company that met our needs. We started out with a couple of lathes. Then from our original location of 8000 square feet, we have grown to over 120,000 in five locations in two states. We have over 70 CNC machines along with grinding equipment and other manufacturing equipment we use in our processes. One of the things we did was to diversify. The company originally just produced automotive parts.

"In our diversification, when quality wasn't as important as it is today, we took it on ourselves to produce quality parts and benefited by gaining new customers. We started doing government work and implemented many quality procedures that were badly needed.

"I took on the sales function, and president Bob Zastrow stayed inside. We went out and ventured into other states and other industries. We went after the aircraft and off-road vehicle industry. We slowly banked these contacts into a group of probably 300 to 400 customers in at least 30 states. We have a reputation for taking on the tough-to-machine parts. We are always upgrading our Mazak equipment to be state of the art. This allows us to compete in some of the industries that require precision machining."

Paas said that they have even tried several competitive machine tool manufacturers. But the innovative design and advanced technologies of Mazak equipment and their ability to hold tight tolerances have been a big factor in staying with Mazak, as well as their excellent service.

Pass commented, "Our employees are accustomed to Mazak conversational programming controls and they prefer them. On some of the other equipment we tried, the employees found programming to be very difficult, taking too much time, and they weren't generally happy with it.

"Programming is real important to us. With the available workforce's lack of training today, it's hard to find good people. But with Mazak's CNC control, it is relatively easy to bring someone in who has never seen one before and we start them out on repetitive jobs. It is a lot easier to train them on the Mazak CNC control than other types of controls. Even though Mazak's CNC controls are easier for the lesser-skilled operator, they still have the complex capability to do tough-to-machine parts."

For the future, Paas said the company will go into different locations and specialize in certain areas. "But we think our market mainstay is the same 25 to 250 piece part runs that require multiple set-ups and long term contracts." Mistequay is also looking to develop itself into a Cyber Factory where all its plants are networked together through the Internet and Mazak's Mazatrol Fusion 640 PC CNC control, which allows machines to be monitored from any interconnected PC. With the Cyber Factory concept, they will be able to monitor total work flow, from the ordering of raw goods, to machine maintenance and service, and to delivery of finished parts.