Shop Owners Hoping Swiss-Type Lathe Helps Them Achieve Goal of Early Retirement
Triax, a Sarasota Florida job shop, recently invested in a 7-axis, Swiss-type CNC lathe and the result has been a 50% reduction in cycle time and parts manufactured completely without any secondary operations.
In 2015 a partnership was formed between Gary North, Michael McKee and Bill Michel. Common interests tied them together, i.e., they were looking at an early retirement and really liked to make things, so they decided to start a component manufacturing business in Sarasota, FL, which they named TRIAX Precision Manufacturing, LLC.
Gary North (center) and Michael McKee (right), founders of TRIAX Precision MFG, have been impressed by the quality of the part manufactured on their new Swiss-type 7-axis lathe.
A former software industry entrepreneur, Gary North believed that manufacturing was on the upswing in the United States. "We think there's a real effort to bring stuff back on shore," said Gary. "We chose Manatee County (Sarasota, FL) because we think it's a growing area and it's a fantastic area to live. There are a lot of wonderful companies here, and we wanted to partner with those companies to produce high-quality products and help them achieve their goals. Our entire being is centered on servicing our customers and helping them with just-in-time delivery with high-quality products, from engineering, all the way to finished products in a timely and high-quality fashion," he continued.
The growth in the aerospace, marine and medical industries in this area made it a prime location.
Combining their decades of experience in the manufacturing and engineering industries, the three partners quickly saw their vision come to life. They acquired the assets of Sarasota based machining company, Hi-Nu-Tec Inc., expanded it to provide machining, engineering, welding and assembly capabilities using advanced CNC equipment, and quickly grew over their initial start-up staff of four employees to fifteen.
Eurotech's SwissTurn Gepard has cut cycle times in half and reduced operations down to one.
In 2018, TRIAX's success and rapid growth created a need for new equipment. "We ran into a bottleneck in the shop on one of our important parts. Our current equipment could not cut the part complete due to its limited horsepower and gripping ability," said Gary North. "The parts we were running had a lengthy cycle time, and we wanted to significantly reduce it."
"Local support and service was very important to us. U Tech CNC had a full range of products so I asked our representative, Patrick Shaver, to come and look at the parts."
"After looking at the challenge that TRIAX was facing, I contacted the engineers at Eurotech in Brooksville, FL," said Shaver.
Eurotech recommended the SwissTurn Gepard 42SLY machine. This machine is a 7-axis Swiss type auto lathe with a 42 mm bar capacity. "The hydraulic gripping fingers of the Gepard SwissTurn 42 SLY combined with the identical 10 HP integral motors that are on the main and sub spindles were some of the key highlights that made this machine a perfect solution for TRIAX," said Joe, engineer at Eurotech.
We are now a "Done in One" Shop! said Gary North, President of TRIAX.
"We offered TRIAX a turnkey solution to have their parts runoff on our floor and then after approval, a runoff on their floor," continued Patrick Shaver.
"We were able to offer the customer a Eurotech Gepard 42 SLY that was able to cut their current cycle times in half as well as have the parts come out complete without any second operations. This was achieved with help from Eurotechs application team," added Shaver.
"Due to U Tech's support over the past three years and the applications help provided by Eurotech, we felt confident that the Eurotech SwissTurn Gepard 42 SLY was the best solution long term to increase the part demand and to obtain more work from future customers," said Gary North.
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