The name of the shop, Clean Machine, is no accident. It was chosen to reflect an awareness that some machine shops are, to put it nicely, not the most pleasant places to work. The owners of Clean Machine believe that in today's manufacturing environment, many customers equate shop cleanliness with quality.
"If a customer visits our operation and sees the environment in which we manufacture, it's a plus for getting the order," says Mr. Curry. "Our shop is a sales tool. Of course we must do the job correctly but the first impression customers get when they see us helps give us a time at bat to tell our manufacturing story."
There are other advantages that Clean Machine has reaped from its clean, well lit and spacious shop environment. Getting and keeping good people has been easier with an orderly shop. "We've found that 'Generation X' isn't interested in 'roughing it' at work," according to Mr. Curry.
"Given a choice between working here or in some other shop, we've found that we can attract people to our shop simply because of its appearance," says Mr. Jones. "We use our environment as a recruitment tool. It's such a simple thing but often it's not a priority for some of our competitors."
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Owners Mark Jones (left) and Ken Curry. As testament to Clean Machine's environment, Mr. Jones allows his infant daughter to play on the shop's floor. He's definitely not an irresponsible parent; rather, a very proud shop owner.
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Six pallets service the horizontal machining center. Tool capacity is 120 tools, which allows multiple jobs to he sequenced without changing tools. The cell's modular design makes adding machines OF pallets relatively simple.
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The Clean Machine partners eased into the machine shop business over a period of five months. In April, 1993, they started working at the machine shop part time, continuing full time in their soon-to-be-transferred jobs. In August, Clean Machine went full time.
"We started the business with a used CNC lathe," says Mr. Jones. "It had 5C collet, gang tooling and a Fanuc CNC. We purchased it with our own money and we kept it very busy."
Shortly after going full time, Clean Machine purchased a new vertical machining center. They looked at several knee mills with 2 and 3 axes but opted for a fully guarded, 3-axis, vertical CNC. "The automatic tool changer is what pushed us toward the machining center," recalls Mr. Jones.
Those first two CNC machines set the course for the company's future machine tool acquisitions. Granted, a CNC lathe and machining center aren't pushing the technology envelope but relative to where the shop was on its growth curve, these were some fairly sophisticated machine tools.
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A variety of work gets pumped through this shop. Specialties include producing parts from Teflon. Aerospace, electronics, food handling equipment, and medical equipment ore industries served by Clean Machine.
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WIPOne type of work-in-process that is very visible at Clean Machine is Teflon. Machining this stuff is one of their specialties. Drilling, tapping or milling this material is not easy.
According to company co owner, Mark Jones, machining Teflon is like machining Jello. It a semisolid material. When we drill a 2 inch diameter hole, a few hours later that hole may be 1.9 inches. It moves. The machining process takes many repetitive steps to get a part on spec."
That Teflon working process sitting around the shop is almost entirely semi machined work pieces that are "aging" for their next encounter with the machining center, when they will get one step closer to final size. Clean Machine uses a Mazak traveling column vertical machining center that's dedicated to machining this material. It's equipped with a special air delivery system in place of coolant, which is designed to keep both the work envelope and the work piece clean.
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There is work that Clean Machine turns down or refers to other shops. Never an easy thing for a machine shop to do, it's necessary for Mr. Curry and Mr. Jones to keep the business within the boundaries they have defined.
"We can't be all things to all people," says Mr. Jones. "We enjoy doing this work and try not to allow ourselves to grow too fast so we lose our competitive edge. Getting too big too fast isn't worth the longer term problems it would bring us."
Are We Having Fun?Is Clean Machine a model for other machine shops'? It's hard to say for sure. One thing is clear, they are doing some things right.
"What's attracting people to our shop is our capability to do the job and the obvious kick we get out of doing it," says Mr. Jones. "Our people have the power to create a better process, design and build a better tool, and modify a program to get more out of a machine. They are engaged and we feel that's the key element to this machine shop's future. We can provide the best tools to work with but unless we also provide an environment that encourages their best use, we're not going to succeed." So far, so good.
Reprinted from the March 1998
MODERN MACHINE SHOP Magazine and Copyright 1998 by Gardner Publications I,n c., 6915 Valley Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45244-3029. |
Flexibility in turning operations is afforded by this Mazak Dual Turn machine. Essentially two lathes in one, it con process one part complete by back turning on the second spindle, or it can process two parts at a time.
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