Finding the Right Tools for a Turning Shop

“I’m not a machinist by trade,” explains Will Fennell, founder of Xcelicut, a Latrobe, Pennsylvania-based machine shop. He was first introduced to machining while studying mechanical engineering. After graduating, he spent a few years in the power generation industry with General Electric before joining Kennametal. “The move to Kennametal re-exposed me to manufacturing, specifically machining,” he says.

During his time at Kennametal, Fennell had the idea to start a machine shop. “I started to see that there's a lot of opportunity to open a shop,” he says. “There’s a lot of work out there, and fewer shops to support the demand.” As he researched the market and the industry more, he noticed shop owners retiring without succession plans, leaving voids in the supply base. “I see it every day,” he says. “I'm getting emails about shops closing up and liquidating their assets, meaning their customers need to find new sources.” 

There are many factors to consider when starting a machine shop, from machines to tools to staffing. One of the most fundamental decisions: What kind of work will be the business’s specialty?  

Building a Business

In 2019, Fennell started Xcelicut with a three-axis milling machine and a lathe. “When I first opened, I didn't really have a niche in mind,” he says. “I would have quoted anything.” However, Fennell knew he wanted to focus on “simple automation that doesn’t require a lot of investment — things that are built into the machine.” The goal is to minimize downtime, primarily by running parts in one setup. This eventually led to a shift away from milling work in favor of turning. “We decided to focus on the lathes because it's more automation-friendly, more in line with that one-and-done mindset I started off with,” he explains. “Even if you have a five-axis mill, you are going to be able to finish very few parts complete. Most of the time you're going to have at least one secondary operation.”

Now, the company focuses on repeating orders and large batches of small, turned parts. Target part sizes are determined by the shop’s bar feeding capabilities (between 0.25 inch and 3.125 inches). According to Fennell, 75% of the shop’s work is between 500 and 2,000 pieces. Orders smaller than 500 pieces are less frequent, and typically consist of prototypes that become repeat work. The company is also moving into stocking parts for customers in order to run larger batches. “I’m being more selective about the work I quote,” Fennell says.

However, Fennell notes it’s difficult to build up a base of this work. “The same reasons it's hard to get your foot in the door are the same reasons that it's good, sticky work,” he explains. “Customers find suppliers that are dependable and provide a quality product on time, and they stick with them.” He says a few strategies have helped:

1. Be patient. “I've had a couple customers where it was over a year between making contact or becoming a qualified supplier and finally getting an order,” Fennell notes.
2. Be persistent. The long wait times between first contact and an order mean it’s crucial for shops to remain in contact with potential customers. “It's staying on top and following up,” he explains.
3. Be prepared. Fennell also notes that when a customer with repeat work does order parts from a new supplier, it’s typically because its current supplier dropped the ball. “You have to be ready to pounce on the opportunity, and you have to deliver.”

Machine Tools of the Trade

As Xcelicut has built up high-volume customers, its machine tools have evolved. The shop’s first lathe was a Haas ST20Y with a subspindle. “I've only ever owned lathes with subspindles, live tooling and Y-axes, because I want the part to come off done,” Fennell says.

Next, Fennell added two Lynxes from DN Solutions. “They were basically the same size lathe but with features that were a little more advanced and a little more geared towards the types of parts we are running,” he explains. Not only are these machines very robust, they also have a full C-axis on the subspindle, which enables more complex work on the subspindle, as well as a parts conveyor. “You can fit a lot more parts, especially for larger runs.”

The company’s latest lathe is a smaller Miyano it added when it started seeing more demand from customers for small, high-volume parts. It’s also the next step technologically for the business, as it’s designed from the ground up for higher-volume bar work. It has a very rigid spindle and ways as well as a subturret which enables users to run both turrets or both spindles at the same time. The Miyano also has superimposition capabilities, which enables both spindles to cut on the main turret simultaneously. “The subspindle follows the main turret,” Fennell explains. This feature is useful in a number of scenarios. For example, it’s useful when drilling similar features on both spindles, and it gives users more tool capacity on the subspindle, which can only hold three stick-type tools and three ID tools. “You could quickly run out of tool positions and put one on the main turret without losing the efficiency of running both spindles simultaneously,” he suggests.

“The Miyano has proven to be an excellent investment,” he notes. The shop has customers in the electrical, automotive and heavy machinery industries that need small, complex parts. “It's a challenge to run these parts on the larger-chuck machines, simply due to tool clearances and challenges with getting small tools in close to the chuck,” he explains.

Xcelicut has reduced cycle times on several parts by moving them from its other lathes to the Miyano. One recurring part’s cycle time was reduced by nearly 50%, from around two minutes to just over one minute. The Miyano is also the shop’s only machine with a bar feeder, so it has the most unattended machining capacity. (Xcelicut runs its other machines unattended for as long as possible, with one piece of barstock typically giving an hour or two of extra production. Fennell has plans to add bar feeders to the rest of the shop’s lathes.) “We've seen improvements in tool life and not having to make offsets as often,” he adds, “so it definitely lends itself more to unattended production.”

Tooling Up

As Xcelicut takes on more challenging jobs, it is exploring more advanced tooling options as well. Fennell describes one smaller part with a challenging boring operation. The shop had been using solid carbide boring bars, but tool life was low, and it wasn’t a quick-change tooling system, meaning operators had to frequently change the tool and touch it off.

Fennell began experimenting with an exchangeable boring system from Horn. “I tested it out and had a lot of success,” he says. In fact, tests were so successful that the shop switched over all of its small boring tools to the 5-mm 105 system and 11-mm 111 system from Horn. “These are both quick-change, indexable systems that offer a wide variety of inserts,” he explains. “We can use the same holder for boring, reaming, threading and a variety of other operations by simply changing the insert.”

The 105 system, which has through-tool coolant capabilities, has improved tool life by 20-30%, according to Fennell. “It’s very repeatable in both diameter and the length,” he notes. And tool changes now take less than a minute, compared to five or ten minutes for the solid carbide boring bars. The time savings is compounded when the operator is just changing out a worn boring bar. Previously, someone had to take it out and touch the tool off in the Z-axis. This step isn’t necessary for the Horn system. “When the tool wears, you take it out, you put the new one in and it's ready to go. It's repeatable to a few tenths,” he explains. “It saves a lot of time.”

The 111 system has replaced solid carbide boring bars in larger boring applications up to 0.75 inch. Unlike the 105 system, this one has changeable tips that can handle inserts for other machining operations, such as threading. “Again, they have a really wide variety of styles, and it's extremely repeatable,” Fennell says. According to him, the previous solid carbide boring bars cost just under $70 and lasted roughly a day. The new system uses $25 inserts, each of which lasts three days. “It's a huge difference,” he concludes. “It's one-third the price, and we’re getting three times the tool life.”

A challenging drilling operation also prompted Xcelicut to look at drills from Mikron. The shop was struggling to drill a small, deep hole in one of its parts. “We were having no success,” Fennell says. “We were just breaking drills like crazy.” A tooling distributor suggested trying Mikron’s CrazyDrills, and Fennell says it has been a “game-changer.” Tool life on the Mikron drill is over 1,000 parts, compared to 50 for the previous drill. “And we didn't have to follow up with a reamer or anything,” he adds. “We were able to just drill it to size.” He also praises their ability to break chips in tough materials, especially as the shop has been machining more exotics, including nickel 200, Kovar and Monel.

Granting Requests

Xcelicut has also taken advantage of several grants and programs to help grow its business. One example is its apprenticeship program. The company currently has one apprentice, who was a co-op in high school and joined full-time after graduation. Fennell is using several different resources for the apprenticeship, including an accredited program from the Pittsburgh chapter of the NTMA and funds through a grant from the Workforce and Economic Development Network of Pennsylvania (WEDnetPA), an alliance of Pennsylvania educational providers that’s focused on workforce training within the state. “I was able to cover roughly 80% of the cost of his apprenticeship with that program,” he says.

Grants were also instrumental in the shop’s ISO 9001 certification. Xcelicut received a grant from local economic development agency Catalyst Connection that covered 50% of the cost of preparing for the certification. “That saved us almost $5,000,” Fennell says. “It doesn't cover the actual cost of certification, but it covers basically any cost for the project to get certified.” This included costs such as calibration, but primarily went to a consultant who helped the company put together its quality management system. “Basically, we just had to take what we were doing and put it into a nice, formal set of documents,” he explains. With the help of the consultant, Xcelicut achieved its certification within five months. Fennell says ISO certification has given the company a framework for being more process-oriented, and will open doors to more high-volume, repeat work from larger customers.

Finding grants and other programs as a small- or medium-sized manufacturer can be challenging, so Fennell recommends reaching out to organizations that are dedicated to helping these businesses, especially local Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) organizations and local nonprofits that focus on small- to medium-sized businesses and workforce development initiatives. “Doing your own research takes a long time,” he says, but these organizations are there to help. Fennell also highly suggests connecting with trade organizations, such as the NTMA and PMPA, which can help put manufacturers in touch with these resources. Additionally, he says networking has been instrumental in finding some of these opportunities. He found out about the ISO certification grant after meeting a representative from Catalyst Connection at a networking event. “He knew immediately the grant that we could use,” Fennell says. “He knew what applied, so it cut down on the amount of time and effort that I had to provide.” Fennell wants other manufacturers to know about these resources and take advantage of them. “It's not just for the large companies that have dedicated resources for finding these grants,” he says. “These partners give you the same access and bandwidth to find these opportunities.”

Getting Bigger by Going Smaller

Fennell wants to grow the company by going smaller — in terms of part size. As his customers request smaller parts, he plans on adding Swiss turning capabilities, but is currently having to outsource some work or find workarounds to produce other parts on larger machines. “There are so many challenges you don't think about until you run into them,” he notes.

For example, the shop recently ran a part that was 0.125-inch in diameter and 0.125-inch long from 0.25-inch barstock. “In order to maintain rigidity, the stickout from the chuck had to be smaller than the width of our cutoff bar, meaning we had to pull the bar out with the subspindle and then push it back in to the main chuck after parting off, adding extra time to the cycle,” he says. “On a Swiss-type machine, you wouldn't have that.”

The shop also ran into issues when ejecting this part. “We were losing parts and quickly realized there was more than one issue,” he explains. “The ejector was firing some of the parts over the parts catcher and into the machine, and the ones that did make it in the basket were falling into the space on the side of the conveyor.” The shop developed a custom ejector to solve this issue and installed a chute to prevent the parts from getting caught in the cracks on either side of the conveyor belt. “On most Swiss machines these issues have already been thought of and solutions are built in,” he says.