Rego-Fix’s Center for Machining Excellence Promotes Collaboration

Machining is a collaborative process. Not only does it require a machine tool, but software, cutting tools, toolholders, tool presetting, workholding, coolant, metrology and more are also necessary to make parts. “All these parts have to come together to make a finished product, be it for the aerospace, medical or automotive industry,” noted Bill Obras, vice president of sales at Rego-Fix. “That's the only way they can work.” Complicating matters, most of these components are made by different companies. But the more these companies collaborate, the more machining processes can become easier, faster and more efficient for users.

This is the vision that drove toolholding supplier Rego-Fix to add a new Center for Machining Excellence (CME) to its facility in Whitestown, Indiana, just outside of Indianapolis. “We are trying to find a different approach to that collaboration, to bringing people together and making this more valuable for our customers,” Obras added.

The 12,000-foot space, which officially opened with a ceremony and open house on October 25, is designed for collaboration. The CME includes a showroom to exhibit how Rego-Fix’s toolholding technology works with technology from partner companies including Kitamura, Kern, Tornos, Fraisa, SolidCAM, Omega TMM, Blaser Swisslube and more.

“The combination of cutting tool partners and technical partners allow us to shape material into something that is desired and wanted, and it's all being connected right here through the CME,” said David McHenry, engineering and CME manager at Rego-Fix. A car from the Ed Carpenter Racing Indycar team (of which Rego-Fix is a technical partner) was on display at the facility, representing the types of parts that are produced by such technical collaboration.

In addition to the showroom and offices, the CME includes a 75-seat auditorium that can be used for presentations and demonstrations of technology from Rego-Fix and its partners. McHenry says the company will use the CME for distributor training sessions, as well as training targeted to specific industries such as medical and aerospace. The company also hopes to eventually use the facility for training apprentices. “It would benefit all of us, because as these young people learn, we want them to learn from experts,” Obras said.

Rego-Fix hopes that providing this physical space for collaboration will strengthen the manufacturing industry. “The whole is greater than the net sum,” Obras explained. “Our goal is to combine all these parts of what we do so that the resulting whole is more valuable, powerful, insightful and significant than all the individual parts by themselves.”