An Arnold Publication- Serving the Western Metalworking Industry Since 1981
From Trieste to Turning
How an Escapee from Communist Bulgaria Came to America and Built a Successful Turning Job Shop.
Story and photos by
C. H. Bush, editor
Jack Savadjan checking a part just off his new SL 25BMC turning center. He is very careful
about the machines he purchases, always looking for “high value for the dollar.”
He purchased the Samsung in August 2010.
The small car pulled up behind a line of vehicles waiting to cross into Trieste, Italy from Communist Yugoslavia. Inside the car, tool and die maker Garo Savadjan, an ethnic Armenian with Bulgarian citizenship sat nervously behind the wheel. Beside him in the passenger seat was his wife Lucy. Curled up asleep in the back seat was their five-and-a-half-year-old son, Jack.
As the cars moved forward, one by one, Garo noticed that the drivers ahead of him held up their green passports and shouted “Za Trieste,” Slavic for “To Trieste.”
Finally, it was Garo’s turn to pull up alongside the guard shack, in which sat a grossly overweight guard. Mimicking the other drivers, Garo thrust his green passport through the window and yelled, “Za Trieste.”
The guard looked at his car, first forward, then to the rear. He didn’t notice that Garo’s car had a Bulgarian license, and he apparently was too lazy to get up and check. Without realizing that Garo was in Yugoslavia illegally, he waved him on, opened the gate, and a moment later, Garo and his family were breathing the free air of Italy.
“That was 1970, and that’s how I came to America,” says Jack Savadjan, now owner-president of Whittier, CA’s Garo Tool and Die, Inc., a turning job shop that primarily produces fluid coupling components for the aerospace industry. “We only had permission to travel to Hungary, but with luck and some finagling we made it through Yugoslavia and into Italy. My parents left my 12-year-old sister behind as insurance that we would return to Bulgaria. It took over six years to reunite the family in the United States.”
Jack Savadjan sets up at the Samsung SL 25BMC control panel. Savadjan does all the programming for his company.
Entrepreneur at Heart
Even in Communist Bulgaria, where capitalism was virtually forbidden, Garo Savadjan was an entrepreneur.
“My dad was a tool maker and designer, trained in an old military-style school founded by the Germans,” says Jack Savadjan. “He worked his regular job, but he also did some work at home, where three generations of my family lived together. Dad was really good at making little devices, dies and things, so he would make little machines with a press and some small equipment he had in a little back shop. He made things like clasps for purses and even watch components. The whole family was involved. My mother was a first-class punch-press operator.”
But at the time Bulgaria was still a communist dominated country, which made it hard.
When Garo Savadjan arrived in the U. S. in the early 70’s, his first job was in New York for Swingline, the staple manufacturer. But, frugal by nature, he saved his money until he had enough to migrate to California.
“We packed up everything we had in a U-haul trailer and drove to California,” recalls Savadjan. “We landed in Hollywood where Dad had some friends from Bulgaria.”
After working as a tool maker for a few months, Garo’s entrepreneurial drive took off again.
“In 1978, dad opened a small shop in Norwalk,” recalls Jack. “It was my dad, my mom, and me working in 1,100 square feet with a tool room and a punch-press. Tool and die work did not pay well, so we went into CNC turning in the early ‘80s. We bought our first CNC lathe in 1980, an Ikegai FX20N for $65,000. Dad paid it off in less than three years. He always hated debt.”
Like Father, Like Son
Unlike many young people, who rebel against their father’s way of life, Jack Savadjan jumped into the machining business with both feet.
“My life as a teenager was the machine shop and high school,” he says. “Most of my summers were not surfing at the beach. Instead, I worked at the shop all summer, including weekends. I learned how to drill dies and cut form patterns. Dad was an expert grinder and wheel dresser, and I watched him prepare and dress grinding wheels. I learned to make dies the old-fashioned way, not with EDM or wire cut. We built the components and put them together, so I was doing a lot of milling, turning, cutting, the basic stuff, and assembling dies. Dad was a tough teacher, but I learned to do things the right way, for which I’m thankful.”
After high school Savadjan’s father urged him to go to college, so he did and eventually graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Cal State, Long Beach, where he met his wife.
“I continued participating in the shop even in college,” he says, “but after graduation, I worked for a brief time as an engineer at a company that made gas analyzers. But my heart was in the shop with my dad, so during the recession in the early ‘90s, I quit my job and joined dad full time.”
Close up view inside the Samsung SL 25BMC turning center. The system has
12 tool locations, a 25-hp drive motor.
A Family Business
Over the next two decades Garo Tool & Die progressed slowly and steadily, moving more and more into lathe work until turning represented 100% of its business.
“Dad continued working with me until he passed away in 2008,” Savadjan says, “but prior to that he allowed me to make more and more of the business decisions. He told me he was proud of me, and I was sure proud of him.”
Over the years the company made a couple of moves,
until finally in 2000 Garo Savadjan built a 14,000-sq-ft block building
“We use 10,000 square feet and rent out the rest,”
Savadjan says. “Dad believed in being financially conservative, and so do I. We don’t take unnecessary chances, which is why we’ve never had to lay off anyone during a recession. We pay cash for our machines, and we only buy machines we believe will give us the best service possible and the best value for our dollars. Right now we’re running an old Cincinnati Talon 210, a Mori Seiki SL300A, a Yang SL30, a Hwacheon Hi-Tech 200C, a Gildemeister 400 CTX Serie 2 and our latest acquisition, which is a Samsung SL 25BMC with live tooling. We bought the Samsung last August from Bill Bursik at Machinery Sales Company. We saw the machine at their open-house event and liked what we saw, and after some investigation, we made the purchase.”
Samsung SL 25BMC
One of the reasons Savadjan cites for purchasing the lathe is somewhat unusual.
“Samsung machines as a brand are fairly new, but I discovered that the company was building for Mori Seiki in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I’ve been very satisfied with both my Moris, an SL3H, replaced by the Samsung, and an SL300A that’s still going strong. Familiarity and confidence drew me to the
Samsung.”
Savadjan checked for other things, too, he says.
“I looked at the control. The operator panel has a logical layout, and the hardware is durable. I looked inside the machine to see how easy it is to set up, clean, and maintain. The high-speed 12-position turret is big with heavy-duty tool-blocks. I liked the large chip pan and coolant tank. The pan, tank, and chip conveyor assembly pull out easily for maintenance. The spindle has a 3” bar capacity, 3500 max rpm, and a 25-hp drive motor. It can take heavy cuts with ease but also light cuts without chatter.
“The most important things in a CNC are consistency and stability. The Samsung is only a few tenths of a thousand off every morning, and it predictably settles back within a few hours. Most machines are like this, but some may be off as much as two thousandths. Once a good machine settles down, it should run stably throughout the day, so you don’t have to watch it like a hawk. The Samsung has been performing well, and I expect it to last fifteen to twenty years, like my Mori Seikis.”
Jack Savadjan, left and Machinery Sales’ Bill Bursik discuss potential uses for Savadjan’s
newly acquired Samsung S-25 mill turn center. Other machines in the background
are a Yang, a Hwacheon, and a Gildemeister CNC lathe.
The Future in America
Now that the Savadjan family has built an established business with steady customers in the aerospace industry, where does he want to go from here?
“I hope to keep the business going and improving for a long time,” Savadjan says. “After my father passed away in 2008 I had to make many decisions. The Samsung is the first machine I bought without him. I’m about to place an order for another, this month.
“What’s most important now is to make sure my mother, who is nearly 82, has a comfortable retirement, and that my wife and my sister and her family are secure. I also have 6 employees who do good work and deserve good employment.”
“I guess the key to our family’s success is that we all stuck together. My sister, a nurse for 30 years, has done a great job keeping our parents healthy. My job is to make sure we are all financially secure, and that we make a positive contribution to society. That’s what Garo, my dad, would want. That’s what teamwork is really about.”
