October  •  November 2005 • Vol. XXIV No. 1 • An Arnold Publication

Home Page

Turning up the Profits
How a Successful Tier 2 Job Shop
Slashed Cycle Times 10-30% by Switching Cutting Tools.

Story and photos by C. H. Bush, editor

Sometimes being set in your ways is a good thing, because like a useful habit, it frees your time for things that require your undivided attention. On the other hand, being willing to stop now and then to look and listen to new ideas even when you’re not sure it’s necessary to do so, can lead to new avenues of profit.

This was definitely case for Larry Long, founder-president of Temecula, CA’s Long Machine, Inc., a successful tier-2 machining job shop producing parts for such customers as Parker Hannifin, Boeing, Airbus and Smiths Aerospace. The company occupies a modern, 15,000 sq ft building and employs 20 people working two shifts.

“I like to find a solution and stick with it,” says Long, who founded his company in 1979. “When I find good people, I stick with them. When I find good equipment and vendors I stick with them, too. Over the years I’ve found so many advantages to working this way, it has become a way of life for me and my company. But, I also believe you can’t stand still and let the world pass you by.”

Long has never made drastic moves in his life or in his business, but prefers a steady, reasoned approach to change.

“After high school, I spent seven years in one company, and then seven years in another one learning my trade,” he says. “But when I was ready to make a move into business for myself, I did it. I rented a small space, bought a knee mill and went to work for myself.”

Cutting Tool Habits Die Hard

One of the habits Long formed while working at his second job, a company called Pick Machine, was to find a cutting tool supplier that could provide all the tools he needed and buy only from them.

“I won’t say who the supplier was,” he says, “but I’ll tell you this. They make good tools that served me well for all the years I’ve been in business.A lot of shops you visit will have five or ten different brands of inserts in their tool crib. I don’t believe in doing that.”

One reason Long avoids using multiple suppliers is the inefficiency that can result.

“Look,” he explains. “When you have all those tools, the operator goes to the tool crib or looks in the tooling drawer, and he won't know which insert will work best for his job. There are so many different varieties of everything that the operator wastes a lot of time and energy trying to find one best insert or grade for his job, and usually there’s no documentation around that’ll tell him what to use. So my strategy has been to use one good company’s products. That way every one knows what grade to use, and we avoid the confusion.”

Long generally seeks to find “universal” tools that can be used on a broad variety of applications, instead of searching for the perfect cutting for a given job.

“When you do it my way, you may sacrifice a little bit on cycle times here and there,” he says, “but I believe you make up for it in overall efficiency. Of course, you can spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect cutting tool for each job, but when you finish, the question is, can you still use that tool for something else? Or is it just going to sit on a shelf and collect dust until another perfect application comes along?”

Long has tested a lot of different cutting tools, both milling and turning, over the years, but so far he always comes back to the same attitude.

“We’ve wasted a lot of time comparing inserts from all the big companies,” he says. “Just about everyone you can imagine has wanted us to test their inserts to see whether or not we can slice off a bit from cycle times or get a little better quality. And we have done that testing, but until six months ago it didn’t pay off for us.”

Switching Horses

After 36 years of total loyalty to the products of one cutting tool manufacturer, Long finally decided to make a switch to another brand.

“Let me tell you, we didn’t do it lightly,” he says. “It took time to convince me that I should switch, but in the end I did, and now I’m glad.”
The company that Long finally switched over to was Ingersoll and even then, the switch was against his own cynicism that he could find something better.

“We had this stainless steel part,” he recalls. “It was heat treated a little bit, but not really hard, maybe 40 Rockwell. We were turning at 350 surface speed with our usual insert at a twelve to fifteen thousandths feed rate. Then the Ingersoll guy came in and gave me a sample pack with three of their tools and suggested we try the CNMG-432 tool. I hadn’t known Ingersoll made turning tools, but he said they’d had them for about three years.”

Long decided to give the tool a try, he says, and was pleasantly surprised at the result he got.

“The Ingersoll tool kicked us up to 450-500 surface speed and a feed rate of sixteen to eighteen thousandths. I was surprised, because the tool worked so well. It took a little bit deeper depth of cut. And the chips were breaking really nicely. Overall it cut our cycle time on the part by about 30 %.”

But Long’s cynicism didn’t fly away with one success.

“The tool worked really great,”he says, “but I was thinking, ‘Yeah, right, but what else can it do?”

Long says they wrote down the insert number for that particular job and put it in the book for the setup sheet.

“I don’t like special inserts,” he says, “but this one worked so well, we decided to do it just for this job.”

Testing Ingersoll

According to Long, the Ingersoll salesman went away, but left him with a few sample inserts.

“I was definitely skeptical,” he says. “I figured it was going to be the same old thing, but we decided to try the insert on another job anyway.”
Another rough turning job came up and Long decided to give the insert another try.

“The job was a different type of 15-5 and it hadn’t been heat treated like before, so I thought it might have a different performance, but it didn’t,” he recalls. “It performed really well, I thought, ‘That’s interesting.’ So we tried it on a rough boring application and the Ingersoll worked better on that one, too. So now, I’m saying, ‘Okay, Ingersoll is cutting a lot better than our other inserts. We’re getting 10-30% reduction overall on our cycle times, the quality is as good or better and the insert prices are less, so maybe I’ll just have to rethink my position.’”

After completing his tests, Long finally decided he had found another company with universal cutters that gave him better performance than he had gotten previously.

“Six months ago, we made the switch,” he says, “so now we’re an Ingersoll shop. They have a really broad line of milling and turning tools, so we won’t have to go shopping if we ever need something special. But as for me changing the way I like to do business, I haven’t. I’m still set in my ways when it comes to giving our customers high quality parts, on-time delivery and fair prices. Plus, we’re still going to be a one-vendor shop for cutting tools but now that vendor is Ingersoll.”

More About Long Machine, Inc.

Long Machine has been audited and approved by many aerospace and commercial prime contractors and has supplied aircraft, aerospace, and oil tool industries with machined parts since 1980. Currently, the company has a long-term rating of Silver Supplier for quality parts and on-time delivery with a goal of achieving a Gold status.

The company operates more than 25 pieces of CNC equipment, including turning centers, 4-axis mills, grinding machines, engine lathes, gun drills and a Sunnen hone.

The company operates an established quality management system compliant with ISO 9000, AS 9100, D1-9000 and MIL-I-45208. It has more than 10,000 sq ft for manufacturing and assembly, and over 2000 sq. ft. for engineering, production, and administrative departments.

—30—