Fortune Manufacturing, Inc., Chino, CA, is a successful machining job shop that barely noticed the 2001 recession. In fact, since February 2000, the company has grown steadily, purchasing another 7,500 sq ft building, bringing its total facility to about 28,000 sq ft.

“We also have added some powerful new equipment,” says owner-president David Miltenberger. “In the past five years we’ve purchased a new Quantum 12,000 rpm machining center and three 15,000 rpm, 5-axis Cincinnati V5-2000 machining centers. Previously our fastest spindle was 6,000-rpm, but changing times and demands have forced us to move to more advanced technology. The bottom line is, if you want to stay competitive, you have to keep your equipment up to date.”

The company’s customer base is exclusively in the aerospace industry, yet it missed the recession altogether.

“That’s because most of our work was primarily military,” he says. “After 9-11 we really weren’t affected. We were doing work for the F18, the C17, the Harrier, those kinds of projects. We only did a little bit of the commercial work, and after 9-11 the commercial side is what got hit hardest. We remained stable.”

Added Competition

The cutbacks on the commercial side did have its affects on the company, however.

“In order to survive, a lot of the people doing commercial work came over to the military side,” Miltenberger says. “And they were hungry, which forced us to find ways to cut costs and increase our efficiency. Our advantage was that they were used to doing long-runs, higher volumes, where on the military side we do only short runs with a lot of set ups. Forty-two parts in a year is production work for us. The way we work on the military side requires a different type of mentality on how you machine parts and the way you serve your customers. One thing the competition did for us, though, is make us rethink our equipment. We no longer could stick with slower spindles, which in the past were fine for low-volume work. The competition forced us to move into high-speed machining.”

Programming Backlog

Fortune Manufacturing’s continued growth in military aerospace brought with it another set of problems.

“About two years ago we added quite a few new projects from Boeing and other companies,” Miltenberger says. “They were virtually all short runs of ten to fifteen parts. The result was we suddenly found ourselves with twenty-five or thirty programs queued up, waiting for a programmer. At the time we only had one full-time programmer, so we had to find a solution fast.”

Over the years Miltenberger had worked off and on with Gary Joy, a freelance designer and programmer who had worked from his home since 1983.

“Because of the cutbacks after 9/11, Gary was amenable to coming to work full time for us,” says Miltenberger. “He is an experienced machinist and programmer. I knew his work and felt he would be a perfect fit for us.”

Mastercam Specialist

Before bringing Joy on board, Fortune used only NCL, Catia and Unigraphics software to produce parts.

“Those packages were dictated by our customers,” Miltenberger explains. “So when we hired Gary, we discovered a minor roadblock. Gary’s expertise is exclusively in Mastercam, so we had a choice. Lose a few month’s productivity by sending him to school to learn NCL and Unigraphics or buying a seat of Mastercam and putting him to work overnight. We had parts to cut, so that’s what we did. You might say we hired the man and Mastercam at the same time. It has proven to be a good decision.”

“I immediately went to work producing programs,” Joy adds. “We had a new project for Boeing, Huntington Beach, which had a lot of onesie parts. That meant a lot of programming. We also had some Northrup JSF parts. Because of David’s decision to buy Mastercam, I was able to hit the ground running.”

Mastercam Part of Software Team

Miltenberger says that his software setup is geared specifically to his customers’ demands.

“You have to understand what the customer gives us,” he says. “They'll give us Unigraphic or Catia or IGES files. Some of our parts have to be programmed in Catia because the customer wants them programmed and inspected in a native Catia format. Neither Mastercam nor NCL can do that. So that's where Catia comes in. We also have a seat of Unigraphics because the customer demands parts programmed in that software. Basically, whatever the customer wants, that what he gets.”

“Mastercam fits in very well here,” Joy says. “Military aerospace customers are moving toward Catia, but Mastercam is very flexible. I can take a Catia model and convert it and still use Mastercam for
programming.”

“And then we still can inspect that program against the native Catia model on our CMM,” adds Miltenberger. “There really are no parts we can’t program on Mastercam. As Gary said, it’s very flexible.”
By hiring Joy and Mastercam together, Fortune Manufacturing not only quickly whittled down the programming backlog, but was able to deliver quality parts fast enough to win a Boeing Supplier of the Year award.

“That wasn’t exclusively because of Mastercam,” says Miltenberger, “but it definitely helped. “When Gary is working with Mastercam, he’s fast. They both played a role in helping us win that award.”

Still Working with Blueprints

With all the advances seen in software and computers in the last few years, Joy says the company still receives jobs to make parts from blueprints.

“We got a thousand-piece job from Boeing,” he says, “and we had to work from a blueprint. No 3-D models. The project had to be constructed in sections. One of the main things I like about Mastercam is that it is very quick for me to draw and to dimension. Mastercam solids are fantastic so I can create tooling very quickly. Another big timesaver with the software is it’s associativity and its ability to regenerate a program with the click of a button. We often get changes in part design, but with Mastercam, making changes is a breeze. You make a drawing change, click a button, and it regenerates the whole thing in under a second. It’s amazing really.”

Along with the seat of Mastercam, Miltenberger purchased a maintenance agreement for the software.

“That maintenance agreement gives me outstanding technical support and all the latest software upgrades,” Joy says. “Right now we’re using Mastercam X, which has some really nice upgrades and which is the first fully Windows-compliant version of the software. It is icon driven, but I’m an old-timer, and I like my hot keys, which I still can do. I also talked to tech support and learned to build an interactive right-click menuing interface. The software is very adaptive to my needs.”

And Next?

Where does Fortune go from here?

“Our goal now is to increase efficiency,” Miltenberger says. “Right now our buildings are packed with machines, so we’re going for increased productivity. But we have room to grow our capacity. We can add more people on the night shift, and we’re looking to buy a new high-speed SNK horizontal with a nutating head. We’ll take out some of the older machines and bring in new high-speed, 5-axis systems. There are a lot of exciting things still ahead of us. Gary said Mastercam is very adaptive. Well, so are we. We’ll do whatever it takes to serve our customers.”

 

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