A few years back two problems slammed the silicon valley with an almost deadly one-two punch. First there was the giant sucking sound of most of the high-volume machining business rushing offshore. Second there was the post-911recession that took building vacancies in the valley from only 1,000,000 sq ft to nearly 100,000,000 sq ft in less than a year.

But for Joe Munich, president and founder of Santa Clara, CA’s High Speed CNC, Inc.—a job shop specializing in producing highly complex, close-tolerance parts for the aerospace, medical, semiconductor, recreation and other industries—the blows hurt, but were not fatal.

“Our survival was no accident,” he says. “We survived, and we’re now thriving, because basically, from the time I started this business in 1991, I did two things. I worked hard, and I saved my money. As a result, when the recession hit, I was able to hang on.”

Munich’s method of hanging on was simple, but required determination and a willingness to invest from his savings. He decided to do a complete overhaul of the way his company did business.

“To stretch my funds, first, I had to cut costs to as close to break even as possible,” he says. “That meant letting a few people go, but not many. We’ve always had a loyal staff of experienced employees, and I didn’t want to lose any of their experience. Next, I figured that I might as well use the slow time to finally get organized, to make my shop stand apart from the one down the street. That meant changes in our internal systems and changes in the way we cut metal.”

Two Steps to Survival

Munich says that his company had stayed busy almost from day one of its inception. As a result, all of his internal systems had grown more or less in reaction to need and not according to any specific plan.
“With the slowdown caused by the recession, I figured that now was the perfect time to get our internal systems running right. I wanted the best customers, who would pay top dollar for our work, so I went the ISO route. With a consultant coming over once a week, it took us about a year to implement it and get certified. It was expensive, but it’s been well worth it. We’re a different, better shop now that can give our customers the paper trail and the assurances they need. Having our ISO certification let’s customers know we have it together. They’re not afraid to do business with us. Our certification is a great selling point.”

Part two of Munich’s overhaul of his shop was a change in production philosophy.

“We were lucky in one way,” he explains. “We had a lot of repeat low-volume work. The problem was we were running it all on standalone machines, no automation. Setup time was killing us. We were like all the other shops running standalone machines. The mind set was op one, run them all out, op two, run them all out. But then you get to op three and discover you made a mistake on op one, and then you have to start over. I concluded that to keep on doing business like that was slow suicide. Which is why I made up my mind to change. I wanted to do my jobs in one setup, if possible. Some of my jobs had setup times of ten to twelve hours. I wanted to drastically reduce those setup times and turn around jobs faster. If the job down the street delivered in three weeks, I wanted to deliver in one. In today’s competitive marketplace, I believe that’s the only solution.”

New Goal

Munich’s states his new goal for his business in very simple terms.

“I believe that in order to survive you have to be able to make ten parts or less and make money at them,” he says. “And that was the goal I set for myself. I wanted a machine that would let me do that.”
The machine Munich settled on was a Mazak Variaxis 630-5X—a multi-tasking 5-axis vertical machining center with 120-tool capacity and a built-in dual pallet changer.

“I looked around at a lot of machines,” Munich says. “I went to tool shows, too, but the main thing was that the Mazak rep in my area, Dale Grant, took me around to a lot of shops and let me see how they operated. I saw what I wanted to do and, just as important, what I didn’t want to do. When he told me about the Variaxis, and I saw how it operated and what it could do, I said, ‘That’s the machine for me.’ Eight weeks after I placed the order, the machine was sitting on my floor.”

The Variaxis 630-5X

The Variaxis 630 5 axis VMC has a highly-rigid, built-in tilting rotary table, unique to the Variaxis series.

“The tilting table allows us to machine work pieces with complex contours and features in a single machine setup,” Munich says. “With the Variaxis I can machine five sides of a cube, then run the other side through automatically on the next pallet. The machine spindle virtually never stops running. Plus, it’s extremely accurate and is very fast. We’ve reduced cycle times somewhat over our standalone five-axis mill, but where the Variaxis shines is in setup.”

Munich purchased the machine with the optional dual pallet system and a 120-tool changer. The result has been major savings in setup and turnaround times.

“We were getting these jobs, little parts, but very complex with angled faces,” Munich says. “Setting up to run them took us anywhere from eight to twelve hours. It was a killer. But that was because we had only twenty-one tools on the standalones. We were constantly stopping, changing tools, stopping and changing. It was eating us up. On the Variaxis the same job can be set up in one to four hours. That’s big-time savings.”

Increased Productivity

Another area of savings with the dual-pallet Variaxis has been its ability to free up manpower for other tasks.

“You have to learn to plan out your jobs thoroughly on the Variaxis,” Munich says, “but once you do, the results are amazing. After you prove out your programming and fixturing concepts, the parts set up and run quickly the next time they’re ordered with a good part coming off the machine the first time. This can’t be done on a stand alone.”

Another advantage of the Variaxis, Munich reports, is that the machine doesn’t need tweaking.

“Once you set up the Variaxis, the machine gives you the exact same part, time after time,” he says. “With my other machines, I might get four or five hours of run time, but then we have to stop and tune them up again. Something falls out of tolerance. Then we’re down again. That never happens with the Variaxis.”

Munich has 16 people working 2 shifts, 4 of them on night shift.
“We run the Variaxis two shifts,” he says. “We’re producing better, higher quality parts now than ever before. We program parts during the day using our own proprietary programming software, plus we save the longer running parts to run at night. The main thing is to keep the Variaxis spindle turning, and we do.”

Automation Lifesaver

Munich believes that owning the Variaxis 630 has literally kept his business alive by allowing him to produce high-quality, very complex, low-volume work and still make money doing it.

“Basically the Variaxis has kept us in business,” he says. “It’s made me very competitive in high-dollar-value work. I have customers all over the country now, which tells me that I’m now competitive with anyone in the United States. That’s a great feeling.”

Munich says that his shop is a “a good case study in Mazak’s machining philosophy.”

“I’ve pretty much followed their principles and their guidelines,” he says. “Their philosophy is to get the part done in one operation, reduce the inventory, increase throughput and slash lead times. And now that’s my
philosophy, too.”

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