Garden Grove, CA’s TL Machine was founded 15 years ago by three Vietnamese brothers who knew nothing about machining when they started. But they definitely knew enough to turn to someone who did—a young man named Daniel Nguyen (pronounced ‘Win’). Since that time, through hard work, imagination and a clear vision of the future, Nguyen has guided the brothers and the company to achieve an enviable success. At present he carries the unlikely title of president-assistant, technical support programmer, though in practice he serves as general manager and long-term planner.

“When we started, there were only the three brothers and me working part time,” says Nguyen. “The brothers had envisioned the company to be a manual machine shop, but I told them that if they wanted to grow, to expand, we would have to turn to CNC machining. They agreed and bought a used 1982 model Kitamura VMC, which I set up and programmed for them to operate before I went to work at my regular job. It’s amazing how far we’ve come since those days.”

Just how far have they come?

“Well, back then we only did job-shop machining,” Nguyen says. “Today, most of our work is contract manufacturing. Back then we had four of us. Today we have 80 employees, and we’re located in our own 40,000 square-foot building. Back then we had one used CNC machine. Today we’re running thirty or more advanced-technology CNC machines. Three years ago we had 40 employees, and our annual sales were about three million dollars. Today, our sales are more than triple that, and we’re shooting for twenty to twenty-five million in five years. We’re all amazed at the kind of opportunities this country offers.”

Sales Explosion

The sudden explosion in sales growth began three years ago when Nguyen finally gave up his day job and joined TL Machine full time.

“I had been working for a Fortune 500 company as a tool and die maker and in management,” he explains, “and I had learned how management in big companies think and how they look at their equipment and vendors. So, when I came to TL Machine full time, I told the owners that it was time for us to move from being a simple job shop and do whatever it took to become a contract manufacturer.”

The owners agreed, and very soon TL Machine got a large long-term contract making more than 100 different parts for an aerospace company.

“The problem was that the parts were all low volume, requiring three to five different operations each,” Nguyen says. “The average order was for five pieces, so the queue times and setup times were killing us on our standalone vertical machines. The customer wanted fast delivery, sometimes overnight, so it didn’t take me long to realize we needed a completely new, very flexible system to hold and produce those parts.”

The Horizontal Solution

Nguyen’s answer was to seek out and find a “total” system that would eliminate queue times, slash his setup times and give him the flexibility to economically produce small runs on demand.

“The solution, of course, was to go to some kind of palletized horizontal machining system,” he says. “I also needed some kind of quick-change workholding system that would allow us to cut setup time down to seconds.”

Nguyen needed to solve the problem quickly if he was to meet his customer’s delivery requirements.

“I looked at several horizontal machining systems,” he says, “but in the end I settled on two 20,000-rpm Mori Seiki NH4000 DCG systems with 120 tools, built-in touch probes and six pallets each. I decided on two six-pallet systems, instead of one bigger pallet system for a couple of reasons. First, the bigger pallet system took up more floor space. Second, with our delivery times so critical, I needed some redundancy. If you have one pallet system, and it goes down for any reason, you’re out of business. With two separate systems, that problem goes away. It’s a lot safer.”

The workholding package Nguyen settled on was a Chick Workholding System 5 package designed specifically for the Mori Seiki NH4000.

“The System 5 package includes standard, dual-station QuickChange machinable jaws, as well as all the hardware needed for installation,” he says. “With this system our changeover is so fast it’s almost not worth talking about. The main thing is that we can changeover in seconds and yet keep our tolerances from setup to setup. Repeatability of the system is great.”

Why He Chose the Mori Seiki

Nguyen’s specifications for a horizontal system were fairly simple.

“I needed as much machine as I could get for the price,” he says. “I needed a machine that would deliver very high quality parts. Machine footprint mattered, too, but one of the biggest factors was reliable support from the distributor. There were a lot of great machines I looked at, but in the end, we went with Ellison Technologies, because of their support. Ellison agreed to form a strategic partnership with us, which means we can depend on them to help us solve problems we can’t solve ourselves. In turn we are working to form strategic partnerships with our customers, too.”

Results of the Switch

Nguyen says the switch from vertical to horizontal machining for his contract customers has been more successful than he ever imagined.

“We kept that aerospace contract, of course,” he says, “but the total results of the switch have been amazing. With our verticals on complex parts, we were lucky to get 40% uptime on our spindles. With our horizontals, we’re getting 90% spindle uptime almost without variation. The machines run so constantly we don’t have time to shut them down for maintenance.”

There has been another bonus resulting from the change over to horizontals, Nguyen says.

“We became so efficient and competitive that our business has become mostly contract manufacturing with our job shop work almost as a sideline. Today our contracts are about 30% with customers in the medical device industry, 40% with the aerospace industry, and the balance commercial. Our contracts range from one to five years.”

Lights Out Goal

Nguyen believes that TL Machine’s future is to become more and more automated and to eventually shift to 5-axis machining.

“We have two five-axis machines now,” he says, “but we’ll have more in the future. We’re already running 24/7 with one attended shift and two unattended. For the unattended shifts we have people assigned to periodically visit the plant to check on the machines. I believe that to stay competitive in the future, we have to become more and more automated. At TL Machining we think in terms of long-term solutions, not just this equipment or that. Even so, considering the incredible difference our Mori Seiki horizontals have made, they’re definitely one of our best long-term solutions ever.

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