CNC West Oct Nov Web

44 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST October/November 2018 It was a few years after becoming Automatic Special- ty’s president that Nate took stock of where he envisioned the company going. He began to dread winning bids with 6 or 8 operations because of the sheer time and effort re- quired to run it. “The parts ran great on the Brownies,” tells Nate. “But I started to look at some of the parts as more a burden then anything else. I knew that I had to move forward with technology and automation so I could free up some time to run the business.” Nate’s dad was an old school machinist, content with how they ran parts. He never considered moving away from manual machines. He also hated computers. “My dad loved playing solitaire in his office,” jokes Nate. “That was literally the only thing he used a computer for. He was not a fan, but I wanted to see if CNC would benefit the shop.” Nate began his search for CNC machine tools, ulti- mately buying a few older machines and learning to pro- gram by reading CNC Programming Handbook: A Com- Automatic Speciality Co is family owned and operated screw machine shop, manufacturing specialty hardware; nuts, bolts, screws, and washers. For decades they’ve relied on the accuracy and reliability of their Brown & Sharpe single-spindle Ultramatic screw machines. After 75 years and millions and millions of parts they have purchased two new CNC Swiss style machining centers. All the parts requiring more than one op are now going on the new Ganesh SL20Y2 machines. Parts that were taking 5 or 8 ops are now being run in a single operation on the Ganesh, giving Nate finished parts right off the machine. Until recently Automatic Specialty Co. was an all manual shop. (left) Employees hand knurl hundreds of gun barrels a day. (Right) The ”Brownies” served the company well for many years, and continue to run the simple parts requiring only one operation.