2018cnc6-7

34 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST June/July 2018 away from the traffic. In 1998 he put enough capital to- gether to open V & T Tooling in a small shop with a single Bridgeport mill. The business grew quickly as the titans of aerospace contracted directly with him for their tool- ing needs. Originally V & T specialized in tooling with a little CNC work on the side, but they’ve evolved over the years. Ninety-five percent of V & T’s clients are aerospace oriented and CNC machining has become an integral part of supporting the tooling contracts and inspection jobs. “Most of what we do is prototypes for aerospace,” tells Luke. “One and maybe two parts are 99% of the jobs we take in.” V & T Tooling manufactures everything from flight hardware and molds to fixtures that tower between their rafters. “We are ISO9001 and AS9100 Rev D certi- fied,” continues Luke. “We support most of the big boys in aerospace. SpaceX has been a customer for something like 15 years and we just added two more rocket compa- nies to our customer list last year. Customers like that we not only manufacture customized fixtures, but install them and do offsite inspections.” Laser tracker inspection work has become a large part of V & T Tooling’s business model. Luke describes the trackers as a mobile CMM with the ability to measure en- tire buildings. “We use the trackers to set all our bigger fixtures,” details Luke. “They measure off a laser beam and are extremely accurate.” Luke has seven of them that they The AGMA BDO 4223 Bridge Type Machining Center is V & T’s largest machine. It has 165” of X travel, 82” of Y travel, and 40” of Z travel. They designed a door system for it so they can open it up and run parts twice as long as the machine. They purchased it with the optional 90° head so they can machine multiple sides without disturbing the setup.