2018cnc6-7

38 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST June/July 2018 V & T Tooling has YCM, Mori, CNC Matters and AGMA mills and is quite pleased with their current capa- bilities. “I’ve been buying a lot of machines lately through Will Atkinson at CNC Matters,” tells Luke. “His service is great, and the machines are great. We linked up with Will when he did a retrofit on an older horizontal boring mill for us a few years ago. He mentioned that he also sold new machines and we bought a smaller AGMA machine from him. It worked out pretty well and we bought more. Our largest machine is an AGMA BDO 4223 bridge type ma- chining center we bought a few years ago fromWill. It is a beast of a machine with 165” of X, 82” of Y, and 40” of Z.” Luke and his team redesigned a custom door system that can open up to run parts twice as long as the machine. With a max table load of 22,000 lbs the BDO-4223 can handle long aerospace structure parts and heavy mold bases. It has a 50 taper spindle with a geared transmission and through the spindle coolant system. They purchased it with the optional 90° head so they can machine multiple sides without disturbing the setup. Luke looks for a lot of torque and rigidity in every ma- chine he buys. “We are known for killing spindles,” laughs Luke. “Not every machine can keep up with us. We run through hardened material such as inconel, titanium, and aircraft steel at the same rate other shops do aluminum. Will recommended the CNCM-6334-VG to us because he knows we get after on every job we run and it is a great size for what we do (63” of X, 34” of Y, and 27.5” of Z).” The CNCM-6334-VG has a max table load of 6000 lbs and weighs almost 40,000lbs. It also has the 50 -taper spindle with a dual speed transmission and through spindle cool- ant system. “The dual chip augers and rear mounted chip conveyor can take as many chips as we throw at it,” contin- ues Luke. “My dad instilled in me the old school mentality of if chips aren’t flying we are not making money. More chips equals more money.” Even though V & T Tooling is a prototype shop spindle time is at a premium, and speed is king. “A single part might have over a 100 hours of stan- dard speed machine work in it,” explains Luke. “I can do it in way less time. My price is lower and my profit is higher. A lot times I’m bidding on a job against someone who has never run a machine and just sits in an office calculating inches. My experience in the shop sets us apart on a lot of job estimates and my machines have to deliver on my expectations.” The next big step for V & T Tooling will be a larger workspace. Having outgrown their current building Luke is hoping to double the square footage. “We’ve been en- tertaining a move for a while, but with the cost associated to move the equipment we haven’t done it,” details Luke. “All our machines are on 3’ deep reinforced pads and it isn’t cost effective to move them. An identical building 2 doors down is for sale and we really want it.” The building would allow them to move welding, inspection and fabri- cation to the new locations without much of a hassle. “It will free up a lot of the shop space in this building to add more CNC and it will allow me to take on larger fabrica- tion and weld jobs in those departments. We have the in- frastructure in place; we just don’t have the physical shop space to take on some of the jobs I have to turn down.” “We manufacture things people have never built be- fore,” concludes Luke. “This makes for an exciting work day, but also is limiting when it comes time to finding new hires. A production machinist won’t cut it here for very long, you love it here or you hate it. We have 28 great people on staff right now that love it. We run 24 hours a day five days a week. When I interview prospects I tell them how you might be working with Aluminum in the morning, Titanium at lunch and Delrin at the end of the day. It is really all over the place. It is never a dull day at V & T Tooling and that’s how we like it.” Left - Luke recently began the process of upgrading his work holding solutions and bought over a dozen of the latest Kurt vises. Right – Jesus Limon VTs General Manger is checking a part via the FaroArm. He is utilizing Verisurf software to check the item to a 3D cad model.