President and 3rd generation owner Bill Jordan, CNC Machining Manager Gino Abishalom, VP/GM Jamie Lerma
For 75 years, Phoenix, AZ manufacturer ATD Precision Manufacturing has been in the same location just west of Skyharbor airport. Otis Jordan opened Allied Tool and Die Company in 1951 making jigs and fixtures for the Garrett Corporation. What began in a small 900 sq.ft. garage-type structure with a single mill and a few guys has blossomed into a 35,000+ sq.ft.. manufacturing oasis spread between three buildings. Otis’s grandson Bill Jordan now heads the company of nearly 100 employees as they hit their diamond anniversary.
Bill took over operations in 2015 and did a rebrand that changed the way they looked at manufacturing. “My dad, Mike, ran the company for 15 years after my grandfather passed,” tells ATD President Bill Jordan. “Dad put his engineering experience to work and expanded capabilities by adding a sheet metal and laser department. After he was gone my mom, Bridget, took over for the next 15 years. With her at the helm we added 4th and 5th axis machining centers, another building, and experienced a boom in sales.” You see plenty of machine shops, and there’s no shortage of sheet metal businesses in the valley, but it’s rare to find a company that excels at both. ATD’s sales are split roughly evenly between the two disciplines, with a solid overlap of jobs that require both. “Our customers are mostly plane, rocket, defense, and medical companies,” explains VP/GM Jamie Lerma. “You flew here on a plane that has our parts in it. If you’ve seen a Falcon rocket lift off, you’ve seen our parts. If you know someone who’s had a heart bypass, they have our parts. We have a wide base of clients, but they all share the same need: precision parts delivered on time. I’ve been here almost 20 years, and that’s how we’ve always done things — but in the last 8 we do it even better.”
Left – ATD’s Eagle iNspire 12kw Flat Pattern Laser is 15 times faster than the two lasers it replaced. It has 6-G acceleration and an ultra-fast pallet changer swaps sheets in as little as 9 seconds. Center – ATD have a Han’s W3525T 2kW, large-format, 5-axis 3D laser that’s large enough to drive a Pontiac Solstice into. It was purchased for a rocket manufacturing company’s specific rounded part needing holes and a cut profile. Right – The Mundt GT-1000 is a 5-axis 2kw cutting & 500 watt laser-welding system is suited to formed/3D sheet metal parts that need precision trimming after forming and then get seam-welded into an assembly.
Jamie touts 2018 as the moment ATD really hit its stride. “We changed our name to ATD Precision Manufacturing because it was more in tune with what we were actually doing,” describes Jamie. “We hadn’t sold a die in forever, and Bill figured it was time our name reflects the advanced manufacturing capabilities we have. 2018 was also when we gained a large rocket customer and started to hear yes more often from management. Instead of a flat no, it became ‘I’m 90% no but convince me otherwise.’ That was a real turning point for us — we hit our stride, going from a good shop to a great shop.” Together, ATD ownership and management decided the way forward started with reinvestment in the newest technologies available across every department. It was also when ATD put their trust in CNC Pros like never before. “For many years — many, many years — there was no such thing as preventative maintenance,” laughs Jamie. “A machine got fixed when it broke, but that was about it. Like a lot of us in the valley, we had a shop full of reliable Matsuuras, a couple Mori’s, but they were aging out and needed some love.” “We partnered with CNC Pros to do all the maintenance on every machine in the shop,” expands Bill. “They came in for a year straight and did one machine a week, and by the time they got back around to the first one, it was ready for service again. That’s when we knew we’d legitimately found a partner we could count on and trust moving forward. With that commitment, we began the retooling process, starting with the brands they sold, like Kitamura. My dad always said, ‘Invest in yourself when times are slow, because when times get fast, you’ll never find the time, and you’ll never catch up.’ So, I committed to a million-dollar-a-year spend for upgrading our equipment. We haven’t always hit that goal, but it put us in the great position we’re in today.”
At the time, the most advanced milling center they had was a 4-axis DMG Mori NH5000 with a pallet pool. They tossed every job they could onto that machine because of the speed, tool capacity, lights-out capability, and of course the accuracy it offered. But it was really too large for the majority of the grape-to-cantaloupe-sized parts they produced. The Kitamura Supercell was the first of many advanced manufacturing centers to arrive over the last eight years. “The original Kitamura we purchased from CNC Pros was a Kitamura Supercell-300G, a 5-axis horizontal machining center with 20 pallets,” tells Jamie. “For high-precision job shops like ours chasing tighter tolerances and leaner labor budgets, it delivered exactly the kind of unattended flexibility we needed.” That flexibility comes down to the machine’s layout: a 20-station automatic pallet changer that can grow to 80 stations, and a 174-tool matrix magazine that can expand to 314, let ATD stage a wide mix of small-to-medium, highly complex parts and walk away for the night. The horizontal architecture helps too — chips fall clear of the cutting zone instead of piling up on the part, which means better surface finishes, longer tool life, and faster changeovers than a comparable vertical machine. Positioning accuracy holds to ±0.001mm across the full stroke, with repeatability down to ±0.0005mm, tight enough to keep aerospace and medical work well within spec run after run. Each pallet even carries its own IC chip, feeding job data straight into the scheduling menu so operators can see what’s queued up at a glance. It’s the kind of machine built to run unattended without anyone losing track of what’s on deck.
The Kitamura Supercell-300G is a flexible a 5-axis horizontal machining center. That flexibility comes down to the machine’s size and layout. With a compact footprint, 20-station automatic pallet changer, and 174-tool matrix magazines lets ATD stage a wide mix of small-to-medium, highly complex parts and walk away for the night. Each pallet even carries its own IC chip, feeding job data straight into the scheduling menu.
ATD added a Grob G352 5-axis, a DMG Mori NMV3000 5-axis, a Kitamura 3XVT (5-axis), multiple SMEC SL2500ASY mill/turn centers, a Hyundai FS SE2200LSY mill/turn, multiple Kitamura 4XV 4-axis verticals, and a Kitamura MYCENTER HX630G/800. “The machining side of the company got a full makeover,” tells Bill. “It seems like everything was replaced with new multi-axis machining centers. That first Mori really showed us the value of 4th- and 5th-axis lights-out machining, and the Supercell sold us on CNC Pros and having Kitamura as our core brand. We really can’t say enough good things about CNC Pros.” “Respected brands, service, and support are everything in this business,” continues Jamie. “So, when we needed a machine for a new larger part, they were our first call.”
The block ATD was machining didn’t just need more axes — it needed more machine. “As a job shop, we typically get machines for their versatility and overall capability,” adds CNC Machining Manager Gino Abishalom. “But in this case, we had a part much larger than our usual size that needed 5-axis machining to be doable in a reasonable amount of time. The aluminum block weighs 350 lbs, and it barely fit on our Mori — like 1/8-inch clearance at best.” That’s what pushed ATD toward the Kitamura Mycenter-HX630G/800, a #50-taper horizontal machining center built for finesse, sheer mass, and stability. Its box-way construction and hand-scraped mating surfaces are designed to keep a heavy, dense workpiece locked in place through aggressive cuts, while a 54 HP, 12,000rpm geared spindle supplies the torque to push through material without giving up a fine finish. ATD opted for the machine’s 5th-axis rotary table, which gives them access to all four faces of the block in a single setup — no re-fixturing, no stack-up error creeping in between operations. “Our new part doesn’t require simultaneous 5th-axis machining,” Gino explains. “Think of it as needing 3+2 for holes, ports, surfaces, and features — but we were able to save a lot of money over buying a pure 5-axis machine of this magnitude. We upgraded our tooling, our holders, and all our support processes to make gains anywhere we can. Machining time started at 11 hours from beginning to end, but as we continue to dial in the MYCENTER, I expect to knock that time in half.”
The Kitamura Mycenter-HX630G/800, a #50-taper horizontal machining center built for finesse, sheer mass, and stability. ATD opted for the machine’s 5th-axis rotary table, which gives them access to all four faces of the block in a single setup. Kitamura’s Arumatik-Mi control blends actual buttons with touch-screen simplicity and offers deep customization for a job shop environment.
With half of their business dedicated to sheet metal, some of ATD’s biggest gains have come from laser upgrades. As an early adopter of laser technology, it’s no surprise that ATD has an extensive collection of large-format, high-wattage, multi-axis CNC laser centers. “We got our first laser back in the ‘80s,” chuckles Bill. “We had this part — sorry, we still have this airplane part — that requires hundreds of high-precision holes in a hard material like L605. Dad had something like six jigs set up with guide bushings to make all the holes by hand. It took hours, I mean hours, to make one. He got a 150-watt laser that was incredibly expensive at the time, and it could do it in under 7 minutes. You can buy a laser like that on Amazon for 500 bucks now, but back then it was game changing. Our newest laser, the Eagle iNspire 12kW flat pattern laser changed the game again. It does the same part in under 30 seconds. It’s no joke — 15 times faster than the two lasers it replaced.” That kind of speed comes from the machine’s construction as much as its laser source. Linear motors drive every axis, so there are no gearboxes or ballscrews slowing things down — the machine can hit 6G acceleration and swing between pierce points at up to 340 m/min. Its cutting head has no internal moving parts at all, so it holds the same speed and precision on part 10,000 that it did on part one, and a pallet changer that swaps sheets in as little as 9 seconds keeps the beam cutting instead of sitting idle waiting on material.
“We have a Han’s W3525T 2kW, large-format, 5-axis 3D laser that’s large enough to drive a Pontiac Solstice into,” continues Bill. “It was purchased for a rocket manufacturing company’s specific part, and it’s something you don’t often see, even at other sheet metal manufacturers. The part goes on the rocket skirting and starts out as a stretch form. We put the now-rounded part on a fixture to create holes and cut the profile.” “One of our other unique machines is smaller, but no less impressive,” adds Jamie. “The Mundt GT-1000 is a 5-axis, 2kW cutting and 500W laser-welding system. It’s really suited to formed, 3D sheet metal parts that need precision trimming after forming and then get seam-welded into an assembly. We use it across all the industries we serve.”
It’s rare to see a company make it 75 years and still be pushing improvements. Bill loves manufacturing — we have him on tape saying it’s “a hoot.” Too often you see third-generation owners sell off to multinational corporations because they don’t have the passion the generations before them did. That isn’t the case at ATD Precision Manufacturing. At the anniversary party, ATD brought back old employees, vendors, customers, and friends of the family — anyone and everyone who was part of their success was invited to celebrate. More than once, Bill was told how proud his dad, mom, and grandfather would be to see the company in 2026. Otis died in 1985 — imagine how far manufacturing technology has come since then. Mike passed in 2000 — imagine how much more progress he never got to witness. Bill and his leadership team are driving ATD into the future without forgetting the past. The company still builds some of the same parts it did in 1960 — right alongside parts that will carry humans to Mars. That’s what a legacy looks like. Decades from now, the fourth generation of ownership will have something to look forward to. “I said at the beginning of this interview we’re awesome,” concludes Bill. “I mean it. We struggle to make perfect parts like every other shop out there. We struggle for 100% on-time delivery just like every other shop out there. But where we really stand out is our employees. Deburring, delivery drivers, management, ownership — we all share the same goal of being better today than we were yesterday, and even better tomorrow, and that’s awesome to be a part of.”
Left – ATD have an extensive lathe and mill turn department. Their newest machine is the Hyundai FS SE2200LSY mill/turn. Left middle – The GROB G352 5-axisis an outlier of sorts. ATD only have one, but rave about its precision and speed. Right middle – ATD are a true one stop shop and even have a small grinding department with a few manual machines and a Chevelier surface grinder. Right – Their EDM department has wire and hole poppers by Charmilles, Makino, Mitsubishi and River.