Smith Brothers love having an easy to remove and install guide bushing on their GenTurn Swiss machines. Juan is reinstalling the guide bushing as part of the switchover to run a Swiss medical part on both the GenTurn SL20Y2 Swiss turning centers.
Glen and Ameda Smith started building parts in their garage on a Brown & Sharpe before moving, in 1945, into one of San Diego’s many Quonset huts. Nestled just north of the city’s historic Old Town, that hut had been used as a wartime ammo-storage facility. Eighty-one years later, Smith Brothers Inc. remains on that same parcel and is going strong.
Today the company is led by Karen Smith Amberg, who runs Smith Brothers alongside her husband and two sons — proud stewards of the business her grandfather began. “Smith Brothers is now a Smith daughter–woman owned business,” Karen says with a laugh. “My grandparents started manufacturing from their home, but they needed a partner, and my grandfather’s brother stepped in. That side of the family is no longer involved, but that’s where the ‘brothers’ in the name came from. My father started his machining career in his parent’s garage and never left. He’s 87 now and you’ll find him every day on a stool running one of our manual lathes. I’ve worked here practically my entire life, and my husband and sons are all here too.” Four generations later, Smith Brothers is still 100 percent family owned — complete with the shop dog and all the hallmarks of a legacy machine shop.
In 1945 Smith Brothers was part of a wave of manufacturers leveraging long runs of precision parts made on multi spindle screw machines. That mentality — make quality parts efficiently — persists, but the equipment and methods have evolved. The 12,500 sq.-ft. facility that once hummed with Conomatics now fills with GenTurn CNC Swiss style turning centers. “It took us a long time to get our first CNC,” explains Karen. “We never really needed one with the parts we made and the speed of the screw machines. Unfortunately, the machines began to age out. They needed more repairs and the people who knew how to fix and run them were all retiring. We still have one, but it only runs a couple parts that we’ve had on it for half a century or longer.”
For years David Colby, a now retired salesperson from Expand Machinery would come in, and Karen didn’t give much thought to it. He was a nice guy, but they never really considered buying a machine from him or any of the other vendors who frequently tried to sell them on the benefits of a new CNC lathe. “One day we listened to David,” tells Karen. “I don’t know why, but we did. So, in 2010 we purchased our first CNC turning center and hoped for the best. At first the CNC wasn’t always as fast as our best screw machines but fast doesn’t mean anything when they’re not running.”
The GenTurn 52CS is the latest purchase in the Smith Brothers’ lineup. It has a 52mm capasity, 8 axis, live tooling and subspindle.
Center – The GenTurn 36CS is the bread and butter machine at Smith Brothers because of its versatility.
Right – The GenTurn 70mm TTMY mill-turn with dual 16-Station live tooling has a ton of power for fast and deep cuts on both spindles.
That first purchase — a GenTurn 32CS with a 12 foot bar feed — became a favorite of the crew. The company quickly added a second machine with a space saving 6 foot bar feeder, then kept expanding. Today Smith Brothers operates nine GenTurn lathes across several configurations: two GenTurn 36CS seven axis Swiss machines with 1-3/8” capacity, two seven axis 32CS Swiss machines with 1 1/4” capacity, two SL20 Swiss turning centers, one 2” eight axis GenTurn 52CS Y2 Swiss, one GT27SL gang tool lathe, and one eight axis GenTurn 70mm TTMY mill turn with dual 16 station live tool turrets.
The company’s core competency remains turned parts up to 190 mm in diameter. Their sales engine is lean: 80 years of in shop experience, a website, and most importantly, word of mouth. As a job shop, Smith Brothers must be able to make quality parts from a broad swath of materials, and they routinely run plastics, brass, stainless steels, and exotic superalloys for a varied customer base. “We have customers that have been with us since the beginning,” explains production manager Hunter Amberg. “Like us, some are multigenerational companies and parts. I remember being a young kid on summer break and running a nozzle on the manual lathe. It’s a little brass fogger for agriculture and we still make it today on the GenTurn SL20Y2 Swiss. There is something special about making the same part on a CNC machine that my grandfather used to make by hand in his childhood garage. Then we have other local customers like Solar Turbines Inc. that feed our spindles nonstop with more technical parts and fittings. Aerospace, medical, automotive, you name it. As a job shop, we welcome most parts, and with our different GenTurn machines we typically have a cost saving way to manufacture them.”
Hunter calls the GenTurn 36CS a near perfect all rounder. “The 36CS are our bread and butter,” he says. “It might be GenTurn’s best all in one machine. It’s the perfect size for most of our jobs. We have two 36CS machines, two of the smaller 32CS and one larger 52CS. They’re all seven axis Swiss style machines that just run. We’re constantly taking the guide bushings out to run them like traditional lathes. All the GenTurns make that easy. With the guide bushing installed you need machined bar stock, so it feeds correctly, but not every part requires Swiss style guiding. To keep pricing down every little bit helps. We alternate bushing in and bushing out depending on the part. It’s a simple process to change over the SL20s — Juan is putting the bushings back in right now on both machines for a medical stainless part.”
After the initial purchase of the GenTurns it became easier to justify the move to CNC. The ability to drop finished parts made the thought of a 2nd, 3rd, or 8th operation seem almost silly. “We have a part that required a ton of hand operations on three different machines,” explains Karen. “It got blanked on the Cone, then drilled, then went to the drill press for 3 more indexed holes, then deburred and so forth. We ran it manually for a long time. It is normally a 6k order and the drilling alone was enough to drive you crazy. We had an employee drill through her finger one day. She had drilled the same hole hundreds of thousands of times, but it finally bit her. We talk a lot about saving operations, but I think employee safety is another big selling feature of Swiss machines. Any time you can reduce human interaction the part will Inherently be better, but also that person has a much better chance of leaving work without injury. Your costs as a business owner are reduced when your lathe drops finished pieces. It is a win-win-win.”
Despite the long history of the company, it’s remarkable that Smith Brothers operated 65 years before turning to CNC. That longevity is evidence of craft, resilience and an ability to do excellent work with the tools at hand. But the CNC Swiss turning centers gave Smith Brothers access to new customers and helped solve one of their biggest challenges: reliable, knowledgeable labor. “Reducing labor by having Swiss machines has been huge for us,” Karen says. “I was glad many of our long‑term people were ready to retire because honestly some were not willing to learn the new technology. Now we have 12 people, many under 40, who eagerly learn and expand their machining skills. We have a great team now, but finding employees like this has been difficult. We’ve had success hiring veterans — Juan came through the Workshop for Warriors program — but we still struggle. The other day we hired a good applicant, and he just didn’t show up. No call, no email, nothing.”
Left – Parts range from tiny to 7.5”. Center – Dropping finished parts has been a huge time saver and has improved quality.
Right – Benny wants no part of the most recognizable product Smith Bros makes. The Ketch-All used by ASPCA and Hollywood.
Hunter laughs at some of the odd hiring moments. “Another applicant used a micrometer to pick up a part when we asked him to measure it,” he says. “He clearly had never used one. We don’t expect plug‑and‑play from every candidate, but we’re a small operation and can’t afford to take people off machines to train new hires constantly. We only have machinists here, no basic parts loaders. All our programming is done via G‑code. We typically don’t use outside CAM software for programming. One of the best things about Expand Machinery is that if we need something programmed, I can shoot them an email and Ken will knock it out for us and send me a ready‑to‑run file. I don’t know any other manufacturer who includes that level of post‑sale support.”
David Colby opened the door, but it’s Expand Machinery’s ongoing support that keeps Smith Brothers buying more GenTurn machines. Karen and Hunter point to different strengths: Hunter emphasizes value and capability, while Karen appreciates service, training and honest sales relationships. “The best thing about any machine Harvinder sells you is the value,” Hunter says. “They do much more than the price reflects. For a job shop like ours, the lower capital cost means profitability sooner. The machines just run, and if there’s a problem it’s handled quickly. Often, they can walk me through a workaround over the phone to keep us going and a tech will be down the next day. Many of the parts are interchangeable and easy to acquire.”
“I agree,” Karen continues. “Harvinder and Ravjeet want us to be successful. Expand Machinery does everything they can to help make that possible. Sometimes that’s a great price on a used machine; other times it’s in training. I can send an employee up to them for basic or advanced training anytime. We put them on Amtrak, they pick them up, give virtually limitless training, take them to the hotel next door, take them to dinner, and put them on the train home when they’re ready. They treat their customers, large and small, like family. I trust them. You can’t always say that about salespeople, but if they tell us something you can believe it.”
Since adding GenTurn CNC machines, Smith Brothers rarely needs to sublet work. “For us that is big,” Hunter says. “Keeping jobs in‑house means we control the timeline and can maintain the quality our customers expect.” That capability has helped weather decades of industrial change while holding true to a few core principles: high quality, fair pricing, and great customer service.
“These values are part of our DNA,” concludes Karen. “Quality, pricing, service has been passed from generation to generation. I remember my dad always wearing Levi’s and coming home smelling like the shop. The smell of manufacturing has changed, but Dad is still out there in his jeans. It’s rare in this day and age to see a company in its second generation of anything; here we are with the third running the office and the fourth managing production. Don’t be surprised if you come back for another interview and find a fifth generation here and me on a stool doing my own thing. We’re proud of the parts we make and the legacy we uphold.” Smith Brothers is a reminder that modernization doesn’t erase heritage — it enhances it. By pairing a long history of hands‑on craftsmanship with modern Swiss‑style CNC turning and combining that with supportive supplier partnerships, this family owned and operated job shop has extended its competitiveness into the 21st century.
Left – 4th generation Hunter Smith, 2nd generation Larry Smith, 3rd generation Karen Smith-Amberg. Not pictured husband Jay Amberg, and son Jacob Amberg. Right – Production manager Hunter Smith-Amberg on the 52CS. The Ecpand Machinery Genturn-52CS Y2 utilizes Mitsubishi’s powerful control with built-in vibration cutting technology to introduce oscillatory micro-motions along the cutting path, effectively fragmenting long, stringy material into easily manageable chips to prevent nest build-up.