Personalizing putters: General Industry Coverage

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feature Kevin Burns Golf, 408-244-7768, www.kbputters.com. Challenge: Maximize productivity and minimize tool breakage when roughing custom putter heads. Solution: A 5-flute, solid-carbide endmill that minimizes chatter. Solution Provider: Dura-Mill Inc., 800-444-6455, www.duramill.com.

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Kevin Burns is a visionary. Faced with increased competition for custom golf putters, he decided to go a different, more risky route—one-off putters built to each customer’s specifications. To do this, he’s developing a manufacturing system and software for the individualization of putters and to run his 5-axis machine tool.

Burns is president of Kevin Burns Golf, San Jose, Calif., and his love of golf led him to a job early in his career with a business that repaired golf clubs. He eventually opened his own repair shop. Later, he decided that if he was going to be in business permanently, he wanted to produce custom clubs.

Courtesy of Dura-Mill

Kevin Burns, president of Kevin Burns Golf, uses a device (top) to document the angle he holds a putter at and the required shaft length for his stance. That information will be downloaded to a machining center, where a customized putter head is produced to fit an individual’s specifications.

After he designed his first putter, he had a vendor cast, machine, grind and polish a run of them. Although the putter design was unique, it wasn’t fitted to the golfer.

Feeling he could do a better and cheaper job than his vendor, Burns opened a manufacturing plant, hired a part-time plant manager to help him with the machining and programming and bought a milling machine.

Burns learned from his plant manager how to run machine tools, and his business grew to eight employees and eight Haas machining centers.