Shop seeks to maximize machine tool investment

Anthony Machine Inc. previously focused on producing medium-size parts in quantities from 10 to about 100, said Eugene Ponomarev, the machine shop’s general manager and vice president. Wanting also to serve the market for small parts, the San Antonio shop purchased its first Y-axis, live-tool lathe, a DMG Mori NLX 3000 1250 turning center. After succeeding with that machine, the business bought a second one, he added.

With a priority to accomplish short lead times while offering competitive prices, Anthony Machine’s manufacturing team was challenged to make the most of the new investment. The manufacturer turned to Mark Davis, senior sales engineer for Latrobe, Pennsylvania-based Kennametal Inc., who has worked with Anthony Machine for about a decade. The shop already had experience with Kennametal’s KM quick-change toolholders.

Mohsen Saleh (left) and CNC Machinist Setter Mark Garland discuss a workpiece produced on one of Anthony Machine’s DMG Mori NLX series universal turning centers. Image courtesy of Kennametal

“Over the years, we’ve built a number of KM-equipped custom toolholders for deep boring and other machining operations on our CNC lathes and machining centers, and we use Kennametal on several of the shop’s manual turret lathes to overcome limitations with available tool positions,” said Manufacturing Technologist Daniel Goller. “On more than one occasion, we’ve earned new business because KM was able to achieve tolerances and surface finishes that others couldn’t do with conventional tooling.”

The shop has about 20 pieces of CNC equipment, including vertical and horizontal lathes and vertical and horizontal milling machines, and employs about 25 CNC machinists, he noted.

In addition to KM toolholders, Davis explained that the best way to reduce setup times and maximize the new machines’ potential would be to equip them with turret-adapted clamping units.

“He made us aware of the new units,” Goller said. “Knowing the KM connection previously, he knew it was what we wanted to do.”

“The TACU system supports everything from KM32 up to KM63,” Davis said. “We offer blocks for both static and driven tools and can tool up lathes from Okuma, Haas, Mazak, Doosan and of course DMG Mori—pretty much all of the major machine tool builders, with more coming online all the time. This makes it both easy and cost-effective for our customers to equip more than 80 models of CNC turning centers with a fast, flexible and accurate quick-change toolholding
system.”