Kitagawa-NorthTech Inc., Schaumburg, Ill., which specializes in standard chucks, advanced chucks, custom-engineered workholding and steady rests, announced that Shawn Luschei has rejoined the company as senior manager of sales for North America. He has over 23 years of workholding industry experience and will be responsible for managing regional sales managers, supporting OEMs and channel partners and further developing the engineered rotational and prismatic workholding business for the company.
He began his career in workholding with Kitagawa-NorthTech in 1994, at the present corporate and manufacturing facility in Schaumburg. Luschei joined the company as an inside sales representative and was promoted to various sales management positions through his 17-year tenure at the company. In 2011, he left to launch Toolmex’s workholding and power chucks division and spent 5 years there in that capacity.
In Luschei's new role at Kitagawa-NorthTech, his primary focus will be to support the custom-engineered solutions business sales efforts. In addition, he will work with regional sales management and channel partners to further refine the inside-engineered sales group. The company's engineered workholding solutions capability is managed by its productivity team. The P Team consists of an in-house applications engineering team committed to developing custom workholding for turning and prismatic applications. In addition to designing and engineering custom solutions, Kitagawa-NorthTech utilizes an in-house design, manufacturing, inspection and testing facility to manufacture, modify and test components and workholding systems for customers.
Working out of the North American headquarters in Schaumburg, Luschei will report to Kevin Bennett, vice president of sales and marketing. Bennett adds, “We are excited to have Shawn Luschei back, as he has extensive workholding industry expertise and knowledge and he will be a great asset to our sales management team. This demonstrates our commitment to customers that we recruit only quality talent to help us in our quest to deliver to them the best standard chucks, advanced and engineered workholding products and services available.”
Related Glossary Terms
- turning
turning
Workpiece is held in a chuck, mounted on a face plate or secured between centers and rotated while a cutting tool, normally a single-point tool, is fed into it along its periphery or across its end or face. Takes the form of straight turning (cutting along the periphery of the workpiece); taper turning (creating a taper); step turning (turning different-size diameters on the same work); chamfering (beveling an edge or shoulder); facing (cutting on an end); turning threads (usually external but can be internal); roughing (high-volume metal removal); and finishing (final light cuts). Performed on lathes, turning centers, chucking machines, automatic screw machines and similar machines.
