The Precimax road to success

Building capable machinists:
Above: An example of a part produced at
Precimax, and a number of posts produced
with the company’s GibbsCAM software.
The Precimax
road to success
By Rob Colman
E
dmonton, AB-based Precimax
(precimax.com) is a shop
known for doing the work
others don’t want to do –
awkward precision-machined parts
in tough materials. Owners Pete and
Dave Kool maintain this reputation
for quality complex parts by hiring
good talent and allowing that talent to grow by giving their team
the independence to program their
own parts. They are equipped to do
standard milling, turning, and 5-axis
machining.
Pete and Dave’s dad, Morris,
opened the shop in 1976 to do this
sort of challenging work, and his sons
carry on that tradition. “Our success
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is due to the fact that we built our
business on the firm foundation our
father created, and the striving to be
the best that he instilled in us,” says
General Manager Pete Kool.
“We generally work with very difficult materials, and parts that have
challenges not only with tolerance
but geometries as well,” explains
Kool. “The parts are often for the
oil and gas industry, but they aren’t
parts that are round with a hole in
them. Probably ten percent of our
work is in 4140 steel. The rest is in
stainless steel, high nickel alloys and
high temp alloys. The parts tend to
be conveyance parts that are used in
tough environments.”
The average run of a part at
Precimax is between one and ten.
“If we get a run of 100, we’re pretty
excited. And we do get those – you
have to get that mix or you’d burn
your guys out running nothing but
Inconel for weeks on end.”
You can tell that Pete Kool loves
metalworking. It’s not just that he
trained on manual machines and has
a feel for the metal, he also still does
some blacksmithing. This passion for
knowing a skill from its very roots
translates in how the Kool’s run their
shop. Everyone on the shop floor
does his own programming. As Pete
Kool explains, “we don’t have any
button-pushers, they’re all trained
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in programming. There is no central
programming, so the guys really take
ownership of the parts they make.”
Each machinist on the floor has
a computer set up next to their
machine so that they can manage
their programs right there. Precimax
uses GibbsCAM, supplied to them
through WestCAM Solutions, and
they studiously update this and other
software they use every year.
“You can’t afford to be out of date
with your software,” says Kool. “Our
customers are constantly updating their software so we need to
do the same. For example, we use
Solidworks. We’re not a design shop
by any means but our customers are
designing parts using that program,
so we need to be able to get into their
solid models to help program our
machines. This is particularly important with some of the milled parts,
which have very complex geometries.”
Kool has been surprised over and
over by what advances in software
have allowed his team to do.
“With the GibbsCAM program,
one of the biggest benefits we’ve
seen is through using VoluMill
for GibbsCAM,” he notes. “I’m
old school – I trained on manual
“We don’t have any
button-pushers,
they’re all trained
in programming.
There is no central
programming, so
the guys really take
ownership of the
parts they make.”
machines, so I figure if you want
to remove a bunch of material, you
get a face mill and you rip a bunch
of material off. But my guys, using
VoluMill, have proved to me over
and over again that with an end mill
buried as deep as you can go, the
volume of material you can remove
is better than a face mill. It’s hard for
me to get my head around that, so I
tell them to prove it – and they do,
every time. We use Haas machines
for milling, and using a half-inch end
mill with VoluMill we can remove
material like a face mill would on our
heavy Mazak.
“Depending on the part, that’s been
a huge advancement,” he continues.
“And you’re using the whole end
mill. We just had a part that was 16
feet long when it’s welded together,
2.25 in. diameter in Inconel. We had
to cut the whole center out, so you
have two spars on either side with a
hole running down each one of those
spars. The center’s milled out of it,
and I think we went through 100 end
mills. But conventionally, if you were
to use a half-inch end mill you’d only
a corner, the tool wants to screech
because you’ve gone from cutting
along 20 degrees of the end mill to
a full 90 degrees in the corner. “The
thing will just howl,” says Kool. “The
great thing about VoluMill is that
it calculates what the pocket is and
maintains the same volume of material removed by programming a path.
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be using a half inch of that end mill
to do your milling. Well, we’ve used
all of it. It is dull from the tip to the
shank, and there’s a lot of carbide laying on the floor when we’re done.”
The killer for end mills in corners
is you get interrupted cuts, or you
get a change in material volume that
you’re removing. When you go into
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Sometimes the path looks goofy but
it’s maintaining volume. The chips
are all the same weight, shape, size,
and so you increase the life of your
tools quite a bit.”
And the team at Precimax readily
accepts the new technology.
“We have a couple of young guys
that are really eager when they get
Yo u
a r e
this new software,” says Kool. “And
they enjoy proving me wrong. That’s
great, those are fun challenges that
they face. And they have lots of time
to work on better understanding the
software as well. A lot of parts will
have an hour run cycle, and the guys
use that time to work in Gibbs on
the next job. Each machine has a
i n v i t e d
t o
computer and is hooked up to our
network. Better than me giving them
a program and saying ‘run this’.”
Kool considers this set-up key to
their success.
“That’s the way to develop people.
It’s very difficult to get apprentices.
We have to develop our own people.
My brother and I talk about this a
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lot. If you just give guys programs
we’ve used for years to run the same
parts, they are never going to take us
to the next level. We encourage them
to think outside the box and say, ‘hey,
if we do it like this we could probably save some time.’ And sometimes
it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The
point is, it strengthens people. It’s
not just making parts, it’s building
capable machinists.”
Precimax currently has 25 people
on staff. They’ve had their ups and
downs in the tumultuous markets
of the past few years, but they are
healthy at the moment and looking
to expand their reach by becoming
ISO certified. In preparation for that
they’ve revamped their inspection
facility and added a Mitutoyo Crysta
Apex 9106 CMM machine to their
arsenal of tools. “You never want to
be tied to only one or two markets,”
says Kool.
The CMM has been a great addition as well. It can handle parts of
about 3 feet wide by 4 feet long.
“We’ve taken on one mission-critical
part for a client and we make a ton
of them. It has about 300 dimensions that have to be checked and
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“It’s very difficult to
get apprentices. We
have to develop our
own people.”
the CMM can fully inspect that in 45
minutes. We’ve always had a CMM,
but never of this caliber.”
The biggest part that Precimax
can handle is about 22 in. in diameter and up to five or six feet long.
But they can work with parts as
small as an eighth of an in. in diameter as well.
“Being a job shop we have to
maintain flexibility,” says Kool. “Most
of the parts we work on are very
small. Everyone’s trying to fit more
in a smaller package. And we do a
lot of design for manufacture work
with certain clients to ensure that we
make them the parts they really need.
That’s where we really enjoy our job
– when we’re able to be part of the
solution. At that point, you’re not just
a supplier, you’re a partner.”
Which comes right back to how
the Kool’s treat their own team – as
partners, in their own way, building
the success of Precimax as a place
that cares about doing complex jobs
the right way – building success that
can last.
4/8/14 1:14 PM
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GibbsCAM Introductory Course
Now Available Online
WestCAM’s Stephen Cunningham
and Chuck Van Volkingburgh
have been installing and supporting GibbsCAM in machine
shops for over 18 years. They
have taught GibbsCAM to thousands of machinists, engineers,
and programmers. Recently, they
partnered with video training professionals to create Cognus, a
company devoted to CAD/CAM
video training.
“We take a person who has
never seen GibbsCAM before
and, starting with simple examples and progressing from there,
we show them how to be productive with the software,” says Van
Volkingburgh. “As a CAM reseller,
our students often have to go to
work and make parts the next
day after our class. It has taken
years to develop and refine our
training strategy. After a few tutorials our clients are comfortable
with how the system works.”
The introductory course shows
how to navigate, draw geometry,
create tools, make toolpaths and
make code for milling and turning
applications. Cut part rendering
and automating GibbsCAM are
covered as well.
The course is made up of many
five minute video segments,
amounting to several hours of
training.
“Quality has been a key goal
of ours,” says Van Volkingburgh.
“It takes several hours to record,
edit, and produce just one five
minute segment. Our training
system is well organized. We
keep track of what our clients
have seen and provide feedback and challenges by way of
quizzes. The equivalent 3-day
classroom course is sold for
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only $350 and comes with many
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Our clients are able to pinpoint
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like, and learn about it right away.
They can also play any segment
more than once until it is fully
learned without fear of holding
up a class. No need to pay for
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“We plan to release the second level, 2.5D Solids Milling, in
July and by the end of the year
we will offer every level including
Advanced 3D and 5-Axis
machining,” Van Volkingburgh
explains.
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N22W23855 RidgeView Pkwy W
Waukesha, WI 53188, USA
800-945-5554
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and lose days of production time.
As a Canadian company we are
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The planned release of the level
one training is May 5, 2014. Go
to www.cognus.co to learn more.
7/30/2013 3:34:00 PM
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