Machine tool builder Hermle is known for its high-precision milling systems, but the company also offers part production services using a platform that combines this expertise with metal 3D printing. A subsidiary based in Germany is focused on operating the Metal Powder Application (MPA) process, a hybrid manufacturing strategy that combines five-axis milling with cold spray deposition. The process supports the precise addition of material, such as conformal copper areas added to injection mold tooling to improve cycle times. MPA also enables the creation of complex internal geometries, functionally graded materials, and, because of the cold spray process, even the inclusion of other components such as sensors. This video filmed at IMTS 2024 describes the process and showcases several representative case studies (despite operating the MPA process for nearly a decade, this event represents the first time Hermle has showcased it at IMTS – The International Manufacturing Technology Show). 

Related Resources

Transcript

Most hybrid machine tools use a welding like process to apply metal material in sequence with machining. But what if you could strategically apply functional materials without melting?

I'm Stephanie Hendrixson with Additive Manufacturing Media here at IMTS 2024 in the Hermle booth. Hermle is known for its high precision machining centers, but it also has a subsidiary focusing on providing hybrid manufacturing services through 3D printing and five axis milling on the same machine. The additive process is called MPA or Metal Powder Application.

Hermle provides MPA services using four machines that it designed and created itself, located in Germany. This is actually the first time that this technology has been displayed at IMTS in North America.

So MPA works by using compressed air to fire particles of material at an existing substrate or part. The powder is accelerated to very high speeds and fired at a pre-heated workpiece. The particles deform and bond to the substrate as well as each other, so you end up with high density, low porosity metal that can be machined almost right away.

Initially, most applications for MPA had to do with conformal cooling, introducing copper into mold tooling for heat dissipation to improve cycle times. But now MPA can be applied with copper, as well as tool steel, stainless steel, Invar and many other materials. And the customer doesn't have to choose just one. You can actually do functional graded materials by changing the mix of powder that is being applied to the part. MPA can even be applied to produce ceramic matrix composites, where they can add up to 30% ceramic powder into the mix.

Hermle also uses a support material for parts with complicated internal cavities or other structures. This satellite waveguide, for instance, has this complicated internal geometry. During manufacturing, these cavities would have been filled with that material, which was then washed out later.

And because there's no melting involved, MPA opens up the opportunity to incorporate sensors, thermocouples, other components into your hybrid manufactured parts. For instance, this semiconductor frame is made of Invar with these copper tubes. Hermle machined channels, placed the copper tubes and then printed Invar over top to fully enclose them and produce this finished assembly.

Using this process, material can be applied in five axes and can be used very minimally just to add functionality to the specific places where you need it.

If you'd like to learn more about MPA or other types of hybrid manufacturing
technologies, you can find a link to our collection of stories in the show description. You can also follow Additive Manufacturing Media
wherever you're watching and sign up for our newsletter, , to stay up to date on new technologies and applications.

About the Author

Stephanie Hendrixson

Stephanie Hendrixson reports on 3D printing technology and applications as executive editor for . She is also co-host of , a video series that highlights unique, unusual and weird 3D printed parts, and co-host and creator of the .

A Tale of Two Facilities

With a skilled workforce of over 850 employees spanning 14 manufacturing facilities across the Northeast U.S. totaling more than 850,000 square feet, communication and collaboration are key within the Momentum Manufacturing Group (MMG). MMG (formerly named NSA Industries) is a leading manufacturer partner to OEMs and product manufacturers, offering a full suite of in-house metal manufacturing and value-added capabilities across a range of markets including semiconductors, medical, robotics, aerospace and defense. The largest metal manufacturing company in the region, MMG machines a range of parts from complex assemblies to large-format components and is vertically integrated from raw materials to post-machining processes. MMG acquired two of its divisions in 2022: Little Enterprises North (Whitefield, Maine) and Evans Industries (Topsfield, Massachusetts).

Evans Industries got its start in the semiconductor industry in 1965 and has typically been involved with roughing larger aluminum parts. While it has three- and four-axis machines, it primarily works with five-axis machining centers. Evans Chief Technology Officer and Mechanical Engineer Dan Golomb has been with the company for fourteen years, and during this time he has seen the company’s fleet of five-axis machine tools expand, beginning with smaller DMG MORI machines, moving to larger, more powerful ones over the years, increasingly equipped with automated pallet changers capable of machining huge parts in only one or two setups. For the past five years or so, Evans has seen overall company growth at 30% year-over-year. “Even during the Covid pandemic, we never closed because demand spiked in the semiconductor and telecommunications industries,” Golomb says. “Demand continues to go through the roof.”

For over 20 years, Little Enterprises North has found success with automated five-axis milling and turning technology, incorporating pallet changers and closed loop programming, primarily in small-part production. The company runs two shifts and over the weekend. “We don’t stop machining when we leave. We have a long-running job set up on a Mazak machine with six pallets to achieve 36 hours of unattended machining,” says Senior Manufacturing Engineer and General Manager Nick Anastasio.

On average, the semiconductor and medical parts that Little Enterprises North and Evans are manufacturing require tolerances starting at ± 0.005 inches with more precise features needing to be held to ± 0.0003 inches. The parts also have complex geometric dimensioning, surface profiles, perpendicularity, true position and flatness. “We are working with everything from forgings/castings to billets,” Anastasio says, “and machining a lot of deep pockets with small internal corners that are hard to reach, in addition to cross holes and complex surface profiles.”

Under MMG, both Little Enterprises North and Evans have invested in conical barrel cutting to save time on finishing passes. Working in parallel, they both latched onto CAM and tooling strategies that dramatically improved machining productivity and part quality. And vitally, by working with the same software and techniques, the two companies developed a collaborative working relationship under their parent company that has made both shops more profitable.

Big Parts, Conical Cutters, Modular CAM

Conical barrel cutting is a milling strategy pioneered by Open Mind Technologies, the producer of the Hypermill modular CAD/CAM software. The company collaborated with cutting tool manufacturer Emuge-Franken to develop and offer conical barrel tools, which Emuge-Franken named “circle segment” end mills. Together with proper CAM software, conical barrel cutters can dramatically reduce cycle times on finishing passes while maintaining tight tolerances by mapping only a part of the circle (a circle segment) on the end mill. This end mill design features unconventional forms with large profile radii in the cutting area of the end mills to enable large stepovers that cut wider swaths of material, enabling fewer tool passes while maximizing tool life and minimizing the number of cusps. The large stepover produces higher cutting forces than standard ball-nose cutters due to the large radii on both the face and radial cutting edges of the tool.

Hypermill had an early advantage in programming for conical barrel cutting, owing to Open Mind’s part in developing the cutting tools and cutting strategy. According to Anastasio, the effectiveness of the conical barrel cutting process prompted him to learn Hypermill CAM programming. “I first became experienced with Hypermill as an engineer with a different company where I selected Hypermill due to its strength with conical barrel cutting for milling aerospace structural components,” he says. “So of course, it was a natural decision to bring Hypermill to Little Enterprises North when I came on board.”

“We are shedding cycle time and creating capacity for more orders down the road.” – Nick Anastasio, senior manufacturing engineer and general manager, Little Enterprises North

In the case of a part that goes into the assembly of a mobile robot system, the machining process starts with two 66-inch diameter sand castings that are machined to remove approximately 80% of the material. They include large surface areas and several holes, providing the interface for inserting components into the robot base. Previously, Little Enterprises North needed multiple operations to complete the part on several vertical machining centers to reach all the holes. Now, the company can produce it on one larger five-axis machine, cutting machining time by 50% to perform the job in one setup.

“The part has a complex surface with multiple and variable radii that need to blend together,” Anastasio says. “Previously, it was taking us 12.5 hours using ball mills for the application, which included accessing deep pockets.” Now, using lens-shaped and tapered circle segment end mills as well as Hypermill, “Machining time has been reduced to six hours, and the surface finish is excellent.”

Meanwhile at Evans, owner Ken Evans grew interested in the promise of conical barrel cutting. After reading a metalworking industry magazine article about the process, Evans went to his programmers to see how they could take advantage of it to reduce cycle time and improve surface finishes when machining an aluminum box for a highly complex application. However, when the team first tried making tests cuts on an older machining center using CAM software that did not offer the right strategies or post-processing support for conical barrel cutting, the results were disappointing.

After researching the topic, the Evans team reached out to Open Mind a year later to help develop a proper process using Hypermill and Emuge-Franken circle segment cutters. With the knowledge base of the Open Mind support team to provide guidance, Evans found success with conical barrel cutting. Since that time, Hypermill has been the go-to CAM at Evans for five-axis applications.

An example of this success is found in one of the more complex parts produced by Evans. It starts from a 7,000 pound billet and is machined down to 450 pounds. “Using a large DMG five-axis machine with the efficient strategies and tool paths from Hypermill, we were able to reduce the machining time to approximately 13 hours per part compared with 23 hours per part when using an older machine and different software,” Golomb says.

Making Parts With a Little Help From Our Friends

Under the MMG umbrella, both Anastasio and Golomb agree that synchronizing knowledge and sharing projects has enabled the two shops to maximize efficiency for the MMG organization and its customers. When a new job comes in, Little Enterprises North and Evans evaluate the type of work to see which facility can best handle the work based on familiarity and experience with the type of part. “We communicate daily,” Anastasio says. “We have become a melting pot for processing, which promotes best practices,” adds Golomb.

With both Little Enterprises North and Evans using Hypermill, the two companies have a clear understanding of the capabilities of their sibling shop, making this collaboration even easier. “We also create a lot of additional capacity by moving parts from one facility to another with the opportunity to share expertise and re-program legacy parts in Hypermill,” Anastasio says. He adds that by moving these legacy parts into Hypermill, the companies regularly save on both programming and machining time. “The overall programming process is very user-friendly, and I know how far off-center I can be and yet still be within the travel of the machine. I would estimate I save 30 to 40% of programming time on the front end and realize significant cycle time reductions, yielding much better parts,” he says. “We are shedding cycle time and creating capacity for more orders down the road.”

Both Evans and Little Enterprises North plan to keep the keep the synergistic approach for taking on new jobs, supported by MMG. By working together under the same umbrella, the sense of competition felt by most machine shops has vanished, and both companies are flourishing by sharing their knowledge and experience.

In this episode of View From My Shop, we’ll take a look at how this shop has carefully cultivated its current machines, why Connecticut was the best place to found East Coast Precision, and why initial recruitment isn’t the shop’s primary concern — but retention.

Transcript:

Evan Doran (Associate Editor, 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ): Ingenuity, resourcefulness, a knack for spotting under-exploited opportunities.

Mark Rohlfs (Co-Owner and President, East Coast Precision Manufacturing): We have mix, so our quantities run from 50 pieces to 40,000 pieces.

Evan: These are some of the key traits that can help a job shop thrive, and which brother and sister team Marc and Nancy Rohlfs have leveraged to build their plastics machining shop, East Coast Precision Manufacturing. But what does that mean in practical terms? Join us in this episode of “View from My Shop” as we take to the shop floor to find out.

Mark: We worked for our father. We decided to go our separate ways. I was a machinist that had worked for him since I was 15 years old. In his shop, I did everything. I did quoting, I did machining. When we decided to go our separate ways, I talked to Nancy. She had done some of the bookkeeping, and I said, "Would you like to go? I'm going to start a business." I knew what machines I could buy. I purchased one of them. She said, "Okay." And so, on January 1st of 2006, we started our business.

Nancy Rohlfs (Co-Owner and Treasurer, East Coast Precision Manufacturing): I had to learn how to develop a website. I had to learn how to get various forms of advertising for us so that we could start getting business in, which was most important. We knew how to make the parts, but we had to get the business to start making the parts.

Mark: We started in my garage and basement, just machining plastic parts. We had two employees back then, me and my brother-in-law. We've since grown to 10,000 square feet and 32 CNC machines. We have Swiss screw machines here. We have machining centers down over there. We have some turning centers down in here. Two-axis lathes. Again, we just machine plastics.

Nancy: I think we found our niche, and Mark can talk about this, where we are working on hard-to-machine plastics.

Mark: Yes, and expensive plastics. We have some parts down here that are made out of Vespel. We have this little guy right here. It's very small. It's got a five-thousandths hole in it. No burrs. It has to be clean and clear. It's something we do. Well, that's our niche — very small insulators for the semiconductor and medical industries.

Here's another grouping of parts that are coming off of this machine. You can see how clean. There's no oils. We run a water-based coolant. We have measuring instruments right at the bench so that the machinist can do the measuring right at the bench.

Nancy: We found that Connecticut was a good place for us to start our business. It has a long history of manufacturing with Sikorsky and Electric Boat General Dynamics. Connecticut has a very good system of technical high schools and community colleges that we can work with to get our employees and to hire young people to start learning the machine shop business here.

Mark: New England, in general, provides a very good — a lot of our customers are other machine shops around New England. Because they'll get orders for — they mostly machine metals. But then they might have one of their customers have a couple of plastic parts that they need made. It's easier for them to subcontract it out. They don't have to change the coolant in their machines. They don't have to learn the specifics of machining plastic.

Let me show you some other parts that we're making here. This is one of our very small insulators that we're making right here. Can you see those in the cup? Now, that looks like a round disc, but — it's actually a round disc, but it has with two trepan counterbores in both sides. The tolerancing is very close, plus or minus five-tenths on all things. And measuring it, just measuring it is a very difficult thing, but we have techniques here. And we have skilled people that are veterans who can do this type of work.

This is something we started at another shop in 2000, and we had struggled to measure them and make them. It took several years of development to get it. The other thing is catching this in this machine — it would be lost. But we have special catching techniques, and we can catch that part.

Nancy: This is a brand new building that Mark and I actually bought right before COVID hit. We thought we had made a huge mistake, but it actually turned out to be good for us to be able to renovate during COVID.

Mark: And unlike other shops, we're actually standing in our office right now. I'm the owner, and I do all the quoting. I do the machining. I do some of the programming, and I don't have an office. This is my office. My desk is right over here. And one of my other employees that does some of the quoting also, his office is right here. So we're right on the floor, and we're in the trenches with them.

So these are our machining centers here. We have them all lined up so one person can run multiple machines. And it's in a compact, organized area. As you can see, we have 15 RoboDrills in this small area.

Nowadays, you can buy a used machine. I bought a machine over there for $8,000, and I think I've gotten $1 million or more of profit off of that. The return on investment is just incredible. Machines are really cheap, comparatively, and manufacturing has come so far that you can outfit your place with a lot of machines. It's not like years ago, where it was so expensive that you added on very slowly. So we buy a lot of used machines and refurbish them.

Nancy: That worked out for us with the Citizens that we found.

Mark: But most of our machines in here are used, and we've bought maybe six, seven, or eight brand new. The reason why we go to brand new is we just happened to get a job that we needed a machine for, and it was going to run long, so we knew we would get the return on investment in a short order. So we were able to — we did it for that reason.

And then, whether that job is still running or not — I know one of our customers is still going on a brand-new machine that we bought in 2008. Every once in a while, we buy a brand-new machine because there's not a used one available on the market when we need it.

And then down here, we have our turning centers. We have a few turning centers. This is where we do parts complete off of the lathe. We have three turning centers right here. And a lot of times, we can get the part to come off complete.

Yeah. Many, many parts run in the two-axis, and then would go into a mill for a second operation. We bundle that all together in our turning centers, so the parts come off complete. This makes them more accurate and results in a better quality part all-around.

But these two parts, that's Ultem-1000. And you can see the nice finish from our polishing that we get on that. I don't know if my fingers are what you want, but the parts certainly are. Then this one here is polycarbonate and we polished that one also. And you can see how sparkly it is. Customers love that. But medical customers need that [finish] so that whatever fluid they're running through it when they go to clean the part, when they go to clean the medical device, it's cleaned easier.

This is our Keyence system, which we do some of our inspection work. It gives us — it's a vision system — it gives us the data. Right now we have a little part set up on there. It's checking it. And we're going through this bag probably. And checking some dimensions. It gives all dimensions. On this particular part it works very well for the diameters.

Nancy: This is our shipping area — and our deburring area and our polishing area. [It’s] kind of a separate area that we wanted to — you can see that our shop is very open. But we wanted to put the walls here because our plastics, once they're complete and once we've — we have our the wash cleaning station — once we've washed them, we like to put them in the plastic bags. We don't want any contaminants coming in from other parts of the shop, so this room is kept a little bit sealed off from the rest of the shop.

Lily Cummings (Machinist, East Coast Precision Manufacturing): My name is Lily Cummings. I work here at East Coast Precision. I kind of do a little bit of everything around here. I do lathe [work], I also debur. That's how I started out here. And I also work in the mill, and I run the surface grinder, preparing our material for the lathe. Pretty much daily, I’ll run about one to three machines every day. I kind of jump around — a lot of these will run by themselves. We've got plenty of different cycle times.

I learned everything I know on the job. I like I said, I'd never did any sort of machining. I used to work in manufacturing previously, but as our needs sort of shifted, I ended up over here in the lathe. Now I've learned how to set up operate, and now I'm working on learning how to program. So there's lots of opportunities here, lots of different things to do. Always busy, always learning.

Mark: I think it's important to note that it's a recruitment — and I've heard this for years. Like “What? What is the biggest problem?” And they put out surveys, “What's the biggest problem?” Getting people, okay? They — “Oh, there's not enough people.” I don't think, for us, it's hard enough getting people. It's — it's once you get them, to retain them is the important piece. There is — for the amount that our company has grown and the speed, we can get people, it's a matter of retaining them. So that's more the key piece.

If we work it from backwards, we don't need a flood of people and then have them come in and go right back out again. We need one good person, once a year. That'll do it, you know? You know, or two good people. You have to be selective, then you have to hold them at the — and we try to do everything we can to make East Coast a comfortable, and low-stress working environment.

Brent Donaldson (Editor-in-Chief, 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ): Hey everybody, Brant Donaldson with 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ here. If you just watched that video and thought, “I’d love for my shop to be featured in The View From My Shop series,” then send us an email at shopvideo@mmsonline.com and tell us what sets your shop apart.

But , the family-owned-and-operated metalworking facility that is the subject of this month’s cover feature, stands out in a couple of distinct ways. And while those distinctions may not be easy to replicate, they still serve as a valuable lesson in business strategy.

On the shop floor, Marathon Precision’s blend of precision CNC machining with three full-time blacksmiths and a new chemical etching department is not typical at shops of this size (~50 employees). This mix of production methods begins to make more sense after getting to know owner and founder Mike Bauer — an old-school craftsman turned manufacturing entrepreneur. You can connect the dots from his beginnings as a tool-and-die maker to the shop’s ability to run lights-out as a path toward fully integrated manufacturing.

This is the first key to Marathon’s success: Its purposeful development into a vertically oriented production facility. Shops limited to a single specialty can be vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and erratic production schedules. So Bauer invested heavily — at times some might say recklessly — in multiple manufacturing processes. Today on Marathon’s shop floor you’ll find:

• Hand-forging in one section of the building
• Manual and CNC grinding in an adjacent department
• CNC mills, lathes and multispindles — more than 50 now — in their own dedicated area
• Optical inspection and traditional CMMs
• Chemical Etching in a newly completed department.

Clearly, this approach is not cheap. Some of the equipment, such as the Keyence 3D scanner discussed on page 64, was not adopted in what you might call a measured fashion. If promising work came along that required new technology, more often than not, Bauer invested in it. New capabilities and extra floor space were often incorporated long before the works orders were a sure thing, and the strategy required reinvesting a higher percentage of profits than many shop owners would be comfortable with. These were calculated risks. But when when they paid off, they allowed Marathon to absorb new customer demands seamlessly.

From what I can tell, this was always part of the plan, from day one.

Not part of the plan but just as critical to Marathon’s success was the other work that makes Marathon unique. One way to describe that work is play. Not the tech-bro, “work-hard-play-hard” style of play with built-in kegerators, free lunch or foosball tables. This kind of play centers around three qualities: Creativity, knowledge and trust.

In 2015, Mike Bauer’s best friend died of cancer. Devasted, Bauer became contemplative about life and work. “When I was leaving his funeral, I was thinking about how I’m living my life, about how I’ve always said that I can make anything, that I’m proud that I can make anything,” Bauer told me. “And that day I decided to start making fun stuff in my shop. Some of the art you see around here, I think it’s good for the shop, good for morale.”

The “fun stuff” is likely the first thing you’ll notice when you step onto Marathon Precision’s shop floor. You can find in-depth descriptions in our March 2025 cover feature, but to sum it up, here’s what you’ll see on Marathon Precision’s shop floor:

• Metal sculptures and art everywhere, all made in-house
• A professional music recording studio
• A ’55 Chevy and a WWII bomber fuselage, among other giant installations, mounted on the wall
• A backroom garage stocked with vintage cars in various states of restoration
• Employees’ cars in the same garage, being repaired.

Creating art or household items or using the shop’s equipment to repair your car is not only allowed but encouraged. Learning to use this equipment brings knowledge to the employee. Shop leadership trusts the employees to use this equipment safely and responsibly. Creativity, knowledge, trust. “If it’s mechanical, it’s good,” Bauer explained in his typically understated manner. “The guys can work on their cars here. They can make whatever they want to make.” This characteristic of Marathon Precision wasn’t the result of a strategic brainstorming session. It’s simply a reflection on who the owner is.

So yes, this shop is a model of vertical integration. If the conversation ended there, it would still be a lesson worthy of attention. But the lesson becomes more profound when you dig into the shop culture, defined in large part by curiosity, generosity and a willingness to reinvest profits. If you consider these “soft skills” to be a distraction from the bottom line, consider the shop’s retention rates. Bauer hasn’t lacked for skilled workers in years. Consider the cross-training and diverse skill sets this culture fosters. When a complex aerospace part comes through the door, think of how adept this team must be at creative problem-solving. Taken as a whole, it is why Marathon Precision is a prime example of how to build a high-morale, profitable shop.

Pallet systems such as this Cubelex-35 from Matsuura enable users to set up parts while the machine is running to maximize spindle uptime and unattended machining. Photos provided by 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ. 

Higher spindle utilization means shops are getting more money from their machine tools. To increase this number, shops need to find a way to set up parts while the machine is running. “The setup is where you lose your money,” says Patrick Filipek, an application engineer at Matsuura Machinery USA. “You get no money out of a setup. Some can take an hour, and some can take days.” One easy way to increase spindle uptime is by adding a pallet pool to a machine. With a pallet system, “the machine's spindle never stops running while you're doing work at the workstation by reloading stock or doing a setup of a job. And with large-capacity pallet pools, you can have jobs stored away so the initial set up is already complete, allowing for no wasted setup time,” he adds.

Not only does a pallet pool increase spindle uptime, but it can also increase unattended machining. “Some shops, they'll run up to seven days straight without human interaction,” Filipek notes. “I tell people, this is your night shift, and this is your weekend shift.” This is particularly important in the face of the ongoing skilled worker shortage. “At IMTS, I don't know how many thousands of people I talked to, and it's the same sentence over and over: ‘We can't find any people,’” he adds. “We’ve got to look at ways for the machine to run itself or take the place of one or two people that we'd have to hire.” But to reach these levels of unattended machining, shops need machines and processes that are set up for success.

Before running a pallet schedule, Matsuura’s system checks data from its probing and laser systems against the jobs loaded onto the pallets. If it finds that any of the tools needed are broken or expired, or any issues with the parts, it will flag that pallet on the pallet pool monitor so operators can identify and resolve any issues.

1. Probing and Laser Systems

Probing and laser systems can be used to detect broken tools and misloaded parts, as well as inspect parts and calculate part and tool offsets. Tool and part data gathered by these systems is stored in the machine using a macro, where it’s used to determine production schedules. When a user starts a pallet schedule, the machines run a pre-check to ensure none of the tools required to machine any of the loaded pallets are broken or expired. “If any status is not good with that pallet, if the probe measures that the part on the pallet is no good, if the tool is broken or if the tool is expired, it will not run the pallet,” Filipek explains. “It flags that pallet so an operator can come and investigate the issue.” Typically, operators can quickly fix these issues (such as tooling or part misloading or measurement errors) and get the pallet back into the schedule so production can continue. In the meantime, the machine will move on to the next pallet in the schedule so it can continue running with no downtime. The pallet pool monitor shows the status of all pallets in the queue, so operators can find and fix any outstanding issues and see current status of the machine with ease.

Matsuura’s machines have capacity for as many as 530 cutting tools. More tools means the machine can handle a wide range of parts and allows for duplicate, or sister tooling of cutting tools that are prone to breakage.

2. Large Tool Magazine

Large tool magazines to enable users to tool up the machines to run a range of parts, as well as stock up on duplicates (or sisters) of any tools that are prone to breakage. The tool magazine capacity in Matsuura’s machines varies based on the machine model, but ranges to 530 tools. “The tool magazine interfaces right into the tool management system,” Filipek explains. “As soon as the first tool expires or breaks, it knows that the next one's ready to go and it will use the sister tool to continue running, ensuring the machine spindle does not need to stop and wait for human interaction.”

Pallets with multiple faces not only prolong unattended machining, they can also enable one pallet to hold multiple different jobs.

3. Pallets and Fixtures That Hold Multiple Parts

Matsuura also offers a range of pallet pool sizes —pools range from four to 91 pallets, depending on the pallet system model. Users can also move pallets between compatible machines, allowing them to set up and store additional pallets outside of the machine and load them as needed.

But having a certain number of pallets doesn’t necessarily limit users to setting up only that number of parts. Filipek says most Matsuura models have pallets with four usable faces, increasing the possible number of jobs per pallet. “You're not limited to one job per pallet,” he explains. “You could have potentially four separate programs running on one pallet. For example, a machine with 32 pallets could potentially run up to 128 different jobs.”

Pyramid fixtures also enable users of five-axis machines to stack parts on top of each other, like a tombstone. “On a five-axis, palletized machine, we're looking for throughput of finished parts,” he adds, “and fixturing is a big player in how many parts we can stack up and be able to machine multiple sides of the part.”

At the end of the day, pallet systems enable machines to continuously make chips. “It's return on investment the quickest way,” Filipek says. “And it all comes back to spindle utilization.”

Being greeted by a WWII bomber hanging on the wall of a machine shop is not a typical experience for even the most grizzled industry reporter. Nor is climbing a stepladder to capture the flames roaring out of a 10-foot-tall metal dragon sculpture. You might have petted a stingray before, but you’ve never played a drum solo in a full-blown recording studio tucked into a shop’s corner.

But what about the array of high-end, palletized HMCs, VMCs, and multitasking machines in the next room? And what are those three blacksmiths making over there? Why are two gentlemen filing metal dies edges by hand in the dark?

Did you just stumble into a playground for artistic gearheads or a sophisticated high-mix manufacturing facility?

The answer here is yes — “here” being Marathon Precision, an all-in-one machine shop and metalworking facility located inconspicuously in the outer Chicago suburb of Wheeling, Illinois.

By the end of the tour, you realize the coolest thing about Marathon Precision isn’t the recording studio or mechanical sculptures or even the back room full of classic muscle cars. It is that their coexistence under one roof serves a rather profound purpose: A drastically improved bottom line for the business.  

Still, you might wonder: Was that the point of fusing art and creativity with a variety of production methods? Was it an offbeat strategy to create a loyal workforce, or was it simply the byproduct of one man’s unbridled imagination?

The answer again is yes — both are true. This is the story of how art, generosity, creativity and technology came together to create a fun, profitable, highly efficient one-stop-shop.

A Vision Forged From Dies

The story begins 40 years ago in a technical high school classroom in Chicago, where young Mike Bauer — grandson of a blacksmith and son of a busy mother of six and a father who flew bombing raids over Nazi Germany during WWII — is learning to shape steel by hand. “I remember in one of those shop classes, the first thing they gave us was a block of steel and a file to square it up,” he says in his deadpan Chicago drawl. “I thought: ‘I’m never going to do this for a living.’”

Those classes soon led to Bauer’s first job at a local shop where he learned foundry work and gained hands-on experience with tool-and-die-making. He took to these skills immediately. He seemed to be gifted with a sixth sense for detecting minute variations in steel and forging edges much sharper than his coworkers.

Over the years while honing his craft at shops around town, Bauer took on greater and greater levels of responsibility. He found himself as a department lead, being praised for his ability to integrate processes while keeping costs in check and attracting a diverse array of customers.

But after years serving other shops, dealing with management conflicts, cold-hearted bosses and secretly harboring a desire for autonomy, Bauer struck out on his own. As fate would have it, he opened Marathon Precision in the summer of 2001, just weeks before the September 11 attacks and subsequent anthrax scares. Still, with just a short list of equipment and his conviction that in-house, end-to-end approaches are how you succeed in a competitive landscape, work began to ramp up. He secured contracts with major packaging and labeling companies — his dies today produce many of the envelopes and paper packages we receive every day — objective validation of his one-stop-shop strategy. 

How “Overbuying” Became a Winning Strategy

To bolster his shop’s forging and die-making capabilities, Bauer quickly added manual grinding and other secondary processes. From the outset, Bauer made a calculated decision to “overbuy” — both in terms of floor space (60,000 square feet today) and equipment — an unorthodox approach that demanded reinvesting nearly all profit straight back into the shop.

Bauer’s earliest forays into CNC machining began as demand grew for more complex shapes and tighter tolerances. When a key customer requested turned features on a stainless part, he invested in his first CNC lathe almost immediately — without a multi-year contract or a backlog of similar orders. That move showed his bias for “buying before needing,” which he continued by investing in Sodick VMCs and palletized Matsuura HMCs for rapid changeovers — both critical to the shop’s high-mix, low-volume operations. He also snapped up one of the first Haas five axis machines as soon as it hit the market, deploying in-process probes and on-machine inspection routines early on — both uncommon at the time for smaller shops. Within a few years, CNC machining was no longer just a side benefit but a primary revenue driver. The shop now boasts more than 50 CNC machines, including palletized Matsurra HMCs that perform lights-out, a full lathe department (manual to 10-axis CNC lathes), OD grinders, surface grinders, Mazak Integrex multispindles, chemical milling equipment, high precision Sodick mills, Sodick wire and sinker EDMs, waterjet and laser-cutting machines.

When producing dies, the blacksmiths hammer wedge-shaped cross-sections, focusing their work on high-stress zones. Once the raw shape is complete, the cutting edges are hand-filed, checking tolerances through measurements and by feel. Doing this work in a dark room allows the craftsmen to see minute reflections on the steel. Their hand-filing motions are methodical and precise, resulting in cutting edges so sharp that Bauer says they can easily cut through two-and-a-half inches of paper. To back up his claim, he takes a thick leather glove from a workbench and runs it over the edge of a newly sharpened die. It cuts through the leather like a hot knife through butter.

While the forging and hand-filing areas are set apart from the machining department, a data-driven rigor still informs the workflow. Drawings are developed from digital files, and final tolerances are often validated with a Keyence VL-700 3D scanner. This investment, it turns out, opened yet another tier of high-value work to the shop. 

Scanning for Success: A Rapid Inspection Loop

Keyence VL-700 Series 3D scanners are equipped with what the company calls “the world’s first fully automatic CAD conversion function.” Its “true-to-life scanning” allow these machines to obtain 3D data with shape and color (“heat map”) information, and CAD data and coordinates can be used to perform comparative measurements. While not ideal for some high-precision parts, the key advantage of the optical scanner, at least at Marathon Precision, is its ability to quickly scan and compare a part to the model used to machine it.

While the Keyence represented a major investment for Marathon Precision, it was triggered by just one particularly urgent case: New work for a potentially major customer that required complex aluminum components with extensive geometric features. The turnaround time? A few weeks. Searching for a solution, Bauer called Keyence and asked for a demo of the machine. After the demonstration, he says, he purchased the scanner immediately. “I would never have taken that job otherwise,” he says.

Another advantage of the Keyence scanner is that very little training is required to properly scan a part and run a comparison, and no programming of GD&T information is required. This means that machinists can quickly check an incomplete part after the first operation to ensure accuracy — particularly important for complex parts. These aluminum vacuum cylinders were machined on the Mazak Integrex multi-axis machine. 

Mike Foy, Marathon’s lead production engineer, explains that any errors and misalignments, even for difficult-to-measure features like fillets, countersinks or concentricity, are easily spotted in the heat map. Other advantages of the scanner, according to Foy: Very little training is required to properly scan a part and compare, and no programming of GD&T information is required. Simply scan and compare, knowing that the accuracy of the comparison can be easily changed. This means that machinists can quickly check an incomplete part after the first operation to ensure accuracy — ideal for the shop’s low-volume production focus.

“We used to rely heavily on more traditional quality control methods,” Foy says, “but a tactile CMM takes considerable knowledge and time to program. With the Keyence, we can scan parts mid-process and catch issues before we’ve made a hundred of them. We get a precise digital model that feeds back to the machining team.”

“Once you have advanced inspection in-house,” Bauer adds, “you don’t hesitate when a tough job comes your way. That’s really where we’ve been able to grow.”

The Full Circle: A Mechanical Playground and Manufacturing Powerhouse

By the time you leave Marathon Precision, the question you had at the beginning of the tour is largely answered. Yes, this place is a mechanical playground inspired by one man’s imagination, and yes, it’s also an intricately structured operation that thrives on technical prowess and the free sharing of innovative ideas.

Bauer’s father flew in several bombing raids over Nazi Germany during WWII. During our visit, Bauer and his team had just finished this art installation that replicates the plane his father flew during the war. 

The WWII bomber fuselage, the flame-shooting Batman symbol, the vintage baby-blue ’55 Chevy on the wall, and the scores of glowing vintage signs aren’t just there to dazzle visitors. They are a testament to history and daily reminder that design, craft, and artistry are as critical to US manufacturing as process optimization or rapid inspection cycles.

Years ago, while working under two co-owners with starkly different leadership styles, Bauer witnessed an incident that nearly killed a young machinist. The machinist had pushed a CNC mill far beyond its recommended speed, causing a large steel part to break free and blow the door completely off its hinges. The door knocked the young man backwards onto a table while the part shot over his head and into the back wall. One boss rushed over, asking if the machinist was all right and calling for an ambulance. The other boss picked up the machine’s door to inspect the damage. “That was the day I decided which one I wanted to be,” Bauer says. Safety protocols are part of routine training, and also checked each morning and afternoon when Bauer walks the shop floor to greet his employees.

So yes, the dragon and Batman and vintage signs and the real-life GTA garage full of muscle cars are visually spectacular. But combined with Bauer’s leadership, their presence also cultivates a work environment where creativity and mechanical tinkering are not just tolerated, but encouraged. Old and new technologies complement each other and foster a diverse range of skills among staff. Here, a blacksmith hand-forging dies or an operator making weekend car repairs is no less valid than programming a five-axis CNC or verifying a new part’s geometry.

Most of the higher-level production jobs at Marathon Precision are staffed internally by people who receive training. Tinkering and sculpting and working on cars all feeds into that system. “I think it’s good if somebody wants to come in and work on their cars,” Bauer says. “There are three or four of us here that know a lot about cars. And if it’s a mechanical part, we can make it here. We can make anything and teach anybody here. If it’s mechanical, it’s good, because it does one big thing for you: It builds knowledge.”

And that’s how we end the tour, with Bauer pointing out all the side projects currently underway inside this nondescript building in a sleepy Chicago suburb. There’s the actual moat that his son, Marathon’s vice president Mike Bauer Jr., is building around the perimeter of a new conference room. There’s the giant spider sculpture situated next to “Buzz,” the metal dragonfly. “There’s a guy building a motorcycle back there,” Bauer points out along a near wall. “He has one on the other side of the wall that he already finished. And when you show people that, people want it. I believe people want — they want a better life. They want to make more.”

Zeiss Industrial Quality Solutions is hosting its first-ever on Thursday, February 27, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. ET. Exclusively for the U.S. and Canada, the digital event will reveal seven new, innovative metrology technologies and software updates in less than an hour, the company says. 

With the technology launched at this event, Zeiss says it is answering the demand for advanced technologies that support efficiency and address the skills gap, enabling the integration of other key industrial developments, including artificial intelligence (AI), clean manufacturing and data-driven operations. These innovations are designed to increase part quality by detecting and preventing defects early.

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• What Zeiss says is the first-ever two-in-one microscope and vision measuring machine (VMM)
• A CMM that supports up to five tons
• Versatile optical 3D scanning machines for fully automated measurement and inspection workflows
• A powerful X-ray microscope for X-ray vision with dual magnification
• A high-accuracy CMM
• The latest Zeiss Inspect software updates to increase data analysis speed and efficiency

These new developments expand the Zeiss Industrial Quality Solutions portfolio that includes automation, CMMs, CT/X-ray NDT, microscopes, optical 3D scanners, VMMs, surface and special geometry instruments, and intelligent software solutions for the aerospace, automotive/NEV, medical, electronics and power and energy industries. Zeiss says manufacturers can rely on these technologies and their industry-focused features to support quality across the entire product lifecycle.

For more information or to register, visit .

One beneficial phenomenon that occurs at low spindle speeds and increases the allowable depth of cut is process damping. Process damping has been identified as energy dissipation due to interference between the cutting tool clearance face and machined surface during relative vibrations between the two. Because process damping enables increased material removal rates at low cutting speeds, it is an important consideration when modeling machining operations for hard-to-machine materials.

The purpose of machining models is to select optimal operating parameters at the process planning stage. For today’s job shops, process planning begins with a solid model of the part to be produced. A CAM software package is then used to generate the CNC tool paths that reveal the desired solid model geometry from the stock model geometry (prismatic bar stock or additive preform, for example). For milling operations, the tool geometry, spindle speed and feed per tooth must be specified in the CAM software. Additionally, the axial depth of cut (stepdown) and radial stepover must also be selected for 2.5D tool paths. Because material is removed layer-by-layer in 2.5D tool paths, the axial depth of cut is fixed and the radial depth of cut is defined by the selected stepover. For this reason, it is beneficial to determine the limiting radial depth of cut as a function of spindle speed for a fixed axial depth. However, traditional stability analyses assume a fixed radial depth and identify the maximum chatter-free axial depth for the selected range of spindle speeds.

In this article the effects of process damping are included in a stability map that describes the limiting radial depth of cut as a function of spindle speed. A milling stability model that includes process damping is applied to generate spindle speed versus axial depth stability limits for multiple radial depths. These limits are then combined to identify the corresponding spindle speed versus radial depth stability map for the selected axial depth. The spindle speed versus radial depth of cut stability map is produced using the following sequence of steps.

1. Specify the system dynamics, tool geometry and force model, including both the cutting force and process damping coefficients.
2. Select the desired spindle speed range and axial depth of cut.
3. Generate the spindle speed versus axial depth stability map for the selected dynamic system using the smallest desired radial depth of cut.
4. Determine the spindle speeds at which the limiting axial depth is equal to the desired axial depth from step 2. Store these {spindle speed, radial depth} pairs.
5. Increment the radial depth of cut to a larger value and repeat steps 2-4. Continue until the radial depth is increased to the tool diameter.
6. Collect all {spindle speed, radial depth} pairs from steps 2-5. The result is the limiting radial depth of cut as a function of spindle speed. Because the axial depth of cut stability analysis includes process damping, the final radial depth stability limit also incorporates process damping effects.

The procedure steps are demonstrated through an example and the corresponding figures. For the example, the selected spindle speed range is zero to 10,000 rpm and the desired axial depth of cut (stepdown) is 3 mm. The spindle speed versus axial depth of cut stability map for an up (conventional) milling radial depth of cut equal to 25% of the tool diameter (that is, a 25% radial immersion) is displayed in Figure 1. This represents the result from step 3. The spindle speeds where the limiting axial depth is equal to the desired axial depth (3 mm) for the final radial depth stability lobe diagram are identified in Figure 2 (step 4).

Fig. 1: Axial depth stability limit for a 25% radial immersion. Source (all figures): Tony Schmitz

For comparison purposes, the step 4 result for a 50% radial immersion is shown in Figure 3. It is observed that number of speeds is reduced with the increased radial depth because the axial depth stability limit is lowered. The final radial depth of cut stability map (step 6) is displayed in Figure 4. This represents the collection of limiting axial depths of cut identified over the full range of radial immersions. The corresponding diagram for a desired axial depth of 5 mm is provided in Figure 5. As expected, the radial depth stability limit is lowered with the increased axial depth.