Business Profile: JessEm Tool Company

This Orillia, ON shop introduced a CNC swiss-type lathe.

JessEm Tool Company’s new Star SR-32J CNC Swiss-Type Automatic Lathe.

JessEm Tool Company’s new Star SR-32J CNC Swiss-Type Automatic Lathe.

This spring, the JessEm Tool Company of Orillia, Ontario, acquired its first Swiss-type machine tool. More specifically, the company bought an SR-32J CNC Swiss-Type Automatic Lathe from AMT Machine Tools of Toronto. The Automatic Lathe was manufactured by Star CNC Machine Tool Corp., a division of Star Micronics Co., Ltd. of Japan.

JessEm (which was founded in 1999 and named after president Darrin Smith’s twin daughters, Jessica and Emily) makes its own line of woodworking tools and accessories, such as router tables. The company has 20 employees working in a 27,000 square foot facility with 10 machine tools and other equipment, including the Star SR-32J. JessEm’s customers include woodworking tool stores across North America, Asia and Europe.

“We have other CNC lathes with automatic bar feeders but this was the first lathe that will allow us to do secondary operations in the same process,” states Smith. “We have a lot of parts we used to make on our other lathes that have to go in the mills after for drilled cross-holes and things like that … I didn’t want to be using more labour to do that. I wanted to get a machine to do it automatically.”

Smith did extensive online research before making his purchase. He selected AMT in large part because of the complementary training and service offered by the company. In addition to being JessEm’s first Swiss-type CNC lathe, this was also the first Star machine tool the firm ever purchased.

The Star SR-32J boasts a six-station tool holder, revolving guide bush unit, four-spindle sleeve holder, C-axis control unit, FANUC CNC unit and a rapid feed rate of 24 m/min on the X, Y, Z, ZB and XB axis.

The company took delivery of the new machine tool this past April. “What I refer to as installation took two days, from unload to running the first customer part,” says AMT president Keith Crowther. “The machine actually came in at 8:30 am on the 17th and we left that night at 9 pm ready to hand the machine over to my application engineer for set-up and training,” he says.

The application engineer stuck around JessEm for several days after the SR-32J was put in place, training company personnel on how to use the machine. The same engineer has returned to JessEm a few times since installation to check in and offer additional insights.

“Swiss style machines usually take a little longer for training due to the Swiss concept and number of axis,” notes Crowther.

“Even how you machine the parts is a little different [on a Swiss-type lathe]. Because the part runs in a guide bushing, the material actually moves back and forth instead of the tool moving back and forth. Your order of operations as you machine the part is a little bit different. You have to get your head around that and [the fact] it actually runs two programs at the same time,” states Smith.

“We’re in pretty good shape now. The first few set-ups were a little rough. [AMT] were always there to help. That’s really the reason I bought from them. I felt most comfortable that they would get us up to speed. That was pretty important because it is a pretty fair learning curve, but between the manual and AMT’s training, it hasn’t been too bad at all. I thought it would be a little worse than it was,” he adds.

In addition to the Star SR-32J Swiss-type CNC lathe, JessEm’s current equipment inventory includes five Haas VF-2 CNC milling centres, one Haas VF-5 milling centre, one Haas SL-20 lathe with a bar feeder, one Haas ST-20 lathe with a bar feeder, one Hydmech H10 automatic saw, one Elumatec automatic non-ferrous saw, one Abtex semi-automatic deburring machine, and various other small manual machines.

All told, the SR-32J came to roughly quarter-of-a-million dollars, more than double the cost of JessEm’s Haas CNCs, and according to Smith, the expense was well worth it.

“We did increase our run size for the Swiss lathe because it does take longer to set-up. We typically did runs of 200 to 500 parts at a time on our other lathes. Now any of the parts we do on the Swiss lathe, we run between 3,000 to 10,000 parts. This spreads the set-up time over a greater number of parts and is less demanding on our manpower.

“We knew it would take a while before we really saw any benefit. We’re starting to see the benefit of it now. It does do the parts a lot faster. Probably in half the time it was taking before,” he states.

JessEm is also using the SR-32J to produce components for a new product called the Wood Sabre Marking Gauge. The gauge boasts a long shaft with a series of grooves on it, and according to Smith it would have been very difficult to make with the company’s other CNC equipment.

Crowther offers some straight-forward suggestions on using the SR-32J. “Like any new machine, my idea of best practice is to look after the equipment. Don’t abuse it and it will serve you well,” he states.

For his part, Smith hopes his new machine tool purchase marks a return to pre-recession levels of productivity. Before the 2008 downturn, JessEm was based in Barrie, Ontario and had 50 employees, 21 machine tools and a second plant in Tennessee. That plant was sold off and both staff and machines scaled back. The company moved to Orillia a year-and-a-half ago.

At present, JessEm’s annual revenues stand at about $4 million, roughly half of what they were prior to the recession. In recent years, the company has enjoyed a flourishing 20 per cent annual growth rate.

Smith says he can “definitely” see JessEm acquiring more Swiss-type CNC lathes—“as long as the economy stays good and we keep growing.”