| Drake Manufacturing Services Co. | Tel:
330-847-7291 |
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| www.drakemfg.com | Email: info@drakemfg.com |
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A note from the President… |
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I am writing this while sitting on yet another trans-ocean journey following the completion of commissioning and running off the world's first 4-meter ball screw grinder built on a cast polymer base with no mechanical drives on the principal axes (more details on that new machine below). While we were commissioning this machine in India (yes, we learned to love the spicy curries as well as the Kingfisher beer), we received orders for over a dozen machines from China, Korea, Japan, Australia, Mexico and yes, believe it or not, even the USA. Reasons for optimism? I sit on the AMT Global Marketing & Sales Committee and we selected the theme the "The Brutality of Reality" for the sales and marketing portion of our forecasting and marketing conference this October (cheap plug—October 21-22 in Miami. See www.AMTonline.org for details). And what a brutal several years it has been. But, the green shoots of late 2009 have turned into even greener saplings and given us all some measure of optimism. Is it warranted? Only time will tell. My partners have often accused me of acting manic-depressive lately as I bounce between preparing us for a double dip and global deflation on the one hand and a round of stagflation that would make the late '70s look mild on the other.
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Only one thing is for sure in my book: the undisciplined governments and consumers of the developed world, that have made a mess of the world's economy, are way too far in debt (on the books), and have made far too many promises of future spending (off the books) to remain solvent without big changes. How this all plays out over the next few years is unclear—inflation, austerity, deflation, more insane spending? The bond and stock market mavens are acting bi-polar as well—one week up chasing earnings (from rampant cost-cutting), one week down running from the PIIGs—and no one in Washington, London, Bonn, Delhi, Tokyo, or Beijing seems to be quite sure what to do. How can we mere mortals know? Reasons for paralyzing dread? We at Drake Manufacturing are carefully investing our time and resources in continued developments for our customers that need to make precise forms with index or helix or all three. Call them threads, worms, racks, gears, ball tracks, splines, or serrations—we are working away developing new and improved methods to help you make them. We continue to be financially successful and plan to continue to transcend the current economic and political nonsense. My advice: stay focused, stay ready to seize opportunities quickly, and stay nimble and prepared to deal with whatever the mid-term elections and the next few years of our continued de-leveraging bring. If you want to make threads, however, give us a ring, wherever we or you happen to be in the world. —Jim Vosmik
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Drake Out in the World Call it the brutality of reality, but we came to the conclusion that exhibiting at IMTS is far too much investment for the returns we receive. So, while we may see you walking the halls or at your booth, we will not be an exhibitor. Our decision was not taken lightly. We fully expect stories and questions about our financial condition as a result of our absence but decided that for $125,000 (yes, that was our average cost over the past few shows), we could market our relatively narrow product line in many more effective ways. We have equated our participation in IMTS to advertising in the New York Times—no doubt as great a paper as IMTS is a great show—but to pay to reach the huge 85,000 to 100,000 attendees of IMTS when maybe, 300-400 may have an interest in our product seems inefficient at best and wasteful at worst. We have not abandoned trade shows and do recognize their value. We just exhibited at a small Chinese gear show and in the next year we will be exhibiting at JIMTOF in Tokyo, IMTEX in Bangalore, CIMT in Beijing, and Gear Expo in Cincinnati.
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Recent Orders and Shipments Shipments … in addition to the GS:TE-LM 4M machine mentioned above, we have recently shipped a number of machines (GS:TI-LM nut grinders and VTM vertical thread mills) to a licensee of the patented Internal Return Ball Nut for an electric power steering program, several refurbished and retooled hydraulic power steering nut and worm grinders, as well as EPS column steer worm grinders. Despite the economic crisis, the fuel efficiency return on electric steering systems versus hydraulic has lead to vigorous investment in EPS systems around the globe. We provide a suite of machines for manufacturing steering components for commercial and light trucks as well as passenger cars including rack milling, ball thread grinding, ball nuts, worms for column steer, and conventional hydraulic steering rack nuts and worms. The other business that remains globally strong for us is the thread gage industry. We recently shipped a second gage grinder to a customer in China for making larger API (American Petroleum Institute) ring gages. This machine accepts parts to 540mm. It joins several other large (650mm and 540mm swing) internal and external thread gage grinders shipped to customers recently. Finally, we just shipped a fully automated worm and gear grinder to Forest City Gear. We are proud of this machine in that FCG decided to keep its first Drake LM worm grinder too. For those of you unfamiliar with FCG, they typically use a machine for a few years and then sell it to make room for the latest technology. We actually had a buyer for their original (2005) machine lined up but FCG decided to keep it in production due to high demand for the ground worms produced on it. We are glad to have this customer pleased with our gear and worm grinding capabilities and productivity.
New order activity… has significantly picked up in the last quarter and we once again have a backlog—hear that?—BACKLOG! Lead times are growing again so do not wait too long to order. We booked more than a dozen machine orders over the past 6 weeks alone and expect 7-9 more in the next month. Orders include more in-the-field re-controls of old hobbers, fully automated tap machines for China (yes, automated machines for China and a private company at that), a thread rolling die grinding machine, a rack mill, a fully automated ball nut grinder, as well as a traditional, job shop thread grinder.
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 Drake GS:VTM Vertical Thread Mill 
Drake GS:TE-LM 4M Ballscrew Grinder  Drake GS:TE/I LM-650 grinding  Drake GS:TE-LM Worm Grinder  Drake GS:TE-LM Grinding Worms |
Developments for You… Tap Grinding Update … the customer for our first, fully automated, continuous run tap grinder reports great success and productivity. This machine is a traditional GS:TE-LM robot load machine but includes a pallet changer that delivers up to 9 full pallets of tools. Depending on tool diameter and pallet density, this provides up to 30 hours of unattended running. The loading and pallet changing system has proved to be extremely reliable but we have been chasing some sporadic faults in the flute finding system. Mike Hughes and Curt Gemmel visited the customer last week and solved the issue. Our next developments in this series of machines will be a wheel changer (longer unattended grinding capabilities) and a bar code reader for a self-configuring setup. Big Ball Screw Grinder … Our new GS:TE-LM 4M machine has been installed and run off at HMT Machine Tools Ball Screw Division in Bangalore India. This machine has a grind length of 4 meters (160 inches) and swings over 350 mm (15"), a cast polymer base, a moving wheel head design, a direct drive torque motor work head with better than 10 arc second index accuracy, a two-axis, behind-the-wheel dresser, a headstock mounted dresser with outboard bearing support for crushing or form roll dressing, power helix, internal grinding capability, and on-machine inspection via a Renishaw probe and Stig Mowatt-Larssen's software. The work head (C-axis) is driven by a torque motor integral with the spindle. The wheel in feed (X-axis) and work traverse slide (Z-axis) are driven by linear motors. There is some irony in the fact that this massive machine for grinding ball screws (and nuts—it has an internal attachment) can operate with no ball screws—truly a "mother" machine tool. Runoff consisted of grinding a 790mm ISO Class 0 (lead error of less than ±7 microns in the length) ball screw as well as a 3.5 meter ISO Class 1 ball screw (lead error of less than ±32 microns in the length)—both ground by Stig in one setup without removing either screw for lead inspection during the grind. As this is written, the machine has been in HMT's control for less than a week. We are still cautious and will return for more software additions to the probing (lead and pitch checking in addition to the form and size checking that exist now) and additional training as the customer gets comfortable with the machine.
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Drake GS:TE-LM Tap Grinder
Drake GS:TE-LM Tap Grinder
Loading & Pallet System
Drake GS:TE-LM 4M Ballscrew Grinder |
Current Lead Times One benefit of the economic slowdown was that our lead times had shrunk to 6-7 months. At this time, however, we are moving them out to 7-8 months ARO. While no longer 6 months, we still have runoff slots in April and beyond for 2011 and have started hiring builders and engineers. Please contact Sales (info@drakemfg.com) for a quote or use the RFP form available at www.drakemfg.com.
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Drake Lives its Philosophy Early 2010 brought us one of those incidents that tests a company's commitment to its philosophy. After all the struggle to design a new ball screw grinder with a cast polymer base and linear motors, get the components, assemble it, run it off here, and get it out of the country in one piece, our installation team was shocked to find that the X-axis wheel head had broken loose in transit and spent some part of the journey to India crashing back and forth between the front table and rear guards of the machine. In the process, it sheared both hard stops, and roller cars, smashed the hydrostatic spindle, glass scale, and destroyed plumbing and wiring. Fortunately, there was no structural damage to the casting itself. Without as much as a thought, the Drake installation team lead by Joe Gimmarco, Dave Bradford, Gary Sweeney and our Indian representatives at VMT Technologies went to work getting the machine wired and installed so we could perform the damage assessment. Within 2 days, replacement parts were being made, scales and cars purchased, and a beautiful orchestration of trans-oceanic logistics took place. Three long months and tens of thousands of dollars of last minute air travel, express shipping, express customs clearance, and long weeks of travel away from our families, the Drake team handed over the machine to our Indian customer—still within the original hand-over time and with better alignments than when it was at Drake!
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Our deepest thanks and respect for their professionalism go out to Joe Gimmarco, Stig Mowatt-Larssen, Dave Bradford, Gary Sweeney, John Bauman, Keith Housel, and Dave Ayers for giving up a good part of their summers in India. Jim Mitchell, Lou Donnelly, Rick Sanders, and Cindy Niemi worked the home front in Warren keeping up with the myriads of emails, requests for prints, shipping requirements and sometimes, late night calls from 9.5 time zones away. They remembered several tenets of our corporate philosophy that at Drake, "we make good machines, we make a profit if we can, take a loss if we have to, but we make good machines" and "You Crash, We Dash." Thanks to all involved. |
Drake Adds Service and Support Please join us in welcoming VMT Technologies, Bangalore, as our country manager in India. Mr. N. Balakrishna has been working with us since 2005 and was responsible for the successful HMT business. He and his team have agreed to manage our sales activities in India, coordinate with local representatives, and provide installation and service support in conjunction with the folks at the AMT Chennai Technical Center. Despite the difficulties in dealing with a machine damaged in shipping and a disappointed and concerned customer, "Bala" and "Manju" (Manjunath) kept their (and the customer's) spirits up, their hands dirty, and the lunches hot while we all suffered through the rebuilding process. Manju is a skilled thread grinder as well as an engineer and provides excellent assistance in training and machine operation and will be a valuable resource to our Indian customers. Mr. Varadachar is an electrical engineer and knows his way around a CNC. Bala, the founder of the firm and a long-time machine tool sales person, is an electrical engineer by training and has proven himself very adept at helping us bridge the culture and understand the customers' needs. VMT Technologies India
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DRAKE MANUFACTURING
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