VIDEO: TOOLING UP – On the Cutting Edge of Innovation with Brendt Holden, Haimer USA

NARRATOR: This video is brought to you by Haimer: Where Quality Wins. Welcome to Tooling Up, a series by MSC Industrial Supply Company, the show that provides real world insights and is brought to you by leading industry experts aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of your operation. And now, the host of Tooling Up, Mitch Free.

MITCH: Hi there, everyone. Mitch Free here. Welcome to Tooling Up, the series that’s built to make you a better, more efficient and more productive operation. We have a fantastic show today. If you're new here, be sure to subscribe and hit that like button. Our guest today is Brendt Holden, president of Haimer USA. Brendt, thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

BRENDT: You're welcome, Mitch. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.

MITCH: It's my pleasure as well. I'm certainly excited to get to speak with you. I'm a big fan of Haimer, I know we use a lot of your products in our shop and I’m  looking to learn today about a couple of products that I think I'm not so familiar with. Brendt, Haimer is an impressive company and your journey to become the president of Haimer is inspiring. Can you tell us a little about your journey and how it all began?

BRENDT: Yeah, sure, Mitch. It is a pretty cool story. So basically after college, I started to work at a small 15 man job shop here in the Chicago suburbs, and I was running  CNC mills and lathes, and learning a little bit about everything as it relates to the process of manufacturing parts. And, you know, about five years into it, I realized, well, I do love the industry, but this part of it's really not for me.

Quite honestly, I wasn't the best machinist. I tried my best but decided to go into sales. So I started to work for a sales organization here in the Chicago suburbs. They became the first importer of the Haimer balancing machine. So that was pretty cool because that got me to be introduced to both the Haimer family and the Haimer product.

As we developed that relationship, we ran into the 2000s and the Haimers decided they wanted to start a North American operation. They approached me. And sure enough, in 2002, with the help of my wife and the support of the Haimer family, we started Haimer USA and it was a slow start, but we took it step by step, grew from there and got to the point where now we have a full operation here in the Chicago suburbs, over 40,000 square feet. We've got an operation in Mexico with 10 employees down there and people up in Canada as well. So now we've really covered North America properly and been able to support the market and grow and learn from the US market.

MITCH: Wow, that is an impressive story. Well, that's incredible career growth. You know, we all know Haimer has incredible products and quite a large product portfolio. What are a couple of the things that you're really excited about?

BRENDT: Well, you're right. You know, we basically are known for our tool holders for milling machines. People know us for that. But what they don't really know about so much is the fact that we do make our own cutting tools all made in-house, all made in Germany. And we've developed these cutting tools based on the needs of the market, things like Safe-Lock™ and Duo-Lock™, some new innovations that really are new to the cutting tool industry.

MITCH: Yeah, something I remember hearing you say a while back is that a lot of the industry is using new high-precision tools in old holders. Can we dive into that a little bit? What did you mean by that?

BRENDT: Yeah, that's a great point, Mitch. So basically, if you think about it, there's so much focus on cutting tool geometries, edge preps, coatings, new developments as that relates to how to be more efficient. But really, no one really thought much about the interface of the cutting tool into the tool holder and Haimer being specialized in that kind of took that to the next level.

So what I mean by old tool holder technologies with new tools is basically, yes, you've got these amazing cutting tools, but yet the customer will take that and put it into a 100 year old side lock end mill holder technology in order to retain the tool. And we had customers come to us. You know, that's one thing Haimer does. We listen to the customers and that's where most of our innovations come from, is customer feedback.

And they said, hey, you know, this isn't making sense. So that's when Mr. Haimer went to the drawing board and came up with the Safe-Lock™ innovation. Safe-Lock™ is a really cool back-end feature on the shank of the cutting tool.

What it allows you to do is hold the tool in a very high, accurate method, whether it be shrink fit, hydraulic chuck, high-precision collet chuck, whatever. But we also put a form in the back of the tool holder that's going to actually engage with spiral grooves on the back of the shank. And this is going to retain the tool. So there's no fear of the tool pulling out. So you're getting the best of both worlds with that scenario.

MITCH: I think that's really important as we think about it. You know, machines are more and more accurate today. As you said, machining strategies with high speed machining, dynamic milling, trochoidal milling, all those things are something that play a part today. Couple that with engineers using tighter and tighter tolerances, and this is an innovation that was just long overdue.

But I know there's another innovation that I personally find very exciting as well. It's called Duo-Lock™. Tell us about that.

BRENDT:  Yeah Mitch. So basically Duo-Lock™ is a modular cutting tool interface system. Mr. Haimer is one of these guys, he’s always looking off into the future, looking for innovations. He noticed more and more people moving to a modular cutting tool system. In doing such, he looked at what was available on the market. What we found and saw was a little surprising to us. 

We found that the interface between the cutting head and the extension or the tool holder was very weak. And then again, it made sense to us when we really thought about it because the people making the modular systems were cutting tool people. So they were people who were really focused on the cutting edge, the coatings, the geometries, the edge preps, etc., but they're not really interface people.

Where at Haimer, we really understand the importance of the interface. So again, Mr. Haimer went to the drawing board and it really took about five years of R&D to come up with the Duo-Lock™ interface. And what we accomplished is really unique because we have a pilot that guides the head into the holder, we've got a load-bearing thread, we've got a multi-angled surface it's going to rest upon. And this gives us a tremendous amount of strength. And with that strength we can take the same kind of cuts that you can with the solid carbide end mill. And that was kind of the trade-off you gave in the past if you went to a modular system. Yeah, it was kind of convenient for the Z-axis and the of the different options you could put on, but you had to reduce your cutting conditions.

And that's the last thing people want to do. They want to machine their parts more efficiently, effectively now. And so with the Duo-Lock™ system, you can do that.

MITCH: That's exciting. Wow. This has been a fantastic conversation. Brendt, your domain expertise really shines through. It's obvious that you're passionate about the industry and that you spend a lot of time out with customers understanding their pain points and how to innovate to fix those challenges. It's been a real pleasure talking to you today.

BRENDT: It's been a real pleasure for me too, Mitch, especially talking to you, someone who runs a shop and understands why this technology is relevant.

MITCH: That I do. If you enjoyed our talk with Brendt as much as I did, please subscribe to our MSC channel where you can find many more great interviews just like this one. 

To learn more about Hammer and their innovations, visit mscdirect.com/haimer. Thanks so much for joining us. Until next time, Tooling Up is here to help you be a better, more efficient and productive manufacturer. See you soon. 

NARRATOR: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the MSC Tooling Up video playlist to hear tips that can take your company to the next level. And subscribe to our channel so you won't miss out.