VIDEO: TOOLING UP: High Performance Tooling for Every Job

JASON WELLS: We as a company have such a tremendous focus on R&D. We have a global innovation center that's fully staffed, with people and equipment and all the latest, greatest instrumentation so that we can gain a tremendous amount of data and data points in order to continue to look for ways to develop new technologies and continue, again, to be relevant in our industry.

Narrator: This video is brought to you by Kyocera SGS Precision Tools. Value at the Spindle. If you're looking for real world insights, tips from leading industry experts, the latest trends in products and technology, you've come to the right place. From MSC Industrial Supply, this is Tooling Up.

TONI NEARY: Hello and welcome to Tooling Up. I'm your host, Toni Neary, and I'm so glad that you've joined us here today. But first things first, if you're new around here, go ahead and click that like and subscribe button so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes of Tooling Up. I'm so excited today to be talking all about Multi-Carb tooling solutions with Jason Wells.

And Jason is the vice president of product innovation for Kyocera SGS Group. Jason, thanks so much for joining us today. And welcome to Tooling Up.

JASON WELLS: Thanks for having me here today, Toni. It's a pleasure to be a part of the Tooling Up series. And, really honored to be able to share some information with the audience today.

TONI NEARY: Awesome. And one of the things I love to jump in is I want to know a little about your career path. Like, how did you end up here and what did that journey look like for you?

JASON WELLS: I came in at a really interesting time at SGS. We were a privately held family company and, went through a transition of, you know, going from first generation to second generation and then fast forwarding to today to where we're part of a multinational conglomerate and, had the unique experiences to work at really every level of our organization in different aspects, to an extent with the company.

I started out of high school and fast forwarding time, 32, 33 years later, I haven't spent that entire amount of time with SGS. I have left the company to work for other organizations, always within the tooling area, tooling arena of our industry and then returned back. So in all actuality, as strange as it may sound, this is my fourth time around with SGS and hopefully final.

TONI NEARY: And I love that. I love to hear this story that, you know, you've left and you've always ended up coming back there. It's kind of like a boomerang. And I'm Australian, so I know a little thing or two about that. But seeing the company in so many phases and stages, really, what have you learned from that experience?

JASON WELLS: As we've seen machines advance, it certainly has allowed or pushed more on us as tooling manufacturers to find ways to keep up with the machines. And as those advances pushed on tool holding manufacturers and fixturing and cooling folks. And so we're all interrelated once that machining process occurs and, just to see the, the need to continue to evolve and continue to grow as a company, not always out of desire, but sometimes out of necessity, quite honestly.

TONI NEARY: And I love that you talk about evolution and you talk about change. But one thing that really hasn't changed at SGS Kyocera is that customer success factor. And I know that sounds like, you know, being a part of tooling solutions and constantly evolving, you're meeting shifting demands. Talk with me a little bit about Multi-Carb tools, like what are the advantages?

How has this evolution happened? When were they first introduced?

JASON WELLS: As we started to see advancements and we also started to see customers strive for greater productivity improvements to be more competitive, it really forced us to start to look at the tooling and ways that we could adapt them or adopt them to be more advantageous in very specific situations, rather than looking at a one size fits all sort of scenario.

And so what we've done is, in our, in our industry is we've created a whole section of tooling known as high performance tooling. In most situations, what we've done is we've taken that geometry and we've adjusted it, we've adapted it to gain all of the benefits we can for a very specific purpose or a very specific need, whether that be material based or operational based or what have you.

The Multi-Carb is one of those products that fall into our high performance product range that really fell into that category. So as CAD/CAM programming, machines being able to look ahead and to be able to take advantage of higher feed and speed rates and productivity rates, what we found is the ability to embrace what's known as high efficiency or high speed machining.

And in that situation, you know, flute count becomes really important. And that is a really big aspect to that Multi-Carb and why it's called Multi-Carb is that offering is available in seven, nine, and eleven flutes or number of cutting edges on that tool which allows us to harness some of those advantages in high efficiency machining and in advanced machining applications.

TONI NEARY: And I think really looking at customer satisfaction, the evolution, the collaborations, talk a little bit about the types of industries that you're seeing the impact with Multi-Carb tools.

JASON WELLS: We're seeing the Multi-Carb really take advantage and be advantageous to us in industries that are machining, I'll call difficult-to-machine materials or what are often termed as high temperature alloys. These would be your Inconels, your Waspaloys, and your titaniums. And these materials are tremendous for their end use. You see it a lot in defense and aerospace and medical because they have tremendous structural integrity, and they hold up extremely well because of their low thermal conductivity to high temperatures. The challenge for us as a cutting tool company is those traits that make them so wonderful for the applications that they're going to be used in, make them that much more difficult for us to, to machine, to shape into a finished part through a machining process.

TONI NEARY: Tell us a little bit about the training that goes into deployment of some of the technology, like the Multi-Carb for your customers and your end users, and you know, your MSC metal cutting specialists that are out there in the field as well.

JASON WELLS: We have a tremendous tool clinic program that's staged in different levels, that you can advance into where we bring folks in for a week and do actual hands-on training, out of our research center, our global innovation center. We'll do onsite training for customers where needed. We do customer projects all the time where we bring in customer projects, we dissect them, get all the details pulled together, and then we'll go back with a deliverable and train them on what we did, how we implemented a solution.

But definitely, most importantly, is our network of application and sales engineers that we have out in the field. Because, as you said, it's not as easy as just handing a tool and saying good luck. And also when we're introducing new technology, the whole idea of it being new is first time we're seeing it. You know, we've never really been down this road before, so we want to make sure that it's being applied appropriately so that we can make sure that that tool is being fully taken advantage of, that all of the productivity that's available to that customer, all the productivity that's available on that tool, is fully being extracted and being taken advantage of by our customers.

TONI NEARY: Jason, thank you so much for your time today. I feel like I learned a ton.

JASON WELLS: It was my pleasure.

TONI NEARY: I'm continually impressed with SGS Kyocera, and Jason, you've left no exception there whatsoever. So I loved hanging out with Jason today. And if you enjoyed our conversation and you want to make sure you don't miss any other ones, please make sure to subscribe to our channel. To find out more about these Multi-Carb tooling solutions, visit www.mscdirect.com/sgs.

Thanks so much and we'll see you next time on Tooling Up.

Narrator: What more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the 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.