VIDEO: TOOLING UP – User-First Innovation

NARRATOR: This video is brought to you by Seco Tools, providers of comprehensive metal cutting solutions. 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 FREE: Hello, everyone. Mitch Free here. Welcome to Tooling Up, the series that's meant to make you a better, more efficient, more productive operation. If you're new here, please subscribe, and hit that like button. Our guest today is Jay Ball, the product manager for Solid Carbide Milling at Seco. Jay, thank you so much for joining me today.

JAY BALL: No, thank you, Mitch. I really appreciate the opportunity to get to speak with you today and just really talk about this exciting new product offering we're going to have available from the Seco Tools product family. So again, thank you so much for having me on today.

MITCH FREE: Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm excited as well. So I saw in your background that you've been with Seco for like 16 years, that you actually started your machining journey, at 14 years old. I'd love to hear a little more about that.

JAY BALL: Yeah, no, Mitch, I appreciate you asking. Yeah, you are correct. I have been in manufacturing since I was 14, started off like most machinists do as a sweepist, pushing a broom around in a machine shop. And then I got into manual machining and then got interested in, got interested in CNC programing in high school.

MITCH FREE:  Well, it sounds like you're perfectly suited for the role that you're in, because I don't think it would be possible to produce the innovation and have the user insight that you and everyone at Seco does without that sort of a background. You know, we're a community where, you know, manufacturing professionals are a community of problem solvers. That's what we do. And I've just always been impressed with Seco in the way you guys are really innovative. What's the approach that you guys take to problem solving, to identifying needs in the market?

JAY BALL: You know, Mitch, that's a really interesting topic. And everybody knows nowadays that manufacturing, machining is changing on a daily basis. So what's really been interesting is we've been working very closely with our R&D teams both here locally in North America, but then also in Europe as well. And what we've been doing is we've been working really closely with customers in trying to really identify opportunities to improve their processes, improve reliability.

It seems that there's this cat and mouse game between material manufacturers and machinists, right? New material manufacturers make these awesome materials that have their lighter weight and they have more heat resistant. But we know from machining that those present their own problems and own challenges. So really trying to collaborate more with the customer and the end user to really develop new products.

MITCH FREE: Well, one of the products that I'm really interested in learning about is this new Seco X head. This is fascinating and quite an innovation. I'd love to hear you talk about this and how this came about and use cases that you're seeing for it.

JAY BALL: Yeah. You know, the the exchangeable head product family for Seco has been around since, I think 1987. We've really come to this new design. We're utilizing our in-house grinding technologies on the front end. So you're going to have the availability to do a lot of different types of materials, a lot of different types of applications.

MITCH FREE: I can tell you one of the things that we're really excited about this product for is, you know, running production. I've got a number of Okuma LT 2000 turning centers that we run really pretty high-volume production on. And we love the fact that operators can change out a milling head without having to reset the offsets. What other interesting value propositions are you seeing?

JAY BALL: That's actually one of the really big benefits to the end user is the repeatability, right? Because you've got your tool offsets, you've got run out you have to consider and with this connection that we're using and the grinding technologies we've incorporated in this connection, we were actually able to get a 50 micron repeatability for the run out, but then also the tool offset length itself.

So as far as the operator issue where you're trying to pull tools out, put new tools in, the versatility in this product is going to add a lot to the customer's production capabilities. It's going to reduce downtime and it's going to help increase a lot of their productivity.

MITCH FREE: I imagine this X head tool works across many different industries, many different applications aerospace, automotive, medical. I mean, it's not tied to anything specifically. It's very broad appeal, I imagine. Let's go into a little bit specifics. Like what grades do you offer for this thing? Do you offer coatings? Do you offer different flute lengths, corner radii. What are all the options here?

JAY BALL: You're right, Mitch. I mean, with the different industry segments, like you mentioned, automotive, aerospace, medical, even PowerGen, we're seeing uses for these tools in PowerGen, steam turbines, gas turbines. We really had to take a look at what geometries we already currently offer in our solid milling portfolio and then just adapt those geometries to the actual connection itself. So we've got three different product families within the X head portfolio.

So you're going to have this more like high performance range. You're going to have a range of tools that are designed for optimized roughings. You're going to have six flute tools, you'll have three flute tools for aluminum. You're going to have two different high feed options. But then also we wanted to, we wanted to have a range for that versatile offering, right?

Customers that machine a wide range of materials. Maybe they're machining steel one day, stainless steel the next day. So we have a three-, four- and a five-flute tool available as well. But then we couldn't forget about general purpose – the chamfers, the corner radius tools, the plunge mill tools, and the spade-style ball nose end mills. We've got that offering as well.

So we really have a pretty extensive offering to cover all these wide industry segments that this product's being used in currently.

MITCH FREE: Well, that's fantastic. It's certainly it's going to be a I could see a reduction of the number of skus in the tool crib and certainly a reduction in the amount of carbide that we’re throwing away. Carbide is expensive. It just keeps getting more expensive. And we are just replacing the head. That's got to be an enormous savings. And so the value of this is just many, many fold.

Jay, it’s been fascinating learning about the X head product, but I'd like to know a little more about Seco as an organization. You guys have a great reputation for innovation, for R&D and would just love to as much as you can share about the organization and what you think the future looks like for Seco.

JAY BALL: I appreciate the kind words, Mitch. I mean, it is built into the legacy with Seco and I think where we really stand apart from a lot of other competitors is the fact that we're always looking out for the customer's best interest. When we're looking at their applications, we want to partner with companies and make sure that they're getting the most efficient use out of all the cutting tools, programming strategies, so we really do pride ourselves on trying to be a solution provider to the customers that we work with.

MITCH FREE: Jake, thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

JAY BALL: Thanks for having me on. I've really had a good time.

MITCH FREE: If you enjoyed that conversation with Jay as much as I did, please subscribe where you will find many more great interviews just like this one. And for more information about Seco products, visit mscdirect.com/seco. 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.