VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Cutting Edge Blades

Narrator:  This video is brought to you by Lenox. Always hungry. 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. Thank you so much for tuning into the show today and checking out the MSC channel. If you're new here, be sure to hit that subscribe button as well as the Like button. Today's guest is the senior R&D engineering manager at Lenox, Mark Cranna. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today.

Mark Cranna: Thank you for inviting me. It's great to be here.

Toni Neary: Fantastic. We're gonna have a great time today talking about technology and all the good cutting edge stuff that we have going on at Lenox. Now, we've been fortunate to have Lenox with us in the past, but you're a new face for us and I always love to know what your journey into manufacturing looks like. So if you can tell me a little bit about what that journey was and what your role with Lenox is now.

Mark Cranna: Certainly. I started off my career with Allied Signal Aerospace, working with gas turbine engines. From Allied Signal, I went to Sandvik. I joined that organization and that led me into the world of cutting tools, and most specifically, bandsaw blades. From Sandvik, I joined the R&D team at Lenox, working on bi-metal bandsaw products. Over 25 years, my role has evolved into leading the bandsaw product development team, and also the R&D testing department.

Toni Neary: That's amazing. And over 25 years at Lenox is pretty astounding. And before we jump in and we start to talk about some of the amazing products like the Alloy Wolf Armor GT cutting blade, I'd love to know more about what drives you. What are you passionate about? How does it go with living the brand at Lenox? And always, you know, being always hungry, always striving to be better.

Mark Cranna: So excellent question. I love what I do. And the team here has a real passion for cutting tools. We're always looking for industry cutting challenges, and in so doing we're out with our end users quite frequently, seeing what their needs are and creating those solutions.

Toni Neary: And I think it's amazing for an organization that's been in business for over a hundred years, still looking at trying to be cutting edge and being better and we're going to jump a little specifically into the Armor GT product today. And what was the genesis behind developing that blade?

Mark Cranna: We currently sell to a large number of production cutting steel service centers, and these steel service centers provide material for both the aeronautic and automotive industries and sectors and the problem is their profit margins are being squeezed, raw material prices are going up, labor prices are going up. And so their challenge is they have to be able to deliver materials to their customers faster and more cost effectively.

Traditionally, carbide has been that answer. But carbide blades are expensive. So our answer has been to go with a proven bi-metal platform with very versatile product, with a high toughness edge, and then to extend the overall performance of that with a new PVD coating. That's the essence of Armor GT.

Toni Neary: So efficiency and productivity and looking at longevity of the blades is huge. And I'm always fascinated by the mind of an engineer. So now that we know the end user's looking for cutting rates, maximum productivity, where or how do you start with using a new product like this?

Mark Cranna: At Lenox, we take a step-based approach, part of lean engineering, and we try to break it down with the team in different categories. We have identified the problem, identified the product features that need to be included, and we brainstorm as a team to generate as many different ideas that are associated within particular technical sets or areas.

This could be raw material, this could be geometry. From that we generate prototypes and we do internal testing and then ultimately external field validation.

Toni Neary: That's amazing. And I think it's, you know, when you're looking at the brainpower of everybody that you have on your team and in the room and you're looking at innovation, I think that field study and making sure the products are doing exactly what you want them to do, is really important as well. Tell us a little bit about the product development specifically for the GT Armor blade.

Mark Cranna: For Armor GT, we broke it down into three particular technical sets. The first one was geometry, did a precision ground M42 product with relatively shallow gullets in order to make sure that we optimized beam strength. In addition, we have a patented, precision, multiple-level set which allows the efficient chip formation that reduces cutting forces and lower energies.

The second area is PVD coating. We've taken an existing coating recipe that's been highly successful for bi-metal blades targeting the structural market, and we've customized the recipe to add additional elements that allow for increased abrasive wear resistance and improved thermal barrier resistance. Finally, the third area is very important, manufacturing. We have completely revamped our approach to the manufacturing process for this product, both upstream and downstream, from the coatings process.

All of this led directly to improved metallurgical consistency and much tighter geometric tolerances, again leading to lower cutting force, lower energy, longer blade life.

Toni Neary: And I think that's really important because we're not just looking at the quality of the products and the quality of the engineers and the amount of research and development that goes into play, but we're also looking at the supporting resources that you bring to the table, not just the specialists that are out in the field, but tell me a little bit about the weld centers that you have across the country for this U.S.-made product.

I think that's really important that we know that as well.

Mark Cranna: We are very proud to be a U.S.-based manufacturer. We have multiple regional weld centers throughout the country – Massachusetts, Ohio, California. Our technical sales team is second to none. We have 50 plus individuals out in the field to help our customers address their cutting challenges and different applications that we on the R&D side may not be aware of.

Toni Neary: I want to say thank you again, Mark. I really appreciate the time that you've had here with us.

Mark Cranna: You're welcome. Thank you very much for having me.

Toni Neary: I'm so glad we had a chance to spend some time today with Mark and get inside the mind of an engineer who's really showing up every day to think of solutions for their customers and the end user. If you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, and you want to make sure that you see more discussions like this, please make sure to subscribe to our channel.

You can also find out more about the Alloy Wolf Armor GT Product Line and Lenox Advantage at www.mscdirect.com/lenox L-E-N-O-X. And we'll see you next time on Tooling Up.

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.