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Opting for Orbs Over Easy:
Finding a Niche in a Tight Market
Story by Stephen Smith
Photos by Scott Rathburn
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In 1952, Eugene Gleason opened a
small shop in Los Angeles called
Micro Surface Engineering to
perform flat lapping operations
primarily for the hydraulics and
national defense industries. But, over
time, the company found its niche and
became focused on manufacturing
custom-made precision balls.
Today, Micro Surface is a highly respected,
versatile contractor. The company’s Bal-tec™
division manufactures precision balls of any size
and material for a wide variety of industries,
including electronics, quality control, aerospace
and the U.S. Government.
Eugene’s son, Joseph, began learning the industry
at the age of seven, and by the time he turned fourteen,
he was already adept at scraping ways and completely
rebuilding various machine tools, such as horizontal
mills and cylindrical grinders.
Joe later went on to learn CNC programming at
Don Bosco Technical Institute, and apprenticed for
several years doing basic machining and inspection.
He now runs the precision CNC and production arm
of Bal-tec, and has numerous inventions and patents
to his name.
SPHERICAL SOLUTIONS
| Every machine shop seems to have a horror
story about a job that turns out to be a real pain, and
Joe says Bal-tec is no exception. “We currently have a running order
for 300-series stainless steel balls for ball valves. We start
with a 1 5
/16 " ball turned to a
spherical tolerance of 75 micro inches. Then we
machine a hole and slot into the ball without
creating burrs or distorting the roundness of the
ball. We do this job on a Haas VF-3 vertical
machining center.
“We have to hold position, squareness and size on
the slot to within 0.001",” Joe continued, “and 316
stainless is notorious for burrs. We cut the slot with
small cuts and high feedrates, and we depend on the
rigidity of the Haas to eliminate any chatter and the
associated burr formation. We end up with very
little scrap.” |
Bal-tec has a running order for
300-series stainless steel balls for ball valves. They molded a
special epoxy fixture to hold the balls for drilling and milling
on their Haas VF-3. |
Chips were another concern on this job, explains
Joe. “We do the milling operations after the balls have
been lapped to a surface finish of 4 micro inches, and
we were afraid the chips from drilling and milling
would damage the surface. But the programmable
coolant nozzle on the Haas keeps chips flushed out so
they don’t damage the finish on the balls.”
BOX WAYS? NO WAY!
When Joe and his father Eugene decided to take
the big step up to CNC machining, they found themselves on opposite sides of an
argument that torments many first-time
buyers. “Yeah, we were looking to
purchase our first modern CNC
vertical machining center, and the
argument was about box ways verses
linear guides,” explains Joe.
It turns out that Eugene was
looking for the box ways, but Joe stood
firm with an adamant NO WAY! “Well,
basically, my reasoning was that there’s
an old-school feeling about box ways
being associated with rigidity. My
argument is that every major machine
manufacturer that I know of uses linear
guides, and I thought that the Haas,
with its linear guides, gave a lot of
value for a much more competitive
price. Once my dad saw the machines
cut, he was convinced. Rigidity has
never been an issue.”
The Bal-tec stable of Haas
machines has grown quite a bit since
the first purchase back in 1996. “We
have two verticals, the VF-3 and the
VF-4,” says Joe, “and we recently
purchased an HL-4 lathe with a bar
feeder and an HL-2 lathe with the new
Haas Servo Bar 300 bar feeder.”
TURNING PROVES PROFITABLE
As with most major machine
purchases, the first lathe was bought to
fill a void in the overall production
picture. Many companies purchase an
additional machine either to take on a
new project or to bring a previously
jobbed-out manufacturing process
in-house. Such was the case with Bal-tec’s HL-4.
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Joe Gleason at the helm of one of the
company’s two Haas lathes. Bal-tec uses bar
feeders on both lathes for unattended operation. |
“We made the jump into turning
mainly to produce ball blanks in an
automated way with a bar feed,”
explains Joe. “Before we took delivery
of the HL-4, we cut blanks and
machined the balls individually on
a tracer lathe. With the Haas lathe and
bar feeder, we’ve been able to reduce the
cycle time on one particular part from
40 minutes to about 12 minutes. And
with the included parts catcher, we are
able to run the lathe unattended. |
| “We make custom balls to order out
of all sorts of materials,” continues Joe,
“stainless steel, brass, aluminum,
inconel, titanium. And sizes range from
0.008" to 20". With the Haas lathes, we
can machine blanks out of several
different materials with the same
program, just by changing the
speeds and feeds.”
According to Joe, the balls are
also more accurate. “The constant
surface speed ability of the Haas
yields very accurate blanks and
allows us to eliminate one entire
process. The balls used to go through a filing process after machining that
could take days. Now they go right
from the lathes to finishing. |
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CONTROL-ABILITY
Bal-tec is a well-equipped
machine shop with all kinds of
machines on the floor, from EDMs, to
VTLs, to grinders, so the crew is
exposed to a number of different
controls. This situation presents a
perfect environment for side-by-side
comparisons of some of the more
popular controls on the market today.
| When you have to use a number
of different controls in your daily
routine, it doesn’t take long to figure
out what you like, explains Joe. “We
have found the Haas control to be
really straight forward and simple to
use. In addition, it has some features,
such as Quick Code programming and
editing on-screen, that are not
available on other machines. For
convenience, we store many programs
on disk. The ease of interface between
the floppy drive and the control on the
Haas is a real plus.” |
The programmable coolant nozzle flushes out chips so they don’t damage the finish on the balls. |
Like any company, Bal-tec loses key
employees from time to time. But thanks
to the easy-to-learn compatibility of the
Haas controls, training a new operator
isn’t so much a problem as it is a
momentary setback.
“Most of our programs are in the
memory,” explains the younger
Gleason, “and the control provides a
Help menu that’s easy to use. In
fact, the Haas control even offers a
switchable language feature that
allows machinists who consider
English their second language to easily
change programs into a language they
are more comfortable with, like Spanish,
French, German or whatever. And it’s
just as easy for us to change it back!
“One of the biggest selling points
of the Haas machines is the ease of
setting the tool offsets, especially on
the lathes with the tool presetter. That
makes a world of difference. And, the
graphic dry-run feature is important
because it catches simple errors that
are sometimes easy to miss, and it
keeps the operator from crashing
the machine!”
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Above left: These stainless steel balls are first turned to a spherical tolerance of 75 micro inches, then
drilled and slotted on a VF-3 without creating burrs or distorting the roundness of the ball.
Above and right: Bal-tec manufactures custom precision balls to order,
using just about any material imaginable. Diameters range from
as small as 0.008" to as large as 20". |
DOIN’ DONUTS
Bal-tec presently runs Haas rotary
tables on both verticals, using the
versatile devices to work parts of all
descriptions and materials. “We’ve been
running some big cast-iron donuts on
the HRT 310,” relates Joe, adding, “I
should mention that we cut a lot of cast
iron on the VF-4. We drill these on the
O.D., and hold tight tolerances when
indexing. These are heavy castings and
require an extremely rigid set-up. We
haven’t been let down yet. The Haas
machines continue to meet our needs.”
According to Joe, that’s one of the
biggest challenges to machine tool manufacturers like Haas, “keeping up
with customers’ needs.” And the Haas
equipment is allowing Bal-tec to
venture into new markets.
“We’re starting to make a lot of
calibration devices for CMM
applications, and we offer these at
wholesale or retail,” says Joe. “For
example, we make the balls that
Renishaw uses for their ball bars, and
we make our own ball bars that we sell
to some of the major CMM
manufacturers. But, during the next five
years, we hope to have our own
complete line of calibration equipment
for virtually any machine tool.”
If the time spent with the Gleasons
is any indication of where the company
is going, there is little doubt that the
father and son team will most likely be
found out in the shop, one-on-one with
the latest innovative job challenge.
“I had a chance to see Gene Haas when
we visited the new factory in Oxnard,”
says Joe. “He seems to have the same
work ethic that I have, so you’ll
probably always find me out in the shop
with dirty hands and a rag in my back
pocket . . . it seems to work for him!”
Bal-tec™
Division of Micro Surface Engineering, Inc.
213-582-7348
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