Bronco Manufacturing today easily tackles the highprecision high-volume work of industries such as aerospace, defense, and medical, but this wasn’t always the case.
For most of its existence, the Texas shop enjoyed a comfortable niche producing simple machined parts where precise tolerances were not an issue. Then its customers started to ask if the shop could produce other parts they needed that required tighter tolerances.
Bronco Manufacturing had to turn down that work because it didn’t have machining centers able to meet the precision requirements, especially at production volumes.
The shop saw an opportunity for growth, and a risk that it would lose business if it was unable to handle that level of manufacturing. The potential to lose business ultimately became the tipping point.
After evaluating several machine tools, Bronco Manufacturing added a Mycenter horizontal machining center from Kitamura Machinery, and later installed four more of those machines along with a Mytrunnion 5-axis machine, also from Kitamura Machinery.
All of the machines are kept busy with the influx of work, particularly in medical devices. The shop also was able to increase the amount of work it was doing for the military as well – work it was unable to bid on before it acquired the Kitamura machines.
“The addition of the Kitamura machines has had several effects on our business,” Sammy Adams, plant superintendent at Bronco Manufacturing, said. “Jobs are rolling through the shop faster, with more consistency and with higher quality.”
One of the features of the machines that Adams and the shop liked was the use of Kitamura-Fanuc CNC controls. The machines the shop previously ran had Fanuc controls, so Adams believed having them on the new machines would help to get them up and running faster.
“The machines are very user-friendly. They are very compatible with our shop and the way we work. This ease of use lets us move operators seamlessly from machine to machine, helping us maintain production schedules while delivering higher quality parts that meet the close tolerances our customers want. Sometimes bringing in new machinery can be painful. This wasn’t,” he said.
The construction of the machines is another benefit. Adams pointed out that every component on the machines contributes to the precision and stability needed for the type of work the shop is now doing. The machines also work faster. Their output is 50:1 compared with the older machines on the shop’s floor.
