From its humble beginnings as a basic manual machine shop in 1953, when OEMs would bring in blueprints for parts, Allis Tool and Machine Corp. has transformed into a modern manufacturing powerhouse. A turning point for the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, company occurred in 1997, when Allis Tool and Machine brought in precision CNC machining centers, sophisticated processing software, and highly-trained technicians and engineers to complement its highly-skilled tool and die makers. The company's president, Bill York, is the man most responsible for this phoenix coming out of the ashes of an earlier incarnation.

"I've taken a much different focus with the company since purchasing it in 1997," says Bill York. "We've gone more to a precision tooling type of quality on everything we do, and we decided to design, engineer, and build complete pieces of specialty equipment. Before it was just a manual machine shop. When I took over, we bought all new CNC machining equipment and hired more technical people and engineers. We knew this is what we'd have to do to be competitive in the global marketplace."

In Allis's region, the manufacturing of large parts would seem to be the norm, with a multitude of earthmoving and mining equipment and rock crushers that need to be manufactured. The company's niche has evolved into medium-to-large parts, components, and machinery--a niche that has Allis performing CNC machining, tooling, systems integration, and assembly in-house. The company's specialty is building very large complete pieces of equipment--often thousands of pounds--in its design and build department. "It's typically something that will give our customers an ROI (return on investment) on a piece of equipment that they can't go out and buy on the open market," according to York. "It could be a completely new concept, or it could be an upgrade on an existing piece of equipment. We will often build a complete, custom piece of specialty equipment, with many different components and systems."

York believes that what makes Allis so unique is that it offers "tool room quality" with its basic CNC machining, and the ability to "intellectually design" equipment. Components are then integrated with a variety of complex systems, whether they are pneumatic, hydraulic, electronic, or control-oriented. Sophisticated data acquisition, testing, and failure analysis software are often part of the equation. The company's precision work is almost completely performed on tool steels and stainless steels, brass, bronze and copper, and sometimes titanium or Inconel^®.

"Another thing that makes us unique is the size of our equipment," York explains. "We have a lot of large fixtures and CNC machining centers for these large parts. We have turning, milling, and grinding capabilities that allow us to go up to a 22,000-pound piece of metal. We decided to do the larger sized parts because we don't want to compete with the high-volume shops that compete with companies overseas. We'd rather contribute intellectual skill sets to high-precision, low volume parts, from 1 to 300 prototypes, parts, components, or machines."

Vacuum Vessel for Medical Imaging Designed, Engineered, and Manufactured In-House

Manufacturing a complete, fully-functioning piece of equipment was once the domain of the OEMs, but companies like ISO-9000 certified Allis are now following in their footsteps. Allis is currently working on a project that will be a complete piece of equipment when it's finished--a pressure and vacuum vessel for medical imaging. The machine is a very large chamber--about seven feet tall and eight feet in diameter--that will be fully automated, allowing it to open and close automatically and draw down vacuum automatically. "We will completely design and engineer this piece of equipment for our client," says Kyle Klamar, vice president of the design and build department at Allis. "It will take us about 90 days to do all of the manufacturing, but we've invested five months in the design and concept stages."

The design and engineering process started with the brainstorming and sizing of all of the hydraulic components, and then the vessel's thermodynamics system, where the thermal load and the amount of energy extraction needed for a chiller to cool the system down were calculated. "Next we had to look into the mechanical system, functions of the vessel and its design, and coating certifications," Klamar explained. "Then we looked into the heat exchange process. Initially we were looking at using radiant emitters, but what we decided to do, not only for energy savings but for safety issues, was go to a convective heat transfer system, using a thermal fluid. This eliminated the potential risk and safety concerns of high voltage inside of a vessel, as well as greatly reducing the energy consumption."

The next concern was figuring out how to control this complex piece of equipment. A variety of controls were needed for the thermal side and the automation side, as well as for hydraulic valving, among other areas. Once the final design was approved, critical path items, like purchased components, had to be integrated with those machined in-house. A manufacturing plan was then formulated and assembly began. "We will always fast track any components that we can to make our subassemblies," says Klamar. "Sometimes it's not efficient to wait for all of your components to be delivered before you start assembling. For example, we'll start assembling the hydraulic power units, valve manifolds, and electrical panels. We make most of the components, but we do purchase some, like PLCs, HMIs (human machine interfaces), and electrical enclosures. We'll be making about 72 parts for this one vessel."

Once all of the components are integrated into the vessel, work starts on programming the control units. Klamar says a team of two technicians assembles the large, automated vessel from start to finish. They will keep track of all of the parts and components on GANTT charts. The technicians need to consider many control unit factors. The control units should know if the vessel is closed and locked, and if it has to turn the vacuum pump on, or bring it up to a specified level. In addition, the units must know the times needed to control inert gas, and when to bring it back up to a specified temperature and atmospheric pressure.

"We perform a lot of control integration, where we might have a closed loop digital controller or a thermal digital controller talking to a PLC," says Klamar. "The big push that we're seeing right now is not only to control these different devices, but also to add data acquisition systems. It might be a stand-alone system at the machine where we can install a memory stick--to extract data that helps you to develop a history of the device--or we can add a data acquisition system to a customer's network server. An engineer or quality control person sitting at his or her desk can pull up data points or collected data from a piece of equipment that's running on the plant floor to see its history and trends."

Many Markets and Applications

Allis Tool and Machine has a very diverse marketplace, for which it regularly provides many different types of parts and components. The company's primary markets, however, include the medical, power generation, aerospace, and motorcycle industries, and the "greentech" space. Medical applications include medical production assembly equipment, manual and powered assembly carts, jigs, fixtures, and other tooling. Power generation applications include large gear boxes for conveyor lines, and large fixtures and stands for companies that make transmissions for ships. Aerospace applications are large machined parts for the space shuttle and parts for astronaut crew quarters in the space station. Motorcycle industry applications are complete engines and complete transmission housings. In the greentech market, the company often produces electromagnetic motor housings.

Allis has mechanical engineers on staff that perform design work. "We have a very strong design assistance offering," York maintains. "Sometimes our engineers will visit a client's plant to discuss a bottleneck they're having. The value to them is we get to see first hand what the issue is and we can talk about different solutions with them and eventually get into a concept mode to solve the problems they're having."

Engineering challenges are taken very seriously at Allis. One particular example relates to a power take-off (PTO) unit for a farm tractor--a drive mechanism used for a multitude of agricultural processes, like pushing silage or operating a hay baler. The OEM, CNH Company, better known as Case Tractors, needed specific data that would provide validation for warranty compliance when the company shipped the tractors.

"We designed and built a piece of test equipment for Case that keeps track of 18 different data acquisition points on the PTO unit," York recalls. We came up with a method to collect data on the unit. This is a very large assembly--three and half feet in diameter and approximately 6oo pounds--that's full of all kinds of gears."

Allis's engineers first conducted a search for a computer program that could handle all of the data acquisition. Subsequently, they had to fixture it, and build a stand that would hold the PTO while it was running at full power. York says the testing is still going on to this day. "They've never shared what savings they got from our help," he says. "But they know now that when the tractor leaves the shop, the PTO is an excellent product, which ultimately adds to their profitability and peace of mind."

Excellent Ergonomics Prevail

Another unique challenge for Allis was for a company that makes rubber mats that cows lie on when they come in from winter weather--a one-inch thick, 4-ft x 8-ft piece of rubber. Before Allis's intervention, the client was pulling these rubber mats out of mold trays by hand--a 630-pound deadweight pull. The poor ergonomics caused workers' compensation issues because the mats were so heavy.

"We automated the unloading for them by installing servos, we retrofitted and redesigned their equipment, and made additional parts for their molds," says York. "After we were finished, they could just press a button and the rubber mats would pop right out of the mold, which made the operation ergonomically sound and safe for their employees."

Another project for the health care industry involves fixtures and equipment. An OEM client uses them to make assembly carts that help the client build its equipment. Most of the carts are constructed of nonmagnetic materials, like aluminum or stainless steel, since large magnets are encased in the imaging machine. For these parts and equipment, Allis had to be ingenious with plastic and fiberglass.

Allis Tool and Machine builds safety equipment for a local power generation company that has very critical performance requirements. The parts are a hub and pawl that are fitted inside a cylinder that helps to convey freight up into a ship. The device is designed so that if the power goes out during freight moving, the device will snap open inside the hub and grip the sides of the conveyor wall, so that the freight can't slide back down the conveyor.

"It all has to be very precision," York continues. "It has to be CMM-measured very carefully. And we have to grind some of the parts to within +/-0.0004-inch. We do 100% inspections for all of these safety parts. We ship the parts to them and they install them right into their assemblies."