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Exposed by our customer GLD & Ikelite The Summer of 2009 found Joe and Jeff with their daughters preparing for a deep water dive in the crystal blue water of the Bahamas. It was their daughters’ first dive and they were hoping to see the magnificent creatures of the deep but anxious as to how they would best capture their thrilling moments. In all their preparation an underwater camera had been forgotten. To their happy surprise their dive leader had an Ikelite Underwater Camera. Now that they were ready for action, they took their dive… |
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“The thrill of seeing the secrets of the ocean and its magnificent creatures up close is a life changing event. One that we were happy to record with the Ikelite camera; not just because we were able to bring home the memories and proof to back up our stories but because the design, programming and machining is done by one of our Eurotech customers!” – Joe & Jeff Eurotech wants to take this opportunity to thank our valued customer Larry Ostendorf of GLD & Ikelite for making this possible. Let us explain: IKELITE was experiencing a difficult time with obtaining screw machine parts. The lead times were usually too long and they couldn’t get prototype parts as quickly as they needed them, not to mention that they were very expensive. Their volume wasn’t such that they received a very good price or the customer service that a larger client would get. They found a solution:
…they no longer wait for their parts, prototypes are done overnight, and they experience a huge
savings of 15% in |
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IKELITE was founded in 1962 by Ike Brigham. His first product was a flashlight for divers or Ike's light. Thus they became Ikelite. Ikelite has since manufactured underwater flashlights, compasses and photographic equipment, introducing many innovative new products to the diving industry like the first O-ring sealed underwater light to incorporate a sealed beam bulb, and the first diving compass with a rotating bezel and direct reading degrees.
It wasn’t always simple sailing for them however. Ikelite was having trouble with extended lead times of up to 90 days on their parts. In addition they needed the ability to prototype new parts rapidly and inexpensively and they weren’t able to do this with their vendors. An engineer for Ikelite, Larry Ostendorf, suggested they pur-chase a screw machine to run some of their parts. Ike wasn't comfortable with the idea so Larry asked if he could supply the parts to him. Ike agreed and so in 1995 they formed a partnership between God, Larry (Ostendorf), and Dave (Combs) which became GLD. God has continued to bless us in our effort and He remains fundamentally important to their business.
Larry continued to do the design of Ikelite’s products during the day; during the night he became program writer
and machinist of the numerous parts needed for his day job. He started with a Johnford TC-20 and
TC-16 lathe. There were several parts he couldn't make and others that required
numerous operations to complete. He and his partner went on a search for a new
lathe and settled on a Hardinge. However, while at the Dayton Show looking at
the machine, they came across the Eurotech E42 Lathe. It was less expensive
than the Hardinge and chip-to-chip faster than anything else they had seen.
So they changed their minds and bought the Eurotech.
“It was a dreamboat and four years later we bought another,” Larry said. His next choice was Eurotech’s B545L. Both were bought from Dave Hornsby of Superior Equipment. We had the opportunity to talk to Larry about his operation and the applications he runs: “I’m absolutely sold on the Eurotech products –
starting from the distribution network, the factory to the finished part – everyone is top notch. We’re not a huge customer but we’ve always been
treated like one and I can’t tell you how much that means to a shop like mine.
The live tooling, the speed from chip-to-chip is phenomenal!”
Larry continued to explain his set-up: “I have an advantage over most as I get to do the design during the day. Then I run the parts at night. It’s an optimum situation. One of the Eurotech machines is used for optics, ports for lenses to shoot through and custom eyepieces to look through. The second Eurotech machine runs any parts from 3/4 to 1½" diameter. Even the most complicated parts we make, using every tool position on the turret including 4 live tools, can run unattended. The average cut for any tool we use is 9 seconds. The improvement we saw in turret tool change was 3 seconds/change. That's about a 30% improvement; and that's without changing any speeds or feeds. Add the elimination of secondary opera-tions with live tooling and we are well over 35% improvement!”
“All lenses on the port of the housing are turned on the Eurotechs. Every housing, every knob that controls the camera functions are run on the Eurotechs. I couldn’t be happier in my choice.”
“With the Eurotech’s we are also able to make prototype parts overnight for far less than our vendors. The most important improvement was cutting lead time and parts outages. We closely monitor the use of all the Ikelite parts we make and we can re-arrange our schedule to prevent back orders.”
“Originally there was a learning curve for me. I was an Engineer not a machinist. Eurotech and their distributor were invaluable in helping us to improve processes to reduce machine time without sacrificing quality. The Eurotech trainer spent most of his time working with live tools and circular interpolation. All of my training was on sight in about two days. I design the parts by day and make them at night so I know how parts fit together and which surfaces are critical.”
“The Eurotech lathes gave us a dramatic improvement in chip to chip time. This reduction in machining time also means a reduction in part cost. Because I work for Ikelite by day nearly all cost reduction is passed along to Ikelite. Ikelite's cost was reduced to 15% but that was during a time when raw material costs nearly doubled in some cases. Our brass cost went from $1.50/lb to over $3.00/lb.”
“Over
all the years the machines have been running, mostly unattended, we have had
about zero down time. We had one service call; Denny from Superior tweaked the
hydraulic pressure because a sensor was tripping. He came within a day which minimized
down time.”
Jean Brigham, daughter of Ike and current owner Ikelite continues to manufacture a diverse line of under-water photographic equipment. Ikelite is famous for the design and manufacture of sophisticated electronic flash units, strobe mounting systems, and a wide range of unique accessories for under-water photography. For more information on Ikelite, go to www.ikelite.com.
