Manufacturing Technology

With National Machinery celebrating its 150^th anniversary, we decided to speak to CEO Andrew Kalnow about how the company has developed into a leader in advanced cold forming machinery and the plans the business has to ensure it stays at the forefront of the sector.

National Machinery has just celebrated its 150^th anniversary. Can you tell us about how the company started and what the key points have been in its development?

“National Machinery started in 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and moved to its current location in Tiffin in 1882. Meshech Frost, my great grandfather, was attracted to Tiffin because of its advantageous logistics and resources. The factory could be located on a main east/west railway; there was cheap land to build a much larger factory; and Tiffin boasted plentiful skilled labour with its German and Italian immigrant populace. 

During those early years National focused on small machines to make bolts, nuts and nails. However, as the automotive industry boomed in the industrial northern states, National seized the opportunity to supply forging equipment to those growing markets. The company then introduced innovations such as the Maxipres vertical press and cold nut formers with rotating transfers. Boltmaker™ equipment up to 1¼ inch was also introduced, which led to National making significant international sales, as well as domestic.

After Word War II, with the Marshall Plan in full force to rebuild Europe, National’s strategy to meet burgeoning demand for cold forming equipment took a bold turn when it acquired, in 1958, the largest cold forming machine maker in Europe – J.G. Kayser in Nuernberg, Germany. A totally new factory that approached the size of the Tiffin factory was completed in the early 1960s in Nuernberg and even today the city remains the hub for our European operations. 

We also expanded into Japan, in 1973, and we are still located in Nagoya, which is a key access point to the Japanese bearing and automotive markets. Finally, the 1990s ushered in the FORMAX^® line that continues to evolve today with new features and models on a regular basis.”

What is the machine portfolio that National Machinery can offer customers today? How does the company guarantee the quality of these machines?

“Our main line of equipment is FORMAX^®, which comes in various sizes, die configurations and options – based on customer requirements. Machines can also be specialised based on the part application to make the most ‘net shape’ part possible.

A fundamental part of our machine portfolio is to ensure quality, which is a process that starts with engineering design and control of the bill of material and then flows to our own machining department and suppliers. Once assembly starts, we observe our assembly work instructions and then do a thorough testing validation of each machine. The processes in place to monitor quality are extensive and we truly follow our policy of ‘build and delivery quality’.”

As a global business, what is it that National Machinery can offer customers? What are the key factors that enable you to stand out from competitors? 

“As a machine builder, National is not only distinguished by the speed and quality of its machines, but also the strong service and support we offer customers worldwide. We ship to customers all over the world and our key differentiation is that we have regional facilities for local service and support. These local service centres stock inventory based on the installed base of machines in that region. This means that it doesn’t matter if a machine is 50 years old or 5 years old, we can help service and support it.

Our customer support function also includes spare parts, technical service and rebuilding. So, it’s not just spare parts supply, it is also available technical resources to answers questions and then in-plant technicians to provide service as needed. We are also capable of rebuilding all vintages of our machines at our regional locations. 

Another key service that we can supply customers is tooling design, whether manufacture or development, thanks to our Met-MAX innovations group, which has the goal of ‘pushing metal to the maximum’. This process development group can help with small or large projects and has a state of the art Tooling Technology Centre to build tooling. It also has multiple development machines in our R&D area that are permanently allocated to support part application development.”

What are the key markets for National Machinery? How have these markets been developing recently and where do you see opportunities?

“We are involved in many markets, which is done on purpose to both serve a large range of customers and to extend the range of cold forming opportunities. Recently we have been fortunate to be involved in some new part applications related to the automotive EV market and although some parts of the global market have not grown at the rate expected, the hybrid sector can still utilise those components. We are also involved in various small niche industries where we can help an OEM with new product development – so they can produce new products successfully with cold forming.

As for opportunities, those that visited our Tiffin site during our 150^th celebration got to see a glimpse of the future. There were numerous brand new machine tools in our machining departments to make parts faster, more efficiently and to tight tolerances. They also saw new FORMAX^® machines for small diameter fasteners and parts; specifically the Lean Header & Threader and FXH Lightning. Additionally, we showcased specialised technology such as Robot-for-Changeover, as well as our latest Industry 4.0 features. Our National Online website portal also gives customers access to not just their own specific machine information, but now also includes a FORMAX^® operator training video series. 

As always for the future the key will be innovation, as well as how to make new and existing formed parts the fastest, and most efficiently, for our customer base. That’s what we have built our company on doing and that is what we plan to continue to do moving forward.”