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Southern Cross takes flight with Haas |
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 SURREY, BC- Many people in the Vancouver area feel that Southern Cross Machining is the leading small-parts fabricator in the lower mainland. Loyal clients rave (and even a few competitors concede) that it’s arguably the most respected job shop in British Columbia. Apparently, the reputation is well earned.
With a sharp eye on quality production, efficient workflow and smart machine utilization, this busy shop consistently turns out exacting, tight-tolerance work-on time and in spec.
For nearly two decades, an enviable parade of high-end customers seeking precision parts has relied on Southern Cross to deliver; and these very particular purchasers haven’t been disappointed. But surprisingly, in the last few years, the label “Most Demanding Customer” has been pinned on the shop owner himself.
In a number of interesting ways, this business is far from the ordinary. The name on the building-“Southern Cross” (borrowed from the Southern Hemisphere’s version of the Big Dipper)-should be the first giveaway of the shop’s heritage.
If not, you’ll instantly realize from owner Leon Massa’s engaging
accent, that he’s a transplanted Aussie. “Well mate, you’re dressed up
like a dog’s dinner!” he’ll taunt, extending a solid hand and a wry
smile.
Continued from Page 1
Sharing the same roof with Southern Cross is a separate venture named Compact Radial Engines, a manufacturer of two-stroke engines and reduction-drive gearboxes for ultra-light sport aircraft.
Massa’s machining background has deep roots in aviation including 10 years with Qantas Airlines in Sydney, then a stint at Air Canada. Massa shrugs off the notion that this aeronautical know-how makes his shop more obsessed with precision. “Qantas never called us ‘machinists,’” he points out, “we were referred to as ‘fitters and turners’. So we not only made the stuff, we also had to put it together.” Building complete assemblies remains a constant in Massa’s business today. Bolstered by his long extracurricular interest in sport aviation, Compact Radial Engines makes sense as a natural business match for Massa.
“Interesting story there,” he relates. “Down at the local airfield a few years back, I spotted a beautiful little radial engine, and eventually convinced the guy to tell me where he got it. I really just wanted to buy one engine for myself. But then, as they used to say in that old shaver commercial, ‘I ended up liking the product so much, I bought the whole bloody company!’”
The company Massa acquired was Italian, and though their small engine designs were innovative and attractive, their market success was not.
With his aeronautical expertise, Massa redesigned many of the components, making the engines better. He also did a better job of marketing the elegant products, offering styles and configurations that matched the newest ultralights far better than the heavier, adapted-from-other-use power plants that had become the sport’s affordable staple. Flyers and builders suddenly had more choices, and could perfectly match the machine to the job.
But as Compact Radial Engines became a new demanding customer of Southern Cross Machining, Massa faced some machine-matching challenges of his own.
“When I bought the company, I figured it would be a good fit with what we already did,” he continues. “I thought I had all the equipment I needed to make the parts. But actually, I didn’t. We couldn’t let the engine company work interfere with the regular job-shop stuff for the established customers. So I decided, early on, that whenever I needed parts for my engines I’d put in a purchase order – just like any other customer.” The devil, it turned out, was in the mix.
Massa has always had a diverse range of equipment in his 10,000 sq. ft. shop, but it was initially built around high-end Japanese machines. His shop’s reputation, after all, was built on precision. But the time spent on exclusive custom jobs was a luxury that no one could afford to give the new “just like any other” customer. The shop’s underpinning of tight-tolerance machines required more effort to set up, and commanded more overall attention than the clear-cut engine parts could warrant. Screaming for cost efficiency, the shop’s newest customer had unwittingly become its most outrageously demanding.
Prior experience, however, was again in Massa’s court. Besides investing substantially in high-end equipment over the years, Massa had also been one of the first in his territory to buy the then “less-lavish” Haas Automation machines – back when few Canadian shops had even heard of the name Haas. Now, he bought more.
“I’ve had a number of Haas machines over the years,” says Massa, “and I’ve always liked them. I kept that early VF-2 for more than seven years, then sold it to a friend who used it for another three years. I later bought it back from him and kept it for a couple more years before finally selling it to get a bigger one. That machine is still going in a shop today, doing work just as accurately now as when I first had it here.”
The Haas line has continued to evolve over the years, and now, Massa feels it’s a lot closer to the level of higher-tech machines. “I don’t need to use a high-end Japanese machine that costs three times as much as a Haas to do what a Haas will do,” he says. “It’s not just the cost and complexity of running the high-end machines when the work doesn’t warrant it-it’s the time you waste that makes no sense.”
Two Haas VF-4SS Super Speed VMCs are used for much of Southern Cross’ four-axis work. “But,” Massa points out, “they’ve also proved to be a really good match for a lot of my engine parts-because they’re quick to set up. I can get on a Haas and be machining quickly, then move on to something else.” The Haas machines were supplied by Thomas Skinner & Son Ltd. (thomasskinner.com), Richmond, BC “I also like the VF-4s because they have so much table length. We have a lot of fixtures and stuff set up to go straight on the Haas, and we like to leave them configured for 4th-axis work. Sometimes, I'll set up one of my engine parts on the end of that long table and use the rest of the machine to do other jobs. “The crankcase for the three-cylinder radial is a good example,” says Massa. “We make the whole thing out of solid 2024 billet. It takes two operations on the lathe and three on the mill, the longest being a 4th-axis op that takes about four hours. It’s 4th-axis indexing, but it’s also 3D contouring on each surface. If the VF-4 is free, I can put it in, walk away, come back four hours later and there it is. But when I need the machine for different work, I don’t have to tear down the engine setup. I can leave it on the end of the table and do something else. I can work on two things at once, so to speak.
“Long ops like this could be a real bottleneck, if not set up properly. This way the engine doesn’t steal all the machine time, but instead, lets us intelligently work around it. I’m always careful to not let my engine company step on the toes of my machine shop,” says Massa. “In other words, its ‘get it in, get it done, and get it out.’”
But that philosophy is tempered with an important caveat. These products have to be well made. After all, some guy’s likely to buy one, strap it on his back and go jump off a mountain. “We can’t just bang ’em out,” stresses Massa. “They’re going to fly-they’ve got to be bulletproof.” And while crankcase castings aren’t especially high-tolerance, things like bearing bores are, so Massa has to trust his machines to deliver the quality he needs, every time.
“My engines remain a separate company from the machine shop,” says Massa, “but my machine shop does the machining for them.” So essentially, a high-end job shop is tasked with turning out consumer products; and Massa can’t sell those products at anything near commercial aerospace prices. Smart shop management is the key.
“There’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” concludes Massa, “but smart efficiency is what’s demanded here. And a big part of that is having the right machines, and matching the machine to the job.”
An old saying warns: “When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” We tend to make-do with what we have, but that can create as many problems as it solves. Now, as Massa enthusiastically points out, “It’s the CNC age-we’re much smarter, mate.”
HaasCNC.com
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