E-Sharp News April 2025

Located in Appleton, Wisconsin, Valley Tool Inc. has been a key player in the custom cutting tool industry for 40 years. Today, President Craig Tetzlaff continues the legacy started by his father in 1988, emphasising the company’s long-standing partnership with ANCA.

“My dad started Valley Tool and he had a relationship with ANCA prior to me becoming president. Part of the rationale for staying with ANCA has been their willingness to invest in technology and bring that technology to us whenever we have a project that we need to work on,” Craig says.

Valley Tool Inc. recently added the CPX blank preparation machine to their lineup of ANCA machines, and it has proven to be a game-changer. Craig explains, “It used to be a bottleneck at the manufacturing process, and by taking blank preparation off the MX series and moving it to the CPX, it's allowed us to increase our efficiency by over 30%.”
 
CIM3D: The “Golden Egg” of tool grinding

ANCA’s CIM3D simulation software is an essential asset at Valley Tool Inc. With the machine running and coolant spraying, it can be difficult to see small movements, but CIM3D changes that by allowing virtual simulation of the cutting tool grinding process through a user-friendly interface.

Craig highlights the value of conducting a virtual grind: “CIM3D is, in my opinion, the golden egg of tool grinding. The fact that you can see the wheels, see the machine, see the axis… the accuracy is impeccable, especially when it comes to training newer employees or people that want to advance themselves. It’s really easy to show what works, what doesn’t work, and then show them why it works. The ability to test those theories before actually grinding – it’s the most important feature of my day.”

Getting the edge with unmatched surface finish and precision on the MX7 ULTRA
Craig recognises the MX7 ULTRA's impact on Valley Tool Inc.’s quality and efficiency, explaining: “Visually, the first thing most people notice is the surface finish – it’s much better using MX7 ULTRA.”

While he still values the MX Linear machines, he notes the added benefits of the ULTRA. “The Linears are still fantastic machines, it's just that ULTRA gives you that edge. Increased accuracy on long runtimes. There are some jobs that we've maybe ran ‘X’ amount before, where we would say, ‘We should probably stop there and make sure everything's okay’ – and we doubled that.”

Increased efficiency means doing more with less

With labour shortages impacting manufacturing, automation has been crucial for Valley Tool Inc. “All of our most recent acquisitions for the machines have included a robot,” Craig notes. “In today's labour shortage or challenges, that robot has allowed us to capture a lot of unmanned hours, whether it be at night after our second shift or on the weekends. So that unmanned time has really evolved into a production time for us now, where before it was just downtime.”

Thanks to automation, Valley Tool Inc. has also enhanced batch processing. “We’ve been able to increase the amount of tools that we can run in a batch because it holds everything just that much tighter,” Craig says. Features like laser compensation further ensure quality. “The machine makes those adjustments for us, so we're able to run lights-out over the weekend and have great results on Monday when we come in with little to none outside of tolerance.”

These efficiency gains have allowed Valley Tool Inc. to increase productivity with the same or fewer employees. “We actually are doing more today with the same number or fewer people than we had before,” Craig says.
Service and support play a critical role in Valley Tool Inc.’s commitment to ANCA, with Craig describing ANCA’s reliability as “second to none.” He says, “When there is an issue, ANCA is very responsive. Our ability to stay on time with delivery is specific to our ANCA machines being available to make custom tools.”

“Moving forward, we are committed to ANCA because they've been committed to us,” Craig affirms. “Long term, I don't see us wanting to go a different direction, and as long as we get what we need out of the partnership and ANCA can get what they need, I don't see us changing at any time soon.”
 

10 April 2025