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Delivering Quality on Demand
Cullip Industries
One of the main features of ESPRIT
inspired
Cullip’sby
purchase
Parts that
machined
in ESPRIT
Central was
Utahthe
Tool.
ESPRIT KnowledgeBase™, a database for storing tools, speeds and feeds.
By Stacey Wiebe
Cullip Industries Delivers Rapid-Fire
Service with ESPRIT CAM
that doesn’t mean that Brinks didn’t earn his stripes. And
though the nature of the job has changed since the company
was founded in 1959, its goals remain the same.
CJ Brinks counts his blessings as he stares from his Indiana
office and into a snowy afternoon framed by the coming
twilight.
“Our mission statement — our filter for everything that we
do — is to deliver quality on demand,” Brinks says, taking a
breather to talk about life at Cullip before he heads home.
It’s near quittin’ time on a Friday and Brinks, whose shirt
sports a name tag that bears the words “plant manager,”
answers a few last-minute questions as the staff of Cullip
Industries streams through the door and into the waiting
weekend.
“That’s what ESPRIT allows us to do: deliver quality on
demand.”
Times have changed in the seven years since the 27-year-old
father of two started his career cleaning the machines on
Cullips’ shop floor.
Sure, it’s a family business and, sure, it doesn’t hurt that
business owner, John Cullip, is Brinks’ father-in-law — but
By ESPRIT®, Brinks means the plant’s computer-aidedmanufacturing (CAM) software by DP Technology Corp.
The software has been part of Cullip’s lineup for about
12 years, since John Cullip switched to ESPRIT from the
company’s former CAM software.
Incidentally, the company made the switch to CNC machine
tools in 1982, when Cullip urged his father, the business’s
original owner, to take the leap.
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In the intervening years, Cullip has
become less a tool-and-die house and
more a job shop.
“ESPRIT had exactly what we needed,”
says Brinks, who heads up all mill
programming at the plant, by way of
explanation. “What we needed was
software that could help us program
parts quickly.”
CJ Brinks, Cullip’s plant manager.
Though the use of ESPRIT is among
the blessings Brinks is counting, he
doesn’t stop there.
For starters, there’s his “wonderful, fantastic wife, Amy,” his
4-year-old girl, his 2-year-old boy and a new baby girl arriving
in March.
There’s also the fact that, despite a questionable economy,
business has been better than ever. The company has even
hired additional staff to shoulder the load.
Though the business began its 50-plus year run as a tool
and die shop, Cullip is now primarily a job shop that serves
four main customers and derives roughly 50 percent of its
business from the aerospace industry.
that Cullip dropped more than half of its previous 10 or so
customers.
By decreasing demands on its time, the company made itself
ready and able to respond to changes and deliver rapid-fire
service with a personal touch.
With ESPRIT and a range of machine tools — including an
assortment of vertical and horizontal mills, a trio of lathes,
one wire EDM machine and one Citizen L-32 Swiss-style
lathe, the company is better equipped than ever to respond to
change at the click of a mouse.
Cullip Industries
One of the main features of ESPRIT
that inspired Cullip’s purchase was the
ESPRIT KnowledgeBase™, a database
for storing tools, speeds and feeds.
“We saw this feature as a potential time
saver, and it has been,” Brinks says.
“Our mission statement — our filter for everything that we do — is
to deliver quality on demand. That’s what ESPRIT allows us to do:
deliver quality on demand.” -- CJ Brinks, Cullip Industries
Twenty percent of that aerospace business is attributed to a
single customer that specializes in cooling systems.
Though it also provides parts for a maker of professionalgrade paint sprayers and two other mainstays, Cullip seeks
to diversify business by adding a couple more customers and
continuing to deliver the service that sets it apart.
“We were getting pulled in so many directions, so we decided
a few years ago to decrease the number of customers so we
could really serve the ones we have,” says Brinks, who adds
“It’s been a good situation for us,” Brinks says. “We found
that if we take care of our customers, they more than take
care of us.”
Though materials commonly used by the company — such
as various stainless steels, cold-rolled steel and aluminum —
are not of the challenging variety, the parts it’s being asked to
make are of the increasingly complicated sort.
“Our customers are giving us some complex things to do,”
Brinks says. “With the assistance of ESPRIT, we have proven
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we can handle more complex parts
with the equipment we currently own.
Our customers have seen this and
are asking us to quote these complex
parts.”
“Among the tougher dimensions on the
part is a ground radius that is held to
.0005-inch in both size and position,”
Brinks says. “The customer requires the
part to be both flat and perpendicular
within .001 along the entire length of the part.”
This part was completely programmed in ESPRIT and, as
Brinks explains, it “had a new shape” after each operation.
“We used ESPRIT to generate the solid shape at the
beginning of the operation to see how to hold the part,
how to avoid colliding with pre-existing walls, and how the
part will look when the operation is complete,” Brinks says.
“Simply put, ESPRIT saved us several headaches before
setting up the part in the machine. The limit to the ability of
ESPRIT has rested in me as the user, not in the software.”
“What I like about ESPRIT is that it’s straightforward,
simple, and user-friendly,” adds Brinks, who had no
experience with CAD or CAM software prior to his
experience with ESPRIT and learned the software using selfguided tutorials.
DP Technology Corp.
1150 Avenida Acaso
Camarillo, CA 93012 USA
The shop floor at Cullip Industries.
Though the self-starter in Brinks had no problem picking up
the intricacies of the user-friendly software, he’s thankful for
the rapid response to that DP Technology aims to deliver to
its own customers — not unlike Cullip Industries.
“Though many different types of CAM software will do what
you need them to do, it’s the service that we receive that sets
ESPRIT apart. We have yet to use any software of any sort
in the shop that has such a good response,” he continues.
“If we have a question, DP Technology has an answer in 30
minutes or less. All it takes is a short phone call. We use the
software every day and, if something comes up that we can’t
fix or change, we can’t afford to wait days or even hours for an
answer. This is where ESPRIT excels.” g
Cullip Industries
Among those parts is a lock system
for a printing press that begins as a
35-pound piece of 416 round stainless
stock with a two-and-a-half-inch
diameter. When the part — which
requires a tolerance of plus or minus
.0005 on several dimensions — comes
off the machine, the 28-inch-long part
sports holes and odd angles and has
been pared down to 11 pounds.
ON THE WEB:
www.cullipindustries.com
Phone: 1 800 627-8479
Outside the US: + 1 805 388-6000
Email: esprit@dptechnology.com
ESPRIT is a registered trademark of DP Technology Corp.
©2011 DP Technology Corp. All rights reserved.
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