Celebrating 50 years of excellence in cutting tool manufacturing

March 15, 2022 –— American cutting tool manufacturer Tool Alliance celebrates 50 years of highly successful business in March 2022. During this time the company has grown steadily and in the process has built an enviable reputation for the quality and durability of its solid carbide cuts and indexable carbide tools.

Tool Alliance makes extensive use of CNC grinding machines from different manufacturers, but chose to standardize machine control systems on NUM’s Flexium CNC platform and NUMROTO software, primarily for performance and production efficiency reasons. Tool Alliance is one of the largest licensees of NUMROTO in the United States.

Founded in 1972 and still privately owned, Tool Alliance operates a number of company-owned factories – its main manufacturing facilities are located in Huntington Beach, California, and Fort Myers, Florida. The Company’s cutting tool products and services include well-known brands such as Ultra-Tool, RoundTool Laboratories, Tungsten ToolWorks, Routco and Mil-Tec. All five brands are sold worldwide and are supported by joint research, design, engineering, manufacturing, marketing and sales facilities.

Tool Alliance owner and president Dave Povich is no stranger to the cutting tool industry. Past president of the United States Cutting Tool Institute (USCTI), he has worked for the company since 1987. According to Povich, “NUM is our CNC technology partner, which creates a win-win situation for both companies. We benefit from direct technical input into the development of the NUMROTO software, while NUM gets valuable feedback on the design and production of the very latest cutting tools.

A good example is Tool Alliance’s innovative Ultra-Tool Series 365 high-performance end mills. Designed specifically for machining exotic materials, these solid carbide tools feature a patented variable helix geometry combined with a proprietary edge preparation/PVD coating combination that enables world-class dynamic milling of tool paths including most groove cutting applications. The tools are produced on high performance 5-axis CNC grinding machines using NUMROTO, using monitored tool runout, real-time deflection compensation and the latest diamond abrasive technology using advanced wheel dressing equipment.

Mark Wortsman, CTO of Tool Alliance, says working with NUM has multiple benefits. “The NUMROTO team is very supportive and always ready to receive suggestions, which makes life much easier for us and our customers. For example, we recently suggested adding categories for pliers and new features for wheel probing and automatic 3D collision checking; these have all been implemented in the latest version of the NUMROTO software.

“We consider NUMROTO’s 3D simulation capabilities to be the most accurate in the world of tool grinding; they help us optimize tool programming by preventing any grinding errors that could otherwise be caused by imperfect wheel measurement or incorrect machine alignment.

Wortsman also points out that NUM’s software helps simplify shop floor management. “Over the years, we have built up an extensive library of tools that we have produced with NUMROTO. The NUMROTO team has done a superb job of incorporating the library into a centralized industry standard SQL database that can be accessed by any of our machines or programming stations. The database can store tens of thousands of tool programs which can be accessed by several hundred users – at the same time if required.

“It’s much easier to back up a single, centralized database file than having to back up computer files on each machine – we perform automated backups several times a day, just to keep productivity going. machine failure. Software updates are also handled very efficiently. As soon as a key NUMROTO update is available, we can bring all our machines, regardless of make or model, to the same software revision level.

Many Tool Alliance CNC grinders are equipped with automatic loading systems to facilitate overnight production – in fact, some operate for two days straight without interruption and no manual compensation required. To keep tool dimensions within tolerances, the company relies on the NUMROTO software’s “measurement in progress” feature, which automatically measures tools after grinding and applies appropriate compensation.

A number of projects undertaken by Tool Alliance have warranted the installation of first generation CNC machines and then their modernization with the latest motors, drives and CNC systems from NUM. According to Steven Schilling, Managing Director of NUM Corporation, “Once again we were able to help. Our CNC team in Chicago provided local support and we were able to improve the performance of the spindles and axes of the machines. It has been and continues to be a pleasure to be a partner in Tool Alliance’s success.

NUM will be exhibiting at GrindingHub in Stuttgart, Germany from May 17-20, 2022.

ENDS