Sacramento, CA. - Next Generation Tooling, LLC, a manufacturer's representative agency, founded in 1995 and servicing the California Nevada Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico CNC manufacturing markets has just opened TWO offices in California. Most of Next Generation Tooling's customers know them as "the Next Gen guys" according to Chris Savolainen, the Founder and President of 'Next Gen Tooling'. What was the rationale of opening not one, but two offices when the entire team has worked out of their own home offices for years? "We've grown our market service area quite a bit since we started out servicing just Northern California. We now include most of the Western States of the US. We've s been adding some of the best technical CNC application people we can find to support the unique mix of principles we represent. The products that we represent are what are considered very high performance tooling and workholding. It's some of the premiere products in our entire industry! We determined that we really needed a place to provide on-site technical training. We also needed to carry some inventory to support the unique needs of the aerospace, medical, electronics and defense industries that we support." Said Savolainen. Rob Aldama, Vice-President of Next Gen Tool picks up the story, "At first we thought that one training and showroom might be good enough, but as we started talk to our distributor, machine dealer and end-user manufacturing customers, we discovered that there was a real need for facilities in both Northern and Southern California. None of our competitors are providing the deep technical service that has helped us gain market share, so we really felt we should just take it to the next level and open two facilities." But what about the Pandemic? With the Covid-19 pandemic raging there are not a lot of companies expanding. Most are cutting costs and employees. When asked about this both Chris and Rob stated that their team of people have remained pretty busy throughout this entire period. Chris said "We get asked in to shops to provide technical support pretty often. Putting on the full body PPE suits has been kind of common for us during the past few months." Rob picked it up from there, "I think we may be some of the really select few that have been asked to come into shops because we're not just taking orders, we're reducing cycle time and we're improving efficiency" Chris jumped back in, "And maybe its a little bit self serving, We can have the equipment set-up at both locations instead of trying to bring it into a facility. It's actually a lot easier, faster and safer to bring people to one of our locations rather than try to move things with lots of sweat and heavy breathing in PPE." "Yea, We can bring people to either location and do the training. There are far less interruptions and the I think people learn a lot more, and learn it faster" stated Rob. NGT Warehouse and Training What types of training do they provide at Next Gen's new buildings? They start off with a lot of fundamentals that people running CNC machines may never had any formal training about. That's where their basic Training Classes fit in. ![]()
But they also can go much deeper with their Advanced Part Manufacturing training series
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Tim Fugazi joins the Next Generation Tooling team as Regional Manager in Northern California1/2/2020 Please welcome Tim Fugazi to our Next Generation Tooling team. Tim will be working in Northern California as Regional Manager for our principals. Tim graduated from San Joaquin Delta College with a Certificate in Computer-Aided Drafting December in 1999 and finished up his Associate Degree in Machine Tool Technology in May 2010 at the same college.
Tim spent 7 years as a Auto CAD Technician and then added Laser programming to the mix. For the past 18 years Tim has worked as a Machinist, SolidWorks Technician & Lab Technician. His experience with SolidWorks software was to provide mechanical drawings for production, fabrication and/or machining. He operated SolidWorks & HSMWorks software to produce “G” code for vertical mills and lathes as well as working in quality control and dealing with customer warranty issues. Our principals and distributors will be excited to know that Tim has a great understanding of shipping procedures so he has a great understanding of your capabilities and expectations. All too often, shops invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in a new machining center to increase production, when they could accomplish the same thing with existing machinery at a fraction of the cost. Many machines cut metal less than 50% of the time during working hours— even less in a flexible manufacturing environment where part runs are generally short. For the rest of the time, these machines sit idle while their operators are setting up tools in the spindle. Instead of purchasing an additional CNC machining center, a shop can invest in equipment that allows it to set up tools outside the machine, so the spindle can make chips while the next tool is being adjusted and prepared.
Presetters measure the cutting edges of your tools to assure they precisely match job specifications and are ready to be used in the machine. Adjustments that could take up to 15 minutes when made on your machine can be made offline in less than a minute on a presetter, while your machine continues cutting. The result - better parts, longer tool life, and less spindle downtime.
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