New Jersey Precision Technologies, Inc. (NJPT) is known as the leader in wire EDM services for the medical industry, an achievement that makes Bob Tarantino, president of NJPT, step back and reflect on how far the company has come. Today they are also one of the largest all-Mitsubishi EDM machining service shops in the northeast with more than 40 machines, including many MV2400-R, MV4800, and FA20V machines running and staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Starting off in a high-tech business incubator on the campus of the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1989, NJPT has always sought precision and reliability from its machines. As a startup, the company began doing prototype work in electronics and the medical device field.
“When the company was created, as a team we looked at different brands of EDM machines to purchase,” says Tarantino. “We went with Mitsubishi machines because of their features and their reliability. Other brands just weren’t as easy to use or didn’t have the dependability we needed.”
Since 1995, when NJPT reorganized into an EDM company specializing in medical device wire EDM and high-precision tooling, the company has become more diverse. Although most of its work is centered in orthopedic and cardiovascular instrumentation and roughly 70 percent of its business is in the medical device field, the company serves as a contract manufacturer for the aerospace, tool and die, plastic extrusion tooling, and defense industries. Its notable success allowed it to purchase a 10,000-square-foot building in Mountainside, NJ, in 1999, and later expand to a space totaling 21,000-square-feet.
Two of the greatest advantages that keep NJPT ahead of the competition are the expert software system that it developed to program its EDM machines and the importance it places on training its employees. The software the company created extracts geometries, notes material types and heat-treating requirements, labels from drawings, and interprets them to create process decisions without operator intervention. This simplifies program development, allowing operators to get the parts to the machine much faster.
NJPT is also a very intense engineering training company, with 75 points of training that engineers go through to be certified in EDM. Executives believe that the only way to grow their business and continue providing the best service is by offering continuous learning.
“Mitsubishi machines are very reliable, easy to program and use and have a great price point,” says Tarantino. “From a practical point of view, we can move our operators from previous to newer generation models, as machines continue to use the same terminology. This helps us increase our throughput and provide faster turnaround times, which improves our customers’ shrinking time-to-market and reduces their related cost-to-market.”
NJPT management stays closely aligned with the rapidly changing medical device industry. Part geometries are becoming increasingly complex, and in many cases, can only be produced using the EDM process. Wire EDM machines can cut any shape very easily with high precision and accuracy, increasing their popularity and use to address industry challenges.
NJPT has utilized Mitsubishi machines to adapt quickly to the changes in medical device special features. The tilting and producing of 45-degree angle wire-cutting of features have proven to be a tremendous asset with no special fixtures needed.
“I cannot say enough how satisfied we have been with all the Mitsubishi EDM machines we work with,” says Tarantino. “They are easy to operate and reliable, but also the service department is by far the best in the industry. We have achieved impressive up-time utilization due to the service department that provides scheduled preventative maintenance or support in the uncommon event of an emergency repair. The team still provides new parts and technical support when needed on every machine model sold. It is hard to find a company that has this type of service.”
Always updated on MC Machinery’s new service solutions, NJPT is highly interested and excited about utilizing MC remote360, which provides owners and operators with real-time machine data on mobile devices and desktops. This tool enables operations to increase productivity and efficiency while at the same time preventing disruptions and escalating service issues.