French Oil Mill Machinery Company has expanded its machining capability with the recent investment in three new CNC machine tools.

The company explains that it upgraded its Piqua, Ohio, US, manufacturing facility with a bridge milling machine, avertical turning lathe and a horizontal machining centre. The aggressive investment replaced aging manual machines, advancing the capabilities and the sustainability of the company.

Daniel French, Chairman and CEO commented, “This investment in our future is an exciting achievement for our company, which gives me great pride and will benefit our customers, our employees and our community. As a growing, world class organisation that focuses on quality, innovation and continuous improvement, we have extended these values past our proprietary products and also applied them to the tools we use in our manufacturing processes.”

The new five face CNC bridge milling centre features a high speed spindle and a 90-degree, two speed geared head with programmable indexing increments. The mill is capable of machining parts up to 44,000 pounds.

French also added a new live tool CNC vertical turning lathe. The lathe features a programmable fourth axis enabling French to mill and drill on the machine and has a table load capacity of 11,000 pounds.

The third machine, a new CNC horizontal machining centre, features a 15,000 RPM high speed machining controller, dual pallets and a full fourth axis 360-degree programmable rotary table.

French also invested in new programming software and tooling for the three new machines.

It explains that this investment and expansion of machining capabilities are a clear indication of French’s commitment to maintaining their domestic manufacturing, delivering high quality American-made products to their customers around the world. In addition, the new cutting edge technology gives French a competitive advantage in recruiting new hires when many manufacturers are struggling to fill open positions due to a workforce skills gap in the industry.