Shop Owner Masters MAZATROL Through Mazak Training

Dustin Sanks, second-generation owner and President of Sanks Machining, wanted to get the most productivity out of the shop’s first Multi-Tasking machine: a Mazak QUICK TURN 250MY. To do so, he realized he needed to learn to fully use the machine’s MAZATROL control, including both its G-code and conversational programming.

According to Sanks, the shop programmed its parts using longhand G-code written at the machine, along with some canned cycles. The reason, he said, was that prior to the first Mazak, the shop’s work wasn’t complex enough to warrant CAM programs, but that would soon change with the addition of the multi-tasking machining capability.

Sanks traveled to Mazak’s manufacturing campus in Florence, Kentucky, for in-person CNC training as part of Mazak’s MPower Complete Customer Care program. At first, he struggled, mainly because he thought the control was a lot more complicated than it actually is. He then realized that conversational programming simply required answering questions.

“It was a light bulb moment for me,” Sanks said. “If you have basic machining knowledge, you can certainly and easily generate a program to start producing parts with Mazak’s MAZATROL conversational programming.”

According to Sanks, using both MAZATROL’s G-code and conversational programming has drastically decreased programming time. He also said that because the programming was already happening at the machine, the shop increased spindle uptime, nearly doubled efficiency and reduced programming on standard parts from two hours to 15 minutes. Additionally, it enabled the shop’s less experienced machinists who weren’t as familiar with longhand G-code to program parts.

As the shop took on more complex jobs, it added CAM software for offline programming of its most intricate part features. Sanks estimates that 60% of the shop’s parts can be fully programmed conversationally with Mazak MAZATROL, while 40% require some offline G-code programming.

Mazak’s MPower program comes with every Mazak machine. As the industry’s most comprehensive machine support program, Sanks gets single-source support right at his fingertips, including ordering parts, registering for technical training, submitting service requests, access to 700 spindle variations, and more. The training courses cover all skill levels on topics ranging from programming and maintenance to operator skills development.

At Mazak, when a customer purchases a machine, we believe it’s our responsibility to provide the support necessary to maximize that investment. More than 100 multi-level in-person and on-demand training courses are available at the Mazak manufacturing campus and through our network of regionally located Technology Centers and Technical Centers across the country as well as through MPower On-Demand Learning (MODL), our user-friendly, cloud-based learning management system.

Learn more about our training courses through Mazak MPower and discover what we can teach you next.