Grinding horse teeth tools

Horse sense for Edge Equine

Australian manufacturer The Edge Equine finds its niche in equine dental products using ANCA’s FX machines.

Based in Bendigo, Victoria, The Edge Equine is an Australian manufacturer of equine dental products, primarily rasps for manual horse dentistry. The company also provides commercial industrial sharpening services for the central Victorian region – specialising in high precision sharpening such as broach drills, annular cutters, saw blades, and router bits for local commercial cabinet makers, sawmills, and food processors. The company’s focus on manufacturing equine dental products stemmed from a local horse dentist’s request to sharpen his equine dental blades. Today, it is a point of differentiation as The Edge Equine have concentrated on a more traditional product while other manufacturers have moved to the electronics industry. The Edge Equine pride themselves on providing prompt service, made possible with on-site manufacturing capabilities that enable them to ship products within 48 hours. The company sells directly to over 40 countries, with distributors in the US, UK, New Zealand, and South Africa. The company’s relationship with ANCA started in 2005 when they purchased a second-hand TG4. “Over the years we grew to have three TG4s on the floor,” explains Managing Director Tim McMahon. “ANCA were fantastic, they helped us write our programs, get the machines up and going and then when we swapped to our first FX3, ANCA developed the programs to make our products which was absolutely fantastic.” “We invested in the FX5E in 2020. We were after another machine, as our demand for product had grown to the point where the FX3 and the remaining TG4 couldn't cope.” Jake Farragher, ANCA’s Asia-Pacific General Manager recommended the new FX5E as having some features that would certainly help Edge grow, part of that being its future ability to be automated as the growth continued. “It's been a pretty seamless transition with having the FX3 and FX5E on the floor.” The Edge Equine mainly produce dental rasps and floats, devices that are used for maintenance of horses’ teeth. “The average cycle time is approximately 14 to 16 minutes depending on the rasp profile that we're grinding which is two blades per cycle so it’s roughly eight minutes, seven to eight minutes per blade,” McMahon said. “Most of our clients around the world order on an as needs basis so a prompt manufacture and supply is important to us and our customers.” The future is bright with ANCA FX5E

“With the implementation of the FX5E, it has given us new scope to look at more high precision grinding in the industrial regrinding market,” continued McMahon. “We do a lot of granular cutters, annular cutters or broach cutters. We're also looking at new products once again in the veterinary space. These are sectioning burrs for basically cutting out teeth that's inside the horse's head. As you can see, they're quite a long burr. So there's a lot of growth in using the capabilities of the FX5E.” “The FX5E has the capacity to have robotics fitted and it will be something to look at in the future as our market grows and with the help of ANCA, we'll develop a process to automate the process of blades. At the moment we manually feed the machines, which still works well for us, but we have the opportunity to grow further on the automation stage.” “The FX5E flexibility gives us the capacity to change from manufacturing our rasps through to grinding tools within a matter of minutes. As with the FX3, we do jig setups, change things over, change wheels. It becomes time-consuming. But the flexibility we have now is outstanding, we can go from one job to the next without losing any time,” adds McMahon. “The FX5E is probably the first opportunity where we've had the capacity and the wherefore to branch out into different products and it's also given us a lot more flexibility of sharpening our own mills within our own processing.” Tim McMahon recognises that the company’s two-hour location from the ANCA headquarters is a major advantage. “Whenever we've had issues, there's always someone on the phone to talk to and usually they'll have a technician up here within five hours or the next morning. As our customers expect customer service from us, our expectation from ANCA is to have a high level of customer service – and they certainly provide.” He is confident that the company will see continual growth in the animal health industry, enabling The Edge Equine to be a leader in the manufacture of manual tools for equine dentistry. McMahon envisions using the FX5E along with ANCA’s technology to manufacture other products within the veterinary space in the next ten to 15 years. “Prior to COVID, we would do three or four conferences a year within the USA, at least one in the UK, and Germany. We are and we'll always be looking at what the world needs and what the industry needs as far as these types of tools,” McMahon concludes.

anca.com

ToolBox quoting

Lasercut Solutions discovers ToolBox laser quoting solution for quick, accurate quotes in the heat of the pitching moment.

Adelaide-based laser cutting and CNC router specialists, Lasercut Solutions, have discovered a solution that allows them to provide quotes to customers simply, accurately, and quickly Previously, Lasercut Solutions was pricing laser cutting jobs using an in-house developed excel based quoting system, which the business had outgrown. Due to the volume of quotes, the process was slow and tedious. “Quoting times would vary depending on the amount of work required, but we knew it was taking up too much of our time,” said Lasercut Solutions Owner, Gary Cabot. Lasercut Solutions provides laser cutting, laser engraving, and CNC profiled parts to a wide variety of fabricators and manufacturers. “We have a broad range of customers across a variety of industries, and they require fast quotes to compete in their respective markets,” Cabot said. After trialling different types of software, Lasercut Solutions discovered ToolBox, by Tempus Tools. ToolBox was developed by laser industry professionals who, combined, have more than 100 years of experience in the laser industry, extending from hands-on work on the jobshop floor through to international commercialisation of their technology. “ToolBox gave us a fuss-free and simple to navigate quoting system. Right from the beginning, we found the interface very userfriendly and setting up the system with our business requirements was straightforward,” said Cabot. “With ToolBox in place, we have noticed most quotes take a few minutes to return to the customer, regardless of the amount of detail in the job. The speed at which we can produce quotes with ToolBox is excellent. We can deliver fast and accurate pricing, which allows us to maintain a competitive edge in the market,” he said. “We found the system to have enough flexibility to tailor to our needs, in contrast to other software we trialed, which became cumbersome with the amount of data entry required.” ToolBox is rules-based, which enables lesser skilled customerfocused service staff to prepare and issue quotes. This means it’s not taking highly qualified CAM specialists and brake press operators away from their productive tasks to assist with quote preparation. The first quote has a higher chance of winning

Tempus Tools’ data, based on more than one million laser cutting quotes, shows that the first quote the customer receives has a higher chance of winning. Tempus Tools CEO Ivan Cooper says that this is crucial to business growth, because laser jobshops, on average, win between 30-40% of all jobs quoted. “If you’re winning less than 40% of all jobs quoted for, an effective way to grow the business is to reduce the time it takes to produce each quote. Our data shows that the average number of line items is 5.5, and average time per line is five minutes. That’s 30 minutes per quote. Using ToolBox, the same quote would take just two minutes,” he said. “ToolBox is a sales tool that helps you generate quotes quickly and accurately, setting it apart from other MRP/ERP quoting solutions. It gives users a unique set of tools to get more quotes out, win more jobs, and grow their business.” Responsive service and support

Tempus Tools designed ToolBox to help laser jobshops with the real issues they face day-to-day with quoting, and the Tempus Tools team is consistently updating the cloud-based platform to include new features. “We worked closely with the Tempus Tools team throughout our trial period and into our subscription. They were extremely responsive and receptive to new ideas. We have been happy to see some of our suggestions already implemented into the ToolBox system, and other ideas on the development list,” said Cabot. Recent updates to ToolBox include integrations with Xero, QuickBooks, and availability on the AutoDesk app store. A new feature that’s planned for release later this year is tube quoting, where users can create quotes from a STEP file without using a solid modelling program. The new tube quoting feature follows on from Tempus Tools’ successful 3D module, which is already part of the ToolBox system. The 3D module takes a sheet metal STEP file and flattens it, ready for quoting. Ivan Cooper says that they value the feedback of Australian laser jobshops like Lasercut Solutions, as they seek to add new features that benefit all ToolBox users. “Sometimes it can be a really minor update that can make a big difference to the user. We like to remain flexible, so that we can update our software with new features that continue to deliver value to our ToolBox customers,” he said.

tempustools.com