Chris Basgall
CEO at Catamount Machine Works
Small Shop Shares Its Roadmap for Digital Transformation
When Chris Basgall purchased Catamount Machine Works, it was a diamond in the rough. Today, it's AS9100 certified, ITAR registered, and CMMC 2.0 compliant, offering 5-axis milling, lathe, and wire EDM services. Read about their digital transformation.
Chris Basgall has a knack for transformation – both personal and digital. After earning a music degree, the fifth-generation musician taught in several public schools, including a federally designated inner-city bilingual school, and played saxophone professionally. His passion for learning led him to earn an MBA in supply chain management at Arizona State University and attend Georgetown and Harvard. He pursued a career in supply chain management, eventually becoming chief supply chain officer at Airtel Africa, a telecom firm with 350 million customers.
However, the nonstop demands of corporate leadership left little time for family. In 2020, Basgall pivoted again. This time, he purchased Catamount Machine Works, a small machine shop in Plant City, Florida.
“When I bought Catamount Machine Works in August of 2020, I saw a shop that had a great reputation for doing tight tolerance work and a lot of physical real estate for expansion,” says Basgall. “My vision included utilizing technology, software, and automation to help drive standardization, efficiency, and customer satisfaction to grow the business.”
Basgall set up a strategic plan organized into three-, five-, and 10-year stages. Years one through three focused on employee health, information technology, automation, and certifications. Years four and five focused on scaling the business for growth, and years six through 10 will include its own product line (which is still a secret).
Today, Catamount has gained AS9100 certification*, ITAR registration, and CMMC 2.0 compliance. The company makes parts for aerospace, defense, industrial repair, and commercial industries, such as automotive parts, bicycle parts, boat parts, and others. The shop floor has added eight CNC machines, upgraded four machines with 5-axis capabilities, and now has three mills with robots.
“In my opinion, it's critical for machine shops to go through a digital transformation,” he says. “If you're not doing this, others are, and it will be harder and harder to compete.”
Basgall believes shops hesitate to make improvements because transformation can be overwhelming. To prioritize investment opportunities, Basgall looked at what the company needed to take them to the next level. From those, he calculated what would produce the highest return on investment most quickly and easily.
“There has to be a multiyear roadmap of planning so that you can prioritize investments for when you have funding, when you have the resources from your team, or when you've got the maturity in your evolution to adopt that new technology,” says Basgall.
To help others begin a journey, he shares some of the steps, stumbles, and accomplishments on Catamount's own roadmap.
*AS9100 is the international quality management system standard for the aviation, space, and defense industry. ITAR (International Traffic in Arms) addresses the export and import of defense articles and defense services. CMMC 2.0 (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) is the Department of Defense's updated cybersecurity framework for contractors handling sensitive information.
Find Good Partners
While technology is essential for a digital transformation, people are always important, starting with your team and your company culture.
“I want vendors that are going to act like partners, like they care about our business,” says Basgall. “They need to blend well with our team so that when a situation gets challenging, they're willing to work through it without creating a lot of stress in the process.”
Key technologies and vendors** for Catamount Machine Works' digital transformation include:
- IT support services from NTG (Northern Technologies Group)
- ERP software from ProShop ERP (booth #133027 at IMTS 2026)
- CNC machines and robotic cells from Haas Automation (booths #338100 and #431452)
- Ballooning and inspection software from High QA (booth #134500)
- Inspection tools and software from Verisurf Software (booth #134330)
- CAD/CAM software from Mastercam (booth #133222)
- Digital tool inventory management from MSC Industrial Supply Co. (booth #432228) and a solid carbide end mill from Kennametal (booth #432217)
**In future stories, IMTS will provide more reporting with Catamount's partners.
Access to Data – Securely
The first step Catamount took toward digitization was simple: Take 15 years of hard copies of files and scan them. Next, Basgall installed a server and put a computer and two monitors at each workstation so everyone could access those files.
“This was important because we'd have a job that could have 10 different operations between the machines, plating, and shipping, and we'd have one traveler – so what were the other nine people supposed to use? Giving everybody access to that data was a big, low-cost first step,” says Basgall.
Basgall has a fair degree of expertise with computer systems. He installed a wired and wireless system for the server and workstation computers using Fortinet products, but he knew that was just a first step.
“If you're interested in becoming AS9100 certified and CMMC 2.0 compliant, do some research. It's a significant investment and takes time,” says Basgall. “Having the right partners makes all the difference. When I was looking for a consulting company, I talked to six different companies before choosing NTG. I wanted a partner for it that could help transform us and continue to support us.”
After an assessment, NTG developed a package for Catamount that included implementing the Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud High app. GCC High is the cloud platform developed by Microsoft for cleared personnel and organizations supporting the Department of Defense. Combined with Fortinet, GCC High allows the necessary security for NIST SP 800-171 compliance, a standard that defense contractors must implement to demonstrate adequate security to protect information in their defense contracts.
A Better ERP
Catamount operated for its first 15 years without an ERP system. Basgall initially developed his own enterprise resource planning system. It had benefits, but there were shortcomings.
“I needed something best-in-class,” says Basgall. “I searched the market for two years, vetting providers. ProShop ERP was the right decision to drive efficiency. It connects estimating, quoting, part making, purchase and work orders, and invoicing. It also works in our AS9100 and CMMC 2.0 environment.”
Tina Lindner, Catamount's director of operations, agrees: “ProShop tracks everything. For example, when we go to make our first article inspection report, which is required for AS9100, it used to take us a couple of hours to pull the documents together and to fill out the paperwork. ProShop ERP does that automatically in seconds.”
Enhancing Automation
Catamount was a traditional 3- and 4-axis shop. In the last five years, the company added or upgraded eight Haas mills, four with 5-axis capabilities (3+2, with a trunnion mounted on the machine bed to provide A-axis tilt and C-axis rotation).
“Through that investment, we increased production and can now make parts that we couldn't make in the past,” says Basgall. However, the biggest leap in productivity came through automation. “IMTS can help you achieve the impossible by learning about new technologies. An example of this would be robotics. There is a lot of automation at IMTS.”
Under Basgall, Catamount acquired three Haas Automation packages with VF-2SSYT mills integrated with FANUC robots, as well as an ST 30ss Haas lathe with an automatic bar feeder.
“We used to do small jobs, maybe 200 parts maximum. Now we can do thousands of parts,” he says. “Instead of 35 production hours, we can get 150-plus hours per week and have run them 24/7 for months to produce thousands of parts. We get products to the customer much quicker while being more profitable and competitive on pricing – and when I say more competitive, we are taking work from China.”
The Best ROI
Previously, Catamount manually ballooned prints and entered data for inspection reports. Each employee used a different style, and manual data entry took hours, creating the potential for errors.
To automate the process, Catamount deployed software solutions from High QA. The company's auto-ballooning tool takes 2D drawings and automatically identifies dimensions, applies balloons, and populates a bill of characteristics. An application called IM/360 CORE simplifies inspection planning by analyzing PDF and TIFF drawings and extracting GD&T requirements. The software also provides traceability on who inspected what feature with what tool on what date and time, which is critical for first article inspections and production part approval processes in the medical, automotive, aerospace, and space industries.
“With High QA, we shortened the time to prepare documents by about 80%,” says Basgall. “It is the highest ROI project in the last five years. At IMTS 2024, I had to seek out High QA founder and CEO Sam Golan just to tell him what a fantastic timesaver his software is.”
The savings are only beginning. The next evolution in Catamount's journey is High QA's 3D MBD (model-based definition) tool, which will save even more time by automating PMI (product manufacturing information) data extraction.
Inspection Upgrade
During his visit to IMTS 2024, Basgall originally planned to find solutions for upgrading inspection equipment. That changed after interviewing many exhibitors.
“I came to the conclusion that I should focus on software because software is where standardization and automation come from, rather than the equipment itself,” he says.
After visiting with exhibitors in the Software Sector, Basgall narrowed his choices. After IMTS ended, he visited Verisurf Software's headquarters to look at their product line and set up a roadmap for Catamount's inspection processes, which included purchasing equipment and software.
“I started with a portable CMM arm, upgraded our Mitutoyo CMM to Verisurf, and will soon add a scanner and a CNC CMM. The great news is they all run on the same Verisurf software,” says Basgall. “Even better, Verisurf is a plugin that works inside of Mastercam. With five Mastercam programmers, instead of having to spend a lot of time and money training team members on different platforms, they all learn the same platform. That drives efficiency and employee comfort when learning new applications.”
CAM Upgrades
Basgall admits he made a mistake when switching CAM software. The shop had used an outdated version of Mastercam for many years. Not satisfied with its operation, Basgall wanted to explore solutions and went to another software for a while.
“I realized that there was a lot of cost and time involved in team members learning the new software,” he says. “Also, the other software wouldn't work in our ITAR environment. I now know that if I had invested in the latest software versions and additional modules in Mastercam, it would have accelerated productivity instantly.”
To ensure security, by default, Mastercam does not send data to the cloud unless users explicitly configure it. The CAD/CAM software is locally installed, and its core functions (toolpath generation, simulation, and postprocessing) are handled on local machines.
Robert Rainbow, an application engineer at Mastercam, says, “There is a lot of espionage in this business, so it's important to have good cybersecurity and maintain that within your facility. Your data is secure with us.”
Managed Tooling Technology
In 2022, the Catamount machinist and programmer who ordered and managed the tools planned to retire, and chaos loomed.
“When it came to tool management, this was a goat rodeo. Nobody knew where all the tools were located,” says Lindner, Catamount's director of operations. “Now we have partnered with MSC for vendor-managed inventory, and we have Tina's tool crib. It's all fully automated. We just use a scanner when tools come in, put the tool away in a drawer that's already assigned, and it makes it very easy for our guys to find all the tools they need.”
After a tool is removed, MSC receives an electronic update. When inventory falls to a predetermined EOQ level, the system automatically triggers a reorder.
“Before MSC approached us with this solution, I thought I was going to have to hire a buyer,” says Basgall. “Through managed inventory, we brought down our tooling inventory from $400,000 to under $50,000 and didn't have to hire a tool buyer with annual recurring compensation.”
As part of the upgrade process, MSC brought in Kennametal to evaluate Catamount's tool choices. By replacing older high-speed steel tooling with products like the KOR5 solid carbide end mill, Kennametal estimates it increased average efficiency by 200%. On titanium, switching to a Harvi IV eight-flute solid carbide end mill increased speeds from two to 140 inches per minute on one project.
IMTS Strategy
When Basgall attends IMTS, he makes it a point to avoid buying anything.
“I'm interested in exploring the new technologies available and establishing connections so that I can follow up afterward,” he says. “I want to find out more about their products, understand how they work in our environment, and then make a purchasing decision.”
For example, Basgall saw Verisurf demonstrate its new machine tool probing suite at IMTS 2024. The solution supports in-process inspection directly on CNC machine tools by using a Renishaw touch probe installed in a CAT tool holder. After he visited Verisurf's headquarters, Catamount began using the technology and is now beta testing machine tool probing for 5-axis applications.
Basgall's IMTS plans also include visiting his current vendor base to learn how to leverage current assets to get a better return.
“We are a 100% Haas shop, so I visited their exhibit at IMTS 2024 and connected with an individual in their robotics program,” recalls Basgall. “I learned that our Haas robots had capabilities we were not using, such as stacking. Without that interactive conversation, I might have missed out on new ways to benefit the company.”
He also notes that IMTS provides a great opportunity to meet and talk with people from different industries and specializations.
“IMTS is a fantastic opportunity to learn. When you're talking one-on-one, individuals tend to speak openly,” he says. “The information you obtain, whether it's about feeds and speeds for titanium or how software operates, helps you make the right decision for your environment. I like going every time the show comes around because I build knowledge. We might not be ready, or the technology might not be ready, but I can put something on the roadmap.”
Save the date for IMTS 2026, September 14–19, 2026, in Chicago.