Daisy Kelly & Jay Simpson
Multi-Axis Technologies
Five Degrees of Passion
Start-up company Multi-Axis Technologies stands behind its high-quality products and services thanks to its top-notch equipment that provides precision machining, design for manufacturing, and CNC programming services.
Producing quality parts comes down to passion at Multi-Axis Technologies, based in the Seattle suburb of Kent. The company slogan – “The Highest Standards Driven By Passion” – fits co-owners Jay Simpson and Daisy Kelly to a T – or should we say GD&T (geometric dimension and tolerancing), which inspired their company logo.
With its proximity to industry giants such as Boeing, Blue Origin, and 1,400 other aerospace companies in Washington State, Multi-Axis' customer base leans heavily toward the aerospace and satellite industries. Their specialty is turning out complex parts with short lead times, rapid prototyping, and working on materials that include aluminum and exotic materials such as INCONEL® and HAYNES®.
“Jay is truly passionate about machining. I am, too, but I'm more passionate about the relationship side of the business,” says Daisy. “Jay will come to me with a part and say, ‘Look at this cool part we made!' I admire the technical achievement, but I'm more passionate about customer relations, such as when we hand the part to the customer and I see their satisfaction.”
Equipment that Produces
Daisy began her career at an automotive parts distributor, moved on to Kenworth Truck Company, spent 18 years at Flow International (a provider of waterjet cutting technology, IMTS booth #135002) and landed at Blue Origin, where she was the machine shop manager. While Daisy's functions involved procurement, planning, scheduling, and project management, her passion has always been the relationship component of the job.
Jay started his career as a journeyman machinist at Boeing, then moved on to Aerojet Rocketdyne and expanded his skills to include inspection, CAD-CAM programming, and working with manufacturing engineers to develop process improvements. Simpson joined Blue Origin in 2007. At the end of his 14-year tenure, he was the director of manufacturing for machining, welding, and programming.
“At Blue, Daisy and I built a team that started with four machinists. When we left, it was more than a hundred in our group alone,” says Jay.
With encouragement from others and a desire to build something of their own, Jay and Daisy launched Multi-Axis Technology Technologies in 2021 with nothing more than an idea and passion. While finding a 5,000 square-foot-shop was easy, they needed everything to fill the space between the walls.
“Our equipment investment philosophy always comes down to finding equipment that helps us produce for our customers. We reinvest every penny back into the business,” says Daisy.
Multi-Axis started with a Maximart e-1300 three-axis vertical mill, then added a Takisawa TS-4000Y lathe. To source equipment, they reached out to distributor Japan Machine Tools (IMTS booth #338980).
“Japan Machine Tool (JMT) provided us with the opportunity to visit the factories for the machine manufactures to help with the selection process,” says Jay. “Owner Roy Yamaji was instrumental in being a mentor for starting our business, providing insight in how to be successful and sustain being successful.”
Equipment from JMT includes two Takisawa TS-4000Y lathes (IMTS booth #338536, part of Yamazen), an AXILE G6 5-axis milling machine and an Axile G8-MT 5-axis mill/turn. All are equipped with SCHUNK (IMTS booth #432010) workholding and SCHUNK's VERO-S quick-change pallet systems.
“We recently upgraded to improve our workholding capabilities from the ground up, not buy cheaper end items and then hopefully grow into something better,” says Jay. “Typically, when you start, you buy the cheap stuff and you stay there. We wanted to get to the next level, so we started out with SCHUNK. High-end workholding allows us to reassure ourselves that the parts are going to be super accurate and repeatable. It's a high cost of entry, but at the end of the day it's worth it when you boil down the man-hours you would waste when things go wrong.”
Multi-Axis Technologies uses Mastercam for programming (IMTS booth #133222), VERICUT (IMTS booth #133340) software for simulating CNC machining to detect errors, potential collisions, or areas of inefficiency. Also, most of the machines feature controls from HEIDENHAIN (IMTS booth #339440).
“I fell in love with HEIDENHAIN controls and decided they're going to be our focus as we build the business,” says Jay. “The control is accurate because it's a direct link between the encoders and the control, and it moves at lightning speed. We're trying to do everything as fast and as best we can, and we decided HEIDENHAIN was the better choice.”
Pond Pumps, Pallet Jacks, and Scrimping
The choice to invest in top-notch equipment that enables a small shop to be competitive (Jay and Daisy have four employees) requires frugality in other areas. For example, the chairs and tables in the lunchroom were brought from Daisy's home. Virtually anything that could be acquired for free or low-cost was, such as the coolant separator for the first lathe.
“When you're starting a new business and sharing macaroni and cheese for lunch, $500 for a coolant separator is a lot of money,” says Daisy. “Jay is a total MacGyver, so we built our first coolant separator from a Rubbermaid tote bin from my house, a pond pump from The Home Depot, three Gatorade bottles, and bunch of tie straps. We used that for several months until we saved enough money.”
“Another thing you need is a pallet jack,” recalls Jay. “When we were in the planning phase, Daisy and I were driving to our respective homes and talking about all the things we'd need, and she says, ‘Hold on, I see a pallet jack on the side of the road.'”
“The jack was stuck to a pallet with something heavy on it,” Daisy continues. “My adrenaline gets going, and I'm determined to get it unstuck, and it did. It was missing a wheel, but it still went up and down. You have to picture that I'm on a busy main street, trying to lift a pallet jack into the back of my little Leaf EV hatchback.”
Jay put a new wheel on pallet jack the next day, and the jack has been used at the shop ever since.
IMTS – Recipe for Production
Jay and Daisy swore Multi-Axis would be a job shop, not a production shop…then, in 2024, they had the opportunity to lease 5,000 square feet next to their existing shop.
“In our expanded facility, we have just installed a TG-350 5-axis machining center from Taiwan Machine Tool and two Mikron (IMTS booths #338819 and #431580) MILL P 500 vertical 3-axis milling machines tended by a robot,” says Jay. “Now we can serve the low-volume, high-mix and production sides of the business. Once you get hooked on automation, you tend to stay on that path.”
The next major step on that path will be at IMTS 2024, where “our business mindset is how do we do more with less, and where we need to focus is on workholding, cutting tools, and automation software,” says Jay.
IMTS 2022 was Daisy's first show, and “it was overwhelming. It's a lot of everything,” she says. “I'm excited to go this time because now we can narrow our focus. For example, how do we make one workholding solution work for both sides of the shop? How do we reduce our set-up and labor time with quick-change items?”
“I look at machining like developing a cookie recipe until everybody likes it,” says Jay. “Now that we have the low-volume side of the business running, how do we take that same recipe and put it in a production shop and make thousands of cookies? A lot of it boils down to workholding and cutting tools, and that's where our focus will be at IMTS 2024. I see the need for shrink-fit technology like that from REGO-FIX (IMTS booth #431822) and MIDACO-type (IMTS booth #339347) pallet changer systems.”
Given their collective 50-plus years with major manufacturing companies, Jay and Daisy will also connect with a lot of former colleagues.
“In the manufacturing and engineering community, where does everybody meet? At IMTS,” says Jay. These connections are critical in manufacturing because you're only one person away from solving any problem.
If you're looking to find ‘unobtanium,' your next tooling purchase, your next thing, IMTS is the place to go,” says Jay. “If the person you're talking to doesn't know the solution, he's got a guy that does. The community is so tight that somebody knows somebody, and I guarantee you'll find it at IMTS.”