Unity manufacturer’s carbide tool earns international industry honor
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A carbide cutting tool produced at a plant in Unity has won an international award that has been described as an industry equivalent of the Oscars.
ARCH Cutting Tools’ Latrobe branch, located in the Westmoreland Airpark, captured the 2020 Tool of the Year Award in a competition sponsored by ANCA, a manufacturer of computer numerical control (CNC) grinding machines and motion controls headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.
Measuring an inch in diameter, the ARCH tool was created specifically for the competition and was judged tops among seven finalists that included entries from Poland, France, Italy and India.
“We feel the opportunity to compete in this worldwide competition was exciting, and being one of the finalists was quite humbling,” said Jim Gray, president and general manager of the Latrobe plant. “At the same time, achieving finalist status was a validation of our capabilities.”
He described his company’s winning entry as “multiple tools in one” that “reduces the need for tool changes and increases productivity.” According to ARCH, it was equipped with a high-performance drill and a reamer and was designed to take the place of six separate cutting tools.
Entered tools had to be created on an ANCA machine and had to fall within a specified size range. The finalists were judged by a panel of experts on functionality, quality, precision and complexity — with an eye toward surface finish and tightest tolerance to the design drawing for the tool.
ANCA co-founder Pat Boland said the ARCH entry “stood out in terms of complexity of grinding and was a large diameter multi-functional cutting tool with many features. Overall, the tool was complete — ticking every box to be the Tool of the Year winner.”
Based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., with branch locations across seven states, ARCH Cutting Tools serves customers in the medical, aerospace, defense and industrial markets.