Company Adds Two Lathes Vital to its Business
CHARLOTTE, NC – March 8, 2021 – A manual lathe is far from one of the flashiest pieces of equipment in machining today. But without it, a CNC machining company might feel like a football team without a long snapper or a Fourth of July party without any rolls.
While the main course of the bar-bar-que will be what’s on the minds of people attending any cookout, the food won’t be much without the rolls.
To begin 2021, Tri-Tec Industries, LLC has reinforced “the roll part” of its business. The Compass Precision operating company has purchased two new lathes — one that replaces the very first lathe Tri-Tec acquired in 1999 and the other will be its new manual machine.
Of the two new lathes, the YIDA Model ML-560M CNC lathe with Fanuc controls arrived first in late December. Supplanting a machine from the late 1990s, the YIDA model figures to be a vital part of Tri-Tec’s business moving forward. It could also provide growth, as the YIDA model is longer along the Z-axis than the machine was it’s replacing.
The new manual machine, the Lodge & Shipley Manual Powerturn Lathe, came in early January. The Tri-Tec team constantly used its previous manual machine, which it had for years, but the previous machine’s clutches gave out and the company could no longer afford to keep fixing it.
CNC industry fans have fallen in love with 5-axis, horizontal and other automated, modernized processes as of late, but in recent months, Compass was reminded of how key these more basic machines are to its business.
“It’s just a necessary evil to have manual machines,” said Rick Loyd, Tri-Tec President. “Because I don’t want to ever tell [our customers] to go to another shop. If they have a simple amount of parts that don’t need to go into CNCs, I don’t want to have to tell them to go someplace else, I’d rather be able to do it here.
“As far as the YIDA lathe, there’s times that it might not run, but the time’s that it is, I can’t go without it.”
Compass CEO Gary Holcomb acknowledged the necessity that Rick expressed with these two machines, but Gary also said he views these two new lathes as ways to expand Tri-Tec’s business.
“Under Compass’s ownership, Tri-Tec Industries continues its history of aggressive CAPEX investment,” said Gary. “Both investments bolster our capabilities and make us a stronger supplier to our customers. We are machining guys, and the more equipment we have, the better we are.”
Tri-Tec operates from its Charlotte, NC facility at 200 Peachtree Drive South. It provides solutions and quality parts to leading companies in industrial automation, chemical processing and OEM’s across the southeast and globally.
Tri-Tec was founded in 1997. ZP Enterprises, LLC, an Atlanta-based firm, acquired majority interest in the company in 2016.
In 2019, ZP Enterprises decided to seek new ownership for three of its portfolio companies, including Quality Products & Machine, LLC, and Advanced Machining & Tooling, LLC, as well as Tri-Tec. It quickly reached an agreement with Main Street Capital Holdings, a Pittsburgh-based private equity firm. Main Street acquired Tri-Tec, along with its two sister firms, and placed them under a new umbrella company, Compass Precision.
In Aug. 2020, Compass added Gray Manufacturing Technologies, LLC of Denver, NC as its fourth operating company. Compass is aggressively searching for additional CNC machining add-ons and hopes to purchase one or two more portfolio companies in 2021.