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History It was a dark and stormy night... Actually, it was a normal day like most in the job shop manufacturing world back in the early 1980s. The owner of a job shop in Corvallis, Oregon was looking for a way to reduce downtime, improve productivity, increase efficiency, and save time. The shop owner, Mark Matsler of Griffo Brothers, encountered these issues in 1983 when he bought his first Mazak, a VQC with a 6-pallet changer. Matsler was first introduced to Mazak’s integrated automation in 1982 at IMTS in Chicago, Illinois. Before attending IMTS, Matsler had read about and envisioned the potential of pallet changing. It was not until he attended the tool show and started questioning machine tool manufacturers that he realized that Mazak was the answer. Initially, Matsler purchased his VQC with the intention of running production work for a start-up robotics company on a repetitive basis. Instead, he began programming and producing low-volume prototype parts, an activity for which Mazatrol has a significant advantage due to its debugging capabilities. However, standing on the shop floor programming one and two parts at a time became a tedious task and wasted valuable production run time. Since off-line options were not available in the early 80s, Matsler developed the first copy of an in-house software product to support his Mazak. Soon after, word of his software spread in the manufacturing industry that there was a great product for Mazak, and Matsler began receiving calls from other Mazak users interested in purchasing his solution. Still an avid Mazak fan, Matsler continues his efforts to support Mazatrol offline. The result of his endeavors is the development of a second company, Griffo Brothers, Inc. (GBI). GBI produces CamLink, a line of software products designed to provide Mazak users the ability to program, print, and store Mazatrol files offline, as well as link to CAD. “CamLink lets people who use Mazatrol join the CAD/CAM age,” said Matsler. Now a fully integrated Windows-based solution, CamLink supports the Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP operating systems. Some of CamLink’s features include:
One of the strongest tool in the CamLink collection, said Matsler, is GB\GeoEntry. GB\GeoEntry helps people create Mazatrol programs faster because it eliminates the redundancy of entering complex geometry that was already created in the design phase. Today, CamLink links six Mazak machines to Matsler’s office PC. Although his shop now runs high volume, repeat production work, Mazatrol is still the machine tool of choice. “Mazatrol on the shop floor is king,” said Matsler.
©2004 CamLink, GB\DataTransfer, GB\DataPrint, GB\DataEntry, GB\GeoEntry, GB\GeoSolid and GB\DataTranslate are trademarks of Griffo Brothers Inc. |
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