Working Together For Better Manufacturing

Bracalente Manufacturing Group (BMG) has been involved in the manufacturing industry for nearly 75 years, making rivets, bushings, pins, and other simple products. But as the world evolved, so did BMG and now for the past 20+ years, they’ve been involved in defense and firearms manufacturing.

Ron Bracalente, the third-generation owner, still makes sure his company maintains a diverse portfolio producing components for the aerospace, agricultural, automotive, and of course defense and tactical industries. The reason behind the diversification is the volatility of the industries, whether they’re getting waves of new contracts, dealing with political fallout impacting their industries, or the ups and downs of manufacturing. That diversity spreads to the shop floor at their 80,000ft2 manufacturing facility in Trumbauersville, Pennsylvania. Bracalente houses Makino, Tornos, Miyano, Tsugami, and Star CNC machines, all with FANUC controls.

Their Makino MMC2 system ties individual horizontal machining centers to an automated pallet system to enhance productivity, holding up to 60 pallets in the magazine and 10 additional pallets in the machines. Thanks to Makino they’ve been able to capture lights-out production, generating an extra 8,000 to 12,000 machining hours per year.

The Tornos system is one of the most advanced tools in the BMG organization with full CNC, 8 spindles, 26mm bar diameter and an automated bar feeder with LOOP capability running up to 168 hours a week. BMG expects to gain 20% efficiency thanks to the Tornos system.

Relationships matter

“It takes a lot of different brands, there’s a lot of choices. You must look at the type of work you’re doing, the service and the support those brands will give you,” says Bracalente, president and CEO. “It’s not a lot different than picking a car you’d want. There’s a lot of different choices out there and sometimes it comes down to where’s the dealer and do you like the dealer? Do they have a really good maintenance crew? And when you go in, do you get attention? Do you get the service you need? A lot of machine tools can do similar things. It’s also the know-how and the people that you have, what are they used to and capable of learning?”

Many of those relationships had already formed around the turn of the millennium when BMG decided to enter the defense industry, but some changes needed to be made. Bracalente began retooling the company, selling 40 to 50 machines, re-training his employees, hiring experts in the field, and buying new machines and equipment to support their quality systems such as advance process quality planning (APQP), automated gages, and instruments to validate their new defense products.

Now BMG focuses on missile and rocket components for air-to-air, ground-to-air, and ground-to-ground munitions, serving all branches of the military. They mostly use high-nickel alloys, stainless steel, and different types of aluminum as long as they meet Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) requirements.

“We go through thorough design for manufacturing (DFM) with any new product,” Bracalente says. “We want to understand how the product is being used in the field so we understand what manufacturing process we want to align and what quality system we want to put together to bundle it all up so we can have a successful launch and a successful program.”

BMG also manufactures for the firearms industry and holds a Federal Firearms License (FFL) but chooses not to produce complete guns. They currently make gun mounts, sites, light mounts, and other parts and accessories to their customers’ requirements without marketing any product under their own brand. Bracalente believes it’d be a conflict of interest and has seen other companies lose contract business because they suddenly become a competitor to their own customers.

That relationship with their customers is what Bracalente believes has set his company apart from the competition.

“I think it’s our people, our quality, our reliability, and there’s a trust element rolled up into one,” Bracalente explains. “If we say we’re going to do it, we do it. We meet our deadlines; we meet our commitments. We have good quality and engineering teams that understand the business, the terminology, the products, and their history. We know these programs; we know how they roll. We know where they’re used with all the branches of the military. It’s a little bit of everything; you miss one ingredient in the cake, it doesn’t come out right.”

About the author: Jake Kauffman is managing editor and can be reached at jkauffman@gie.net.

Bracalente Manufacturing Group (BMG) https://www.bracalente.com