Waterjet: Going Wholesale

February 6, 2008

   Since ancient times, however, stone masons have been trying to find easier ways to marry curves to stone. The advent of computer-controlled waterjet cutters makes the fabrication of curves, as well as the precise forming of just about any shape, a reality.
    The only problem for many shops is the cost involved in buying a machine, training an operator and then finding enough work to keep it busy.
   There is another option: finding a shop that wholesales waterjet cutting, then developing the type of relationship that can bring you the benefits of having a waterjet, without the overhead in equipment or manpower.
   In the case of one recent job requiring tight tolerances and unusual cuts, having that go-to source became critical for success.

AHEAD OF THE CURVE
   When it comes to wholesaling waterjet services to the stone industry, Ron Beltz knows the territory. The chief executive officer (CEO) of JIT Companies bought precision cutting from other wholesalers for companies in both the countertop and cabinet industries before installing his own waterjet.
   After more than a decade in the funeral industry, Beltz and partner Bob Pflipsen (now JIT’s director of engineering) launched the company in 1984 doing stained-glass restoration. The two men continued working strictly with glass until the late 1990s, when they decided they needed to do something radically different to continue in business.
   The two men explored the opportunities and decided to buy their first waterjet cutter.
   “A lot of the projects we had worked on required people to do laser-cutting or CNC wood-router cutting or waterjet cutting,” says Beltz. “The problem we had with that is every time we sent a project out to a vendor, when the parts came back nothing seemed to fit.”
   Not only would the precision cutter – a Flow International Corp. machine with a 4’ X 8’ table – allow them to do their own projects, but it gave them the option of cutting a wide variety of different materials, including metal, stone and composites.
   Beltz says the first year with the waterjet was difficult as JIT made its capabilities known to potential customers in the Twin Cities area.
   “In some cases, once prospects became acquainted with us and what our capabilities are, they’ve become lifelong customers,” he says.
   JIT has cultivated customers in several different markets, the CEO adds.
   “In the morning we can be cutting airplane parts for an aerospace manufacturer and in the afternoon we can be cutting carpeting for an interior designer,” he says. “Today, we were cutting laminated custom mirror strips for an industrial application.”
   JIT also has a strong customer base in the sign industry and in the stone industry throughout the United States, providing custom medallions and other inlays. Beltz says it’s not that difficult to ship product all over the country.
   “A lot of contracts specify waterjet cutting, and one of the things we bring to the table is we understand what they’re looking for,” says Beltz. “Even though we’re spread across several industries, we’ve grown to understand them and can have intelligent conversations with their engineers. We pride ourselves on the knowledge we’ve acquired over the years.”
   When it comes to countertops and cabinets, the company is well-versed. The firm still has its glass business, with a lot of that output going into glazing high-end cabinets with stained- and leaded-glass inserts, as well as patterned art-glass inserts.
   Beltz says the cabinet distributors’ designers are also excited to discover that the waterjet allows them to offer custom inlays for countertops and backsplashes, either from different colors of the same material, or by combining dissimilar materials, such as stone and stainless steel.

"THE GREATEST PART”
   When it comes to stonework, Beltz says what makes the waterjet attractive is its ability to do the irregular shapes and sweeping curves that are difficult and time-consuming to produce on other equipment.
   A good example, he says is the elaborately curved bar tops that are popular in huge hotels and upscale restaurants.
   “Often times, our clients are looking at doing a 3” build-up bullnose,” he says. “What we can do is cut the build-up material into thin strips a couple inches wide that the fabricator can glue up, put the bullnose, on and be done. It’s a lot easier for us to cut those strips than to try to cut them on a bridge saw.”
   Still another advantage he cites is the clean cutting of waterjet, which lends the ability to closely nest parts and optimize material use. On one job the company did, the client anticipated needing four slabs to cut the job; thanks to nesting, JIT was able to do it from one-and-a-half slabs.
   “There’s a tremendous material savings for them,” he says. “That particular one was huge.”
   While countertops are pretty standard output for JIT, the company also works with its clients on more elaborate jobs. Just recently, the company teamed up with St. Paul, Minn.-based Twin City Tile and Marble Co. to create a two-story freestanding gray limestone fireplace for a local hospital.
   Joe Becker, vice president of Twin City’s stone division, says that company began working with JIT when one of its employees recommended the firm.
   Becker says when his company looked at bidding the fireplace, it was apparent the job would have to be done by waterjet.
   “Every stone is a different shape and the joints are curved lines going up and down,” Becker explains. “The pieces above and below have to marry into each other. It would have been just too expensive to do the cutting by hand.”
   Additionally, he says hand-cutting wouldn’t have allowed the project to be done with 1/8” joints or the half-inch reveals on either side of them. The joints were tighter than the designer had originally specified.
   Because of the uniqueness of the project, the two firms worked together to come up with a price and JIT was actively involved in its production.
   “We laid the whole thing out for them,” says Beltz. “They had a general idea of what they were looking for, but our technicians did the field measurements and laid it out.
   “Twin City got the appropriate people to sign off on it, and supplied us the slabs. We cut it, laid it out here in the shop to make sure everything fit, labeled and numbered the pieces, and got it to them.”
   As with other computerized forms of cutting, it’s also easy for the waterjet to replicate what it’s cut before. In the case of the Twin City job, one of the pieces was broken after being delivered to the jobsite. The stone contractor called JIT in the morning, identified the broken piece by number, and had a replacement shortly after lunch.
   “It was simple to do,” says Becker. “We had given Ron extra panels and we left them at JIT until the job was done. They cut the piece and it fit. That’s the great part about waterjet.”
   Both men agree that CAD technology makes quick recoveries such as that possible. However, Beltz says JIT also works off just about anything else a customer can supply, from blueprints to cardboard or stick templates.
   “CAD files are the perfect way of doing it, of course,” says Beltz. “But, we have a system where we digitize templates and it works, and we know nothing is perfect.
   “If we see something we don’t understand, we don’t take it for granted. We get on the phone with the customer, and we try to take care of potential problems before their raise their ugly heads.”
   Thanks to that level of service, Becker says he doesn’t see a waterjet in Twin City’s future, even though the company has plenty of other tooling, including a CNC.
   “We’re not that big a company that we’d want to put the overhead on,” Becker says. “We’ve thought about it, but we’ve had very good luck working with Ron. When you can be competitive by not owning the machinery, that’s a real plus.”

A PLACE TO SHINE
   Beltz agrees that JIT’s goal is to be another tool available to its customers.
   “We like to think we take care of people’s problems,” says the CEO. “That’s what we really strive for here. We want to be a source that people will come to when they need to figure out how to do a particularly challenging job.”
   Much of the business has been built by word-of-mouth and through the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers, and Beltz says he strives for happy repeat customers.
   “Not only do they know what to expect from us, but we go the extra mile for them,” he says.
   He adds that isn’t always the case. For one thing, the cost of a job can sometimes exceed the quote. When customers aren’t happy, they can expect to hear from Beltz himself.
   “For whatever reason, if there needs to be a follow-up call because a customer is not happy, I’ll make the call,” he says. “The buck stops at my chair.”
   Today, with 19 total employees, the firm is poised to make a big commitment to its waterjet operation. In early January the company placed an order for its fourth waterjet from Flow, a second 6’ X 12’ single table machine. (The company also has a machine with a 4’ X 4’ table.)
   Plans are also in the works to effectively double the size of JIT’s existing 12,000 ft² building.
   Just as Becker says his company isn’t interested in adding a waterjet, Beltz says he’s certainly not tempted to expand deeper into his customers’ markets – including stone.
   “We know what we’re good at, and that’s why we’re going to continue to focus on the waterjet-cutting services,” Beltz says. “That’s where we excel. It wouldn’t make sense for us to get into some sort of fabrication. We’d rather have people tell us what to cut, because that’s where we shine.”
   That isn’t to say he won’t be investigating some new markets, though. In fact, Beltz says his main job right now is just that, and he has his eyes on cutting some other types of products, especially in the glass industry.
   “We like to do the one-offs, the specialty niche products,” he concludes. “I don’t want to go where there are 150 other people doing the same thing and you have to cut costs or cut corners to get the job done. Luckily, by being diverse, if one of our industries slows down, another one picks up.”