While CNC sliding head automatic lathes are still largely regarded as a niche area by the tooling companies, they have won a precision machinist some very good business for complex components.

Attention to detail has enabled specialist component machinist Paragon Precision to create very close relationships with customers' quality control departments. And this focus on quality is indeed reflected throughout the business - from the signage on the front of its modern 6,500 ft2 building to the way services are fed to its seven citizen cnc sliding-head mill/turn centres and fixed head CNC bar/chucking lathes. The company's name 'Paragon', defined as a 'model of excellence', truly portrays the attitude of this 15-man company in Redmoor, Milton Keynes, UK, where the three family directors - Paul Kratovil, managing director, his brother Mark, commercial director and John their father, now in semi-retirement but still very interested in the business as a strong team player - play a very 'hands-on' role in the company's day-to-day activities.

The objective set by John Kratovil for his two sons is to build the operation into a 20-machine site with the latest CNC technology, and judging by its growth of 75% between 2002 and 2003 plus another 50% during the last financial year, everything is well on course to achieve that.

Said John Kratovil: 'This company is our lifeblood, we are passionate about giving that little bit extra and it's paying-off.' And he quickly pointed to the benefits that attention to detail can bring: 'We have had a contract from a US defence customer for three years to produce very complex fibre optic components on our citizen machines to very strict tolerances and in difficult to machine material.

So far we have maintained a 100% quality rating and have never had a reject.

At a recent meeting with the customer, when the purchase director asked the quality manager if there were any problems in supply, he replied 'Yes, We don't purchase enough work from this company.' Paragon was set up in 1972 at Harpenden and moved to the new facility at Milton Keynes in early 2006.

The site has room to expand the production shop by a further 30% to enable new business to be accommodated as well as growth from existing customers from the aerospace, defence, marine, scientific, communications, medical, automotive and gardening equipment sectors.

Work batches tend to vary between 250 and 14,000 parts on a range of materials including aluminium, stainless steel, titanium, brass, copper alloy steels, mild steels, plastics and nylons.

Commenting on the number of Citizens installed Paul Kratovil maintained: 'NC Engineering's back up over the last eight years has been excellent.

We tend to concentrate on one supplier of a particular machine tool type and this is proving very rewarding on the shopfloor with common tooling, control knowledge and the ability of our setter operators to really exploit the methods used on the machine to achieve cycle time and quality.' Relationships are important to the Kratovils, who carry out a customer survey every six months.

What the directors are finding from this customer feedback is that quality departments are giving them a positive attitude for the future.

Said Mark Kratovil: 'Like most of our industry we were concerned over work going to China and India, so we have moved up market in the type of work we produce.

As a result, margins are improved and customer relationships are better.

We are now also finding work is coming back from the Far East because our customers do not want to be forced into larger batch runs to keep prices down - they are having problems with extended lead times and their quality departments are finding it very difficult to send parts back for rework because they are required for build.' On the commercial side, Paul Kratovil added: 'We have had no end of 'panic' orders because we have the skill and flexibility to capitalise on the flexibility of the Citizen machines and quickly reset to and produce smaller batches of parts that have been supplied wrongly from Eastern Europe and the Far East.

This capability is giving the customers time for the problems to be sorted out with the supplier without holding up assembly.' Paragon has seven Citizens, five L20-VII, one of the recent L20-VIIIs and two of the latest M32, 13-axis machines with programmable unload and CoolBlaster 2,000 lb/in2 high pressure coolant.

The first experience with Citizen was eight years ago and John Kratovil maintained: 'It is these machines that have been the mainstay of the growth of the business and we have continued to progressively buy new machines as our order book grows.' Each machine has its individual material racking and three to four jobs are issued to each machine at a time.

Programs are created either on the machine or off-line when they are fed by DNC using wireless technology.

A new NC Editor is currently being installed for the Citizens to further speed programming, but still Paul discusses all new jobs with the setters and is never slow at involving technical representatives from the main tooling suppliers.

'While sliding head technology is still largely regarded as a niche area by the tooling companies, they know their products,' said Paul Kratovil: 'We understand the machines and what we need to get from the application and this works very well.

It has won us some very good business either because of our capability to produce a complex component very cost-effectively or to maintain a customer when faced with 'cost-down' demands.'