Harvey Performance Company welcomed dozens of local high school students to its Gorham, ME manufacturing facility for an educational tour as part of “Manufacturing Day,” a national day of celebration of modern manufacturing meant to promote, inform, and inspire.

As part of the tour, students were led around the facility by Harvey Performance Company engineers, receiving valuable insight on how a state-of-the-art CNC grinding machine turns a carbide blank into specialty tooling.  The event concluded with a question and answer segment led by Plant Manager Adam Martin.

“It was a thrill for me to meet with the participating students, and to see just how enthusiastic they were about manufacturing,” Martin said. “The Harvey Performance team really had a great time celebrating Manufacturing Day with them.”

Nationwide, more than 2,800 events took place for current and aspiring machinists as part of Manufacturing Day, held the first week of October every year. In 2016, 84 percent of participants in a Manufacturing Day event were more convinced that manufacturing provides interesting and rewarding careers, according to data from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.

Harvey Performance Company remains committed to its goal of highlighting the best of the manufacturing industry via its “Plunge Into Machining” campaign.

(Rowley, MA) May 19, 2017 – Harvey Performance Company employees built a new stage for the Ipswich Family YMCA’s summer day camp, Camp Cedar Mill, as part of a continuing effort to contribute to local community organizations. Seven employees spent their morning building the stage, which will be used for morning announcements, awards ceremonies, talent shows, yoga, and community events.

This volunteer opportunity was part of the Harvey Performance Gives Back Program.

Harvey Performance Company supports and celebrates the local community with the Harvey Performance Gives Back Program, which is designed to promote social responsibility and corporate citizenship. This structured company-wide program seeks to motivate and enable employees to volunteer and give back to the local community. Past programs have included clothing drives, community giving tree programs, and school supply drives.

Rowley, MA – Harvey Tool is proud to announce that for the second consecutive year, it has been voted #1 Most Popular End Mill Brand by participants of the 2016 CNC Cookbook End Mill Survey, a questionnaire meant to gauge machinists’ most preferred manufacturers.

Of the nearly 1,300 votes cast for more than 90 different end mill brands, Harvey Tool earned the top spot with 90.3 percent of voters listing the Rowley-based company as a top choice end mill manufacturer. Following behind were Niagara (whom Harvey Tool tied with for the top spot last year), OSG, Accupro, Garr, SGS, Kennametal, and Micro100.

While the survey focused on overall brand popularity, it also asked respondents to rank end mill brands based on the categories of “combined value and performance” and “highest performance.” Harvey Tool was named the top choice for both categories, tallying 7.9 percent of votes for highest performance and 6.8 percent for combined value and performance. Simply, participants voted Harvey Tool the first choice for tools if money was no factor, while also listing them as having the best balance of performance and value.

Helical Solutions, whom Harvey Tool acquired in 2015, also performed well in the CNC Cookbook End Mill Survey, ranking in the top position within the Tier 2 list of end mill brands. This marks the first year that Helical has been named and ranked in this annual survey.

“We’re extremely proud of this accomplishment as it works to affirm the hard work and commitment our team exhibits every day for our customers,” said Harvey Tool Vice President of Marketing Garth Ely. “The results of this survey clearly express that Harvey Tool is a top choice for machinists, and there’s no better feeling than that.”

“Each member of our team played a vital role in making this possible,” Ely said. “It’s truly a cross functional effort here, which makes an accomplishment of this magnitude so much greater.”

“For us, this is just another accomplishment in what has been a tremendous year of growth and achievement,” said Harvey Tool Senior Vice President of Sales Jerry Gleisner. “To see both Harvey Tool and Helical Solutions perform so well is only added motivation for us to continue to push for an even better product for our customers in 2017.”

Rotherham, ENGLAND – Helical Solutions Vice President of Sales Scott Tiehen, Engineering Manager James Graham and Northwest Sales Manager Rick Woods are proud to announce a top tier finish in the 2015 Boeing Industry Challenge II, a multi-month invitational tournament meant to gage the world’s strongest and highest-performing milling tools in 6AL4V, a material common to the aerospace industry and intended to yield higher metal removal rates in a repeatable manner.

“When we learned that we were invited by Boeing to participate in this thoughtful and rigorous challenge, we jumped at the opportunity,” Tiehen said. “Our team immediately began working hard to leverage proprietary geometry, coatings and expertise to develop the perfect tool.

“Our successes at the Industry Challenge worked only to affirm my unyielding belief that Helical tools, and the Helical team, are among the world’s best.”

Hosted by Boeing’s Portland, Ore. plant, one of the largest machine shops in the world, and held at University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, the Challenge was compartmented into two chapters: Traditional and High Velocity. Helical Solutions earned Exceeds Expectations recognition for the Traditional Finishing parameters.

Boeing outlined specific operating boundary conditions, as well as performance deliverables, to maintain an even test environment for all participants. Exact parameters have been omitted from this document in respect to Boeing’s confidential operations.

Decisions related to tool geometry, coating and coolant, however, were made by each participant. Helical opted to use proven tool geometry, but added a unique core strategy for increased strength, Graham said.

“We also opted to use a proprietary coating that we have developed in-house with our coating manufacturer, he said. “It works awesome in titanium.”

After allotted periods of machining time, edge wear on tools was recorded and critiqued. Three stages of test results are critiqued by Boeing when determining a tool manufacturer for upcoming projects.

Boeing has chosen to keep the peak performers of the final stage confidential, but said that Helical was in the “upper echelon of competition,” Woods said. Excelling earned Helical one of just a few spots in the third and final round of the competition.

“Everyone at Helical was constantly asking us if we made it to phase three,” Graham said. “When I received word, it was the biggest pleasure for me to let them know that we made it. We out-performed some of the biggest and best in the world, and that’s something we’re extremely proud of.”