Kinetic > Our People, Facility and Equipment

Kinetic

Greendale, WI

Making the finest industrial knives and hardened wear products requires highly trained employees, the finest metal working equipment available, the best steel melted and rolled, and a facility that is the best in the world. We have all of those at Kinetic.

For those of you who have not had the opportunity to visit us we would like to take you on a tour so that you can learn who we are and what we look like.

Our original building was only 1200 square feet. Built in 1950 on the south side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin it was a huge investment for C.L. Masters; prior to this building he was running Kinetic first out of his garage and then out of rented factory space. But business was good and he had to expand again in 1955; Kinetic grew to 3,600 square feet. Business continued to grow and in 1960 C.L (as he was known in the industry) bought the lot next door to his factory and increased the “shop”, as it was always called, to 7,200 square feet. But business continued to grow; in 1969 he needed to expand but ran out of room at his current location.

A 10 acre parcel was located in Greendale, Wisconsin. It was just what C.L. wanted –not in an industrial park but rather a solitary parcel surrounded by Milwaukee County Parkway land. A plant and offices were designed and built; in July of 1970 we moved in. Our new “shop” and offices were 25,000 square feet. You can learn more about Greendale at http://www.greendale.org/.

Since setting up our new “shop” in Greendale we have expanded the plant 4 times; in 1975, 1985, 1994 and 2008. Our offices were expanded in 1978 and 1991. Included in every plant and office expansion were remodeling to existing facilities. Our 1970 “shop” is “newer” today then it was in July of 1970.

But you need more then bricks and mortar to make industrial knives. You need highly skilled and motivated employees. We have the best. Many of our employees have 15, 20, 25 and 30 years of experience with Kinetic. Brian Labucki, our senior Mattison grinderman, celebrated his 40th anniversary with Kinetic in March of 2005. Kinetic is a good place for good people to work.

Our expertise lies in the manufacture of hardened tool and high speed steel parts. Our grinding capability for these products is the best in the world. We have 7 large Mattison reciprocating table surface grinders, the last installed October of 2005. This latest Mattison was purchased so we can handle the largest grinding requirements of our customers. The table capacity is 36” x 168” [914mm x 4.267mm] with 36” [914mm] clearance under the wheel. All of these Mattison grinders incorporate box ways to allow us to hold close tolerances and variable speed spindle drives so that we can take advantage of the latest in grinding wheel technology.

Here Cash Masters is operating one of our Mattison surface grinders as he finish grinds a steel mill plate shear. You just can’t put these shear blades on the machine; fixturing is important. Skill and knowledge pays dividends.

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Chris Robson programs one of our 5 Mori-Seki lathes. These workhorse lathes allow us to quickly turn a variety of tool and high speed steels into rotary cutting knives. The box way design of the “Mori’s” allow us to take advantage of cutting tools that can take the heaviest of cuts. Live tooling allows us to accelerate our manufacturing process

We excel at making thin cross section long industrial knives. Here Daryl Foellings examines the flatness on some perforating blades and anvils made for Perini tissue rewinders.

Jeff Kulinski is straightening a winding mandrel with drive assembly for a Paper Converting Machine Company rewinder that we repaired for a customer. Making new winding mandrels and repairing existing ones has been a Kinetic specialty since the mid 1950’s. No one in the world can equal our experience in the manufacture or repair of this product.

Making angle shears for the steel industry requires knowledgeable machinists. Kinetic’s policy is that each machinist is responsible for doing his own CNC programming. Our machinists have been trained in computer operation and CNC programming. Machining tool steel is not as predictable as machining aluminum; the machinist must be able to make programming changes “on the fly”.

Our grinder operators give our customers exactly what they specify. If a customer requires a super finished slitter the operator insures that the surface finish meets blueprint specifications by checking it with our profilometer.

Customers who side trim steel coils demand a side trimmer with extreme parallelism. Inspection proves that these specifications are met.

The last operation before our products go to shipping is inspection. Our chief inspector, Jim Baumgartner, and his staff make sure that our product meets your requirements. Here Jim inspects the height on a complex steel mill bar shear.

Our sanitary paper customers are confident that the bond spacing on perforating blades for their Paper Converting Machine Company rewinders is correct because Jim reviews the spacing with an optical comparator.