Quarterly Newsletter

Adios 2009….A Message From Yvette Pagano, President

I am sending warm wishes to each and every one of our newsletter readers.  I am sure you will agree 2009 was quite a challenging year.  Thanks to our customers both new and old for ordering parts, working with us on deliveries, giving us referrals, and keeping our machines running.  In turn we hope you are satisfied with quality parts delivered on time.  Thanks to our vendor partners for keeping us supplied with raw material, completing outsourcing on time, and getting quotes back to us quickly.  A huge thank you to all our loyal CAR Engineering employees.  They stuck it out during reduced hours always working with management not against management.  We could not have survived this year without all of you, you are truly stakeholders in our business and we appreciate it.

I am pleased to say that all hourly employees have been working 40+ hours since May 2009.  We also hired two new employees within the last 30 days to assist with our increased workload.  It appears the worst is over and although we will finish behind our 2008 sales, we are optimistic about 2010.  So goodbye 2009, we have our eyes on a bright future.

Peace on earth and enjoy the holiday season with friends and family.

 

CAR’s Engineers- Value Added Design

Engineer Dan Kelly poses with parts he designed

Many of you have been working with CAR for years, you send over prints and Milt, Steve, or Dan prepares the quote.  Ideally you cut us a purchase order for the parts and tooling.  We appreciate this work and please continue to send all manufacturing opportunities to your friends at CAR.

However, we can do more for you and your business in terms of design work and original ideas.  An entrepreneur, Eric J. Johnston, saw an opportunity in the television and film business.  Eric thought he could market digital cinema camera accessories and had some design ideas.  Working hand and hand with Dan Kelly at CAR, Eric was able to launch his new business Cine Hardware.  Dan designed the digital camera accessories using his solidworks software.  Eric stated, “Dan is awesome to work with, he really nailed my design concept.  He offers good ideas but is responsive to change as ultimately I have the final say on the design.”  CAR was then able to make the prototypes for Cine Hardware followed by production orders.  CAR is pleased that Cine Hardware is growing rapidly in its first year in business and that we have designed and manufactured six unique parts for them in 2009.  Eric is about to go live with his website: www.cinehardware.com check back soon to see all his products.

Another success story involves a customer in the mid-west who found CAR on-line.  His business involved selling bottle caps for arts and crafts purposes.  While standard size bottle caps are readily available he identified a market for mini bottle caps, about half the size as a standard cap.  In working with CAR’s designer Steve Weilert, we were able to draw up a part in AutoCAD and build a tool capable of stamping 5,000 caps per hour.  At the time of this article the tool had been completed and samples were out to the customer for approval.  The initial estimated annual usage is 100,000 caps.

CAR has also had great success manufacturing parts for OEM equipment.  If a custom machine breaks and a replacement part is expensive and or has a long lead-time consider having it replaced with a CAR Engineering part.  One of our customers had a 12-week lead-time from their OEM in Europe with a replacement cost of over $1,200.  CAR was able to make a better part, in about 3 weeks, for less than half the price.  If you don’t have a print don’t worry- our designers can draw something up that will meet your needs.

Often it is quite expensive to have design work done.  We at CAR can help with this process, often adding valuable suggestions in terms of material use and design for manufacturability.  Our designers enjoy early supplier involvement and being a machine shop we are quite interested in the production work.  For this reason we can offer the design work at no or low cost- assuming we get to run the parts when they are approved.

If you have an idea for a product and you need help getting started or you feel your company would benefit from bringing in outside designers at an early stage in the process, don’t hesitate to contact one of our outstanding designers/engineers.

 

John Namekeopannha Back From Laos- School Near Completion

John and Phone being honored

Children with the old school in the background

Children with new school pictured

Loyal CAR Engineering newsletter readers may recall our feature article on CAR employee John Namekeopannha who along with brother Phone have been working for many years to build a new school in their native country of Laos.  John had the opportunity to return to Laos to check on the progress.  He was there for 5 weeks in Oct/Nov 2009.  We sure missed John in our multi-slide department but he had an outstanding trip and the school is near completion.

As you can see in the photos the new school is quite an improvement from the old school.  The school serves about 150 children from 3 neighboring villages.  During his time in Laos, a ceremony was held to honor John and Phone which was attended by many prominent Lao citizens including the mayor.  The school is operational and the children are learning everyday.  There is some finishing work on the entrance and some painting that still needs to be completed but for the most part the school is done.  John has dedicated much time and money to this project and we at CAR are very proud of his accomplishments.  He is still accepting donations for this project, if you would like more information please contact John directly at 585-703-1221.