Sutton adopts a very pragmatic approach to sub-contracting: Buy the best machines, equip them best you can and use the best operators and you ll succeed.
It s a philosophy that has stood him in good stead as owner of Intersat Manufacturing, a company he started in the early 1990s in his garage with a lathe and a mill, and with which he gained his first order for £6.75p.
That s a far cry from where the Hampshire company is today with 22 employees, a £1.8 million turnover and a determined focus on high-value, complex parts.
As Intersat spent its first few years expanding to meet its growing customer base, Jon Sutton then decided to concentrate on only a handful of customers primarily in the high-value, medium volume sector and including Fisher Instrumentation, the company that placed that first order and to equip the company with machines able to meet their demands for increasingly complex and high added-value workpieces.
It was this strategic decision, to truly partner a small number of customers and to develop machining solutions that would allow Intersat to respond appropriately, and cost-effectively, that underpins Jon Sutton s manufacturing philosophy of investing in the best to be the best .
As much as replacing ageing plant, the investment policy has seen Intersat continually implement machines of the highest technology, to continually push forward our abilities , he says.
The impressive plant list includes high-speed five-axis machining centres, multi-pallet machining centres, an array of vertical machining centres with fourth axis capability (including several models from C Dugard Machine Tools) alongside mill-turn centres all DNC linked - as well as an impressive portfolio of CNC lathes and spark erosion machines.
These complement a well-equipped inspection capability (including co-ordinate measuring), CAD/CAM (with the facility to accept the direct input of drawings via email) and sophisticated production control software.
I firmly believe that you need the best machines if you are to produce the best components, says Jon Sutton, and we specialise in high-specification, multi-face machined shaft-type and prismatic components supplied in relatively small batches of usually 50-off.
Every new machine we install is specified to the highest level possible with all the bells and whistles - for instance, pallet systems (where appropriate), large tool magazines/capacities, on-machine infra-red probing, laser toolsetting, tool monitoring and through-spindle coolant.
High-speed machining obviously reduces cycle times, and the pallet systems enable us to be extremely flexible (and, with lights out working, very cost-effective) in terms of switching between workpieces.
Combined with large capacity (up to 120-tool) toolchangers employing sister tooling, the machines can easily handle a wide variety of parts at the touch of a button without incurring downtime.
But as well as having plenty of tools available, it is also crucial that the correct high-specification tooling is used you must have the right tool on the right machine to maximise machine capability and minimise tool cost while achieving the required tight tolerances and surface finishes.
It s no surprise, therefore, that Intersat enjoys the benefits of Walter s renowned Tiger.tec tooling and is evaluating Titex drilling and Prototyp thread milling from the same stable, Walter GB. Tiger.tec regularly achieves up to 75 per cent more components per edge than competitor products, and in some cases double output, due to improved process reliability courtesy of a high resistance to flank wear, cratering and thermal cracking.
The inserts combine a mixture of aluminium oxide (Al²O³), titanium carbon nitride (TiCN) and titanium nitride (TiN) coatings on a tungsten carbide substrate, featuring a grey (TiCN) rake face and a golden, TiN finish (flank face) that aids wear identification.
The aluminium oxide coating is particularly effective against tribochemical wear and permits higher cutting speeds and feeds to be employed while also providing longer service life. The golden TiN coating applied to the inserts' clearance surfaces simplifies wear detection and thus avoids the unnecessary waste of unused cutting edges. The grey TiCN rake face minimises negative tensile stress and improves adhesion and toughness.
To create a happy marriage between tooling and machine and workpiece/material (stainless, aluminium, Inconel, Monel and titanium, for example) Intersat s project engineers work closely with machine manufacturers and distributors and, increasingly, with tooling suppliers like Walter and specialist distributor Jemma Tools.
Jemma draws on its in-depth technical knowledge and wide tooling portfolio and superlative service levels - to solve machining problems and improve the cost-effectiveness of production for companies of every size throughout the south of England.
With up to £20,000 being spent each month renewing tooling across the CNC machine portfolio, Jon Sutton says it is not only the choice of tooling but also the technical expertise and back-up offered by Walter and Jemma that is vital to the choice, application and cost-effectiveness of the tooling employed.
The use of a twin-pallet, 120-tool horizontal machining centre for machining stainless steel castings typifies the Intersat/Walter/Jemma approach.
With the machine costing £200,000, Intersat spent an additional £40,000 on tooling and fixturing but the expense is fully justified because, compared to a daily output of just 14 units on a pair of vertical machines, the new set-up produces 29 units.
Once set, the machine runs unattended and often in lights-out mode, says Jon Sutton. These are high value workpieces, so it is essential we have total confidence in the tooling.
Walter and Jemma provided the best tooling product in conjunction with optimised speeds and feeds - that offered the ultimate in tool life performance.
Another example concerns a Dugard 850 vertical machining centre purchased specifically to machine batches of components loaded six at a time and machined to finish after a sequence of milling, drilling and profiling and cycle time per component has been reduced from eight hours to five-and-a-half hours.
In both cases, Walter tooling is the critical bridge between machine and workpiece.
The F4033 face mill was the first of the Walter tools to be introduced to Intersat, says Jemma Tools technical sales engineer Jim McLatchie.
Featuring Tiger.tec inserts, its immediate impact on the kicker application where insert life rocketed from only 15 mins per edge to an impressive 40 mins - soon enabled the benefits of Walter tooling to escalate to other Intersat applications.
These include the Tiger.tec end mills (model F4042) and the F3038 Quar.tec porcupine cutter. And more recently, Intersat is working closely with Walter and Jemma evaluating Titex drilling (the Alpha Ni drill on Inconel workpieces) and Prototyp thread milling.
Jon Sutton concludes: Machines and tooling are advancing at such a rate that companies like us must invest regularly and tap into the relevant specialised knowledge of suppliers like Jemma if we are to stay on top of our game.
But, importantly, successful sub-contracting is also about investing in people it s no good having the best machines on the market if your operators can t make the most of them.