Changing production over from single customised to volume-customised bikes introduced CNC machin tools but using similar programs and standardising on tool libraries from machine to machine.

The management at Orange County Choppers (OCC) bicycle plant in the USA is busy laying the groundwork to make the company the best-known and most influential bike builder in the world.

Paul Teutul Senior’s business planners, designers, machinists and builders are settling in to manufacture a new line of standardized production bikes to support a growing chain of OCC retail dealers.

Until now, each bike has been specifically made to order for each customer, so the move represents a major shift in the way everyone at OCC must approach the work.

Perhaps no one faces greater changes than OCC’s machine shop manager Jim Quinn.

“It’s definitely a challenge,” said Quinn.

“In some ways it’s easier, but in many ways it’s more difficult.

Because of the way we’ve networked our machines, once we’ve made a part to spec, it’s just a matter of loading the program and we can duplicate it again without any problems”.

Trying to dedicate machines to manufacturing production, while building one-off bikes under the pressures of television deadlines, is no simple matter.

“That’s the other part of it,” said Quinn.

“It never fails.

As soon as I get a machine set up to run production wheels all day, it’s ‘Oops!’ we’ve got to break in and run a special design for one of the bikes for the show”.

OCC set out in 2006 to virtually double the size of the machine workshop.

Paul Senior and son Mikey, with a full video crew in tow, visited the 1,000,000ft2 Haas Automation factory in Southern California, and humorously scribed their names on the machines they wanted.

Jim Quinn and many others had thoughtfully coordinated the expansion and suggested which machines to acquire weeks before the stars left for the sunny coast.

The OCC machine workshop began to expand, expanding into what had been the warehousing area of the 30,000ft2 building.

This new annex holds a recently installed Haas Mini Mill, TL-1 Toolroom Lathe and EC-500 horizontal machining center - all tied in with the crew’s ever-busy VF-5/50, VM-3 and VF-2SS vertical machining centers and SL-20 lathe.

* Machining in real time - Quinn said: “The nice part is that I now have crossover between all my Haas machines.

Pretty much the same program will work on any of them.

And, I keep my tool libraries the same from machine to machine: Tool two is always a drill; tool seven is always a quarter inch endmill and so on.

With this broad interchangeability, it’s amazing what we can do”.

He continued: “There was a day here, a couple months ago, when I had wheels running on four of my five mills, even the (smaller) VF-2,.

A lot of Senior’s old-school bikes take a 16in rear wheel, instead of the usual 18s and 21s we put on most of our new choppers.

I said, ‘you know what? I think this will fit in here’ I’d never even thought of cutting wheels on the VF-2 before, but I needed four sets going out that day.

Happily, the 16 incher fit the VF-2’s cutting envelope with a bit to spare, and I didn’t have to change a thing in the program.

To be able to just throw it in and cut wheels on all those machines, all at the same time, was just amazing”.

Every Haas machine at OCC is fully networked, and has either a 20- or 40-gigabite hard drive, which Quinn accesses from his office.

“I use my desktop to post the programs through Mastercam,” he said.

“I output that post, and send the NC code directly to the machine tool”.

The flawless finishes Quinn achieves on OCC’s famous appearance parts are the result of both his machining skill and the flexibility of this network setup.

“The chaining tolerances I use in Mastercam are always evolving,” he admitted, “I’m now down to about five-millionths.

This makes the programs extremely large, but you couldn’t ask for a finer finish.

Since the programs are too big for resident memory, I do most of my wheel and surfacing files through DNC,” he explained.

“Our chromers and polishers really love the finish we’re getting off the Haas machines”.

Multi-functional - with the challenging expansion into production manufacturing alongside the custom-build television demands, nearly everyone in the OCC shop, including Quinn, is wearing a lot more hats these days: machinist, designer, fabricator, engineer, assembler and, of course, TV personality.

Everyone has to be a little bit of everything.

“Yeah, that’s kind of what we’ve become,” said Quinn.

“But this way, everybody knows the product a lot better than when we were niched, always doing the same job.” The change was absolutely necessary, he explains, to get OCC to where it is today.

“When you consider some of the tight time frames we face, it’s obvious we can’t afford a machinist-versus-designer standoff around here,” said Quinn.

“Everybody has to work together to put out bikes; our systems have to be efficient.” The crew has to give Paulie what he needs, when he needs it, and Senior what he wants, when he wants it”.

After peering below the surface of OCC, it’s easier to value Senior’s hard-nosed work ethic, and to appreciate why nothing sets him off like ‘wasted time’.

But, above everything else, this is a business of talented, creative people influenced by the imaginative minds of Paulie and Mikey Teutul.

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