Mastercam Reseller Profile – Q&A with Macdac Engineering, Inc.
Macdac Engineering, Inc., became a Mastercam Reseller with a bang in 1991, when it earned the award for Highest Sales for a New Dealer in its first year. Since then, the veteran-owned and operated company has consistently placed in the top 10 national industrial Resellers, winning a multitude of other honors.
From offices in Somers, Connecticut, Macdac sells to all of New England and parts of New York, with a focus on the aerospace industry. In the following Q&A with Kaitlin Lynch, Inside Sales Representative, shares Macdac’s above-and-beyond approach to customer training.
Q. What Mastercam services do you offer customers?
A. We do normal tech support via web conference, phone, email, but then we do regular application sessions on Thursdays and Fridays. We leave Thursdays and Fridays completely open and allow customers who buy our Technical Support Plan B or higher to come in an unlimited number of times per year. It’s first come, first served, and customers can come in and talk one on one with our trainer Bruce. You can do anything you need to do, whether it’s reviewing a toolpath or function or working on a specific part that you need help with.
Beyond that, we also do training here. We have a dedicated room with eight full workstations and a dedicated trainer. He’s the same one who does the application sessions Thursday and Friday, but Monday through Wednesday he’s teaching classes. They’re anything from Mill 2D to Multiaxis to Mill-Turn.
We guarantee our classes; someone who has already taken a class once can come back in for a review anytime with no extra charge. We want to make sure that they will definitely get what they need out of the class. We sell tutorial books, too, and we like to do demos here as well. Some people want demos on specific features, some people want demos on the entire software package, so we do our best to tailor those. We want to see our customers succeed.
We also do on-site training at other facilities. We can take what we do here for those three days and bring it onsite for people. Really, the only prerequisite is having a conference room set up with a projector, and everyone has to have a laptop with Mastercam.
Q. What’s the latest or most exciting customer application you have?
A. Two come to mind readily. The first was with one of our customers that makes all sorts of beautiful knives. They had been using really basic programming—not using Dynamic Motion Technology, not using a lot of the features in the newer versions of Mastercam—so we went in there and got them up to date. We introduced them to Dynamic and showed them how it could eliminate cycle time and improve tool life. Now they’ve increased their productivity by 50 percent.
The second one is about a gentleman who came in here a while ago. We offer our classes to veterans and unemployed people for no cost, and that’s something that’s unique to us and that we’re very proud of. We’re trying to fix that rift between unemployment and the skills gap as much as possible. When this particular gentleman came in, he was unemployed. He took all our courses—every single one. He then went on to be hired by one of our customers doing programming. He’s really helped them use those newer techniques, and he’s even grown our account with them because he’s brought them back up to speed. That was a home run for us because the gentleman found a job and his company is running better now. We love to see that kind of success with our customers.
Q. What’s your favorite feature in Mastercam?
A. Dynamic Motion Technology is the coolest. When I went to college, I first learned to write G-code by hand. Then, we started using Mastercam. We began with learning the most basic features in Mastercam, and then we worked our way up to Dynamic. You don’t realize how much time it saves unless you start out like I did. It’s just great. [https://www.mastercam.com/dynamic/]
Q. What are some challenges/opportunities you find that are unique to your region?
A. One of the challenges that we face every year here is competition. We are one of very few Mastercam Resellers that has another Reseller directly competing in our territory. Another issue for us is the New England weather. When we plan classes and then get hit with a snow day, it can obliterate things for everyone involved.
Q. What are some unique issues that you can solve as a local support hub for Mastercam?
A. It works out really well for everyone that we are so local. We can always go on-site and help if there’s any kind of issue, and we don’t have to worry about the technical difficulty of trying to remote in. Not every software distributor can say that; not many have a whole team of people ready to be sent out at any time. We know our customers really well as a result. We have a bunch of customers that are within 15 minutes of us, so we can make sure our customers see our faces when they need us.
Q. Do you sell any other products besides Mastercam?
A. We sell WireFree CNC, also referred to as Excellerant, which is an MES system that also includes DNC.
For more information about Macdac Engineering, visit www.macdac.com.
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