Since its inception just 10 years ago, Paragon Precision Engineering has achieved impressive growth, today employing 23 people that help generate a turnover in the region of £1.7 million.

Since its inception just 10 years ago, Paragon Precision Engineering has achieved impressive growth, today employing 23 people that help generate a turnover in the region of £1.7 million. There are many reasons for the success of this Cambridgeshire-based subcontractor, not least the fact that the company has used milling cutters from ITC of Tamworth since day one. Paragon's speciality is the provision of CNC machining and sheet metalwork services for hi-tech manufacturing companies that make equipment for medical and scientific research.

Cambridge, just 11 miles south of Paragon's Ely facility has the largest cluster of hi-tech companies in the UK.

Paragon's prismatic machining capabilities are impressive and take centre stage at the core of the company's business.

Most of the machines are Haas models, including vertical, horizontal, twin pallet and high-speed variants.

All have full fourth-axis capability and all use ITC milling cutters.

'We've used ITC since the outset,' confirms managing director John Kent.

'It started simply because one of my co-directors knew Gary Bambrick, ITC's area sales manager, from a previous role.

However, over the past five years our use of ITC tooling has increased significantly, so much so that we now keep a reasonable amount of ITC cutters in stock on site.

We have tried other suppliers but we like the service we get from ITC along with the performance of the cutters.

The tool life and surface finish we achieve makes them very cost effective.' Paragon uses a wide range of ITC milling cutters including Cyber Series slot drills, end mills and ballnose cutters across materials that include steel, aluminium and plastic.

At the time of visit, many of these cutters were being put to work machining heatsinks for the telecommunications industry.

The company also deploys multi-flute cutters for stainless steel as well the 6011 multi-flute carbide end mills.

With its fast helix and square end straight shank, the 6011 Series is available in three different lengths.

The cutter is manufactured from ultra wear resistant micrograin carbide and comes with a TiALN coating for enhanced life and heat resistance.

The 6011 Series is designed for profiling steels up to 60HRc.

Typical batch sizes are 5-50 off but Paragon regularly processes orders up to 9000 off.

While the machine shop is manned for 12 hours a day, most of the machining centres are left to run overnight, hence confidence in cutting tool performance is paramount.

The company's large Haas VF8 and HS1 machines are frequently left unattended to make long sequences of complex cuts using up to 24 different tools.

Among the components that are processed regularly by Paragon, are parts for fibre-optic testing equipment, DNA testing machines, laser scanning devices, x-ray machines, bio-robotics, MP3 audio equipment and inkjet printers.

'We're really pleased with the ITC service,' continues Mr Kent.

'We can phone up for a cutter and it will arrive by post the next morning.

They are also very good when we require the occasional carbide special.

ITC are open and honest with us in the same way that we are with our customers.

Good relationships are vitally important for relatively young businesses like ours.' In fact, Paragon is so open that the company is quite happy for its customers to 'pop in' unannounced to see parts being manufactured - something that few subcontractors encourage.

'We haven't got anything to hide,£ concludes Mr Kent.

'We offer a complete manufacturing solution using high technology machinery and cost effective processes, in which our milling cutters from ITC play an integral role.'