Machinery & Manufacturing | Issue 15 | May-June 2024

Celebration

Half-century contribution to industrial progress Family, fulfillment, and a fascination with technology are all part of a formula that has seen ANCA lead the demanding niche of CNC tool and cutter grinders for a half-century.

In its time, the Australia-based global business has made an enormous yet largely hidden contribution to the world, selling over 10,000 5-axis CNC machines to over 2,500 customers. Around 1.1 billion tools have been created using ANCA’s grinders. “You would be very unlikely to find any bit of advanced equipment, anywhere in the world, that hasn’t been touched by a cutting tool which has been manufactured on one of our machines,” explains co-founder Pat Boland, whose company’s customers include Boeing,

Rolls-Royce, Iscar, Sandvik, Sutton Tools and many other household names. Boland and Pat McCluskey – then an electrical engineer and an industrial electronics tradesman – met at a government-owned munitions factory at Melbourne in 1968. The two Pats started ANCA in 1974 in a spare room at Boland and wife Libby’s home. “It wasn’t about money in the beginning, and for me it’s not about money now...I get my kicks out of designing new machines,” explains McCluskey. “Even before we started ANCA,

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