On Season 4 of Swarfcast, we’re talking to people involved in the machining industry around the globe. On this week’s show, we visit India.
Today’s guest is Mayank Patel, director of Mayank BrassFit in Jamnagar, India. In the interview Mayank tells Noah his company produces Brass fittings primarily for Tribal Manufacturing and Parker Hannifin, both located in the United States. Mayank produces the majority of his parts on an expensive Buffoli Transfer machine. This is in stark contrast to his competitors who use cheap but slow single-spindle CNC lathes that require considerable manpower.
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Main Points
Noah introduces Mayank Patel, talking about the used Buffoli Transfer Machine Graff-Pinkert sold him a few years ago. (2:30) 
Mayank says he has  two Buffoli Transfer machines, one he bought new and other he bought used from Graff-Pinkert. He says that the new one cost 800,000 Euros. (3:20) 
Mayank gives his background. He lives in city called Jamnagar, which is the hub in India for manufacturing brass parts. He went to boarding school from ages 6-15, which he says is standard for a certain class of people in India. He spent two years in Bombay to complete is undergraduate degree. Then he went to London for four years and got a Masters Degree in international business. He says he later learned machining on the job, as opposed to having formal training. (4:30) 
Mayank talks about his family’s business. His family has been in business for a long time in the brass machining sector, and he wanted to join the company when he came back from studying in London. He wanted to run the international business operations of the company, but unfortunately he was 8th in line for this position. Mayank says the company did not want to expand into international markets like he did, but just keep the status quo, focusing on India’s domestic market. Ironically, Mayank says his father had explored opportunities to bring high production machines back to India and to export parts to the American market, but the family had never bought in. So, Mayank went on his own to start his own shop. (6:00) 
Mayank talks about exporting brass parts to US customers, Tribal Manufacturing and Parker Hannifin. He says it took him two and half years to get his first PO cut for those accounts. In 2018, when he came to the United States to dismantle the Buffoli he had bought from Graff-Pinkert he visited Parker Hannifin. He says before he started selling parts to Tribal and Parker Hannifin he was shipping parts to second tier distributors in Kansas City and Michigan.
Mayank says the main reason he bought his first Buffoli was to machine lead-free parts, which had not yet been done before in India. Mayank had to import lead-free brass rod samples from Italy to prove he could machine the material. At that time mills were not producing led-free brass in India because plumbing in India is entirely made up of iron pipes.