Custom Motorcycle Parts Made Here: Video Tour of a Family-Owned CNC Machine Shop | Modern Machine Shop

Oct 23, 2024

Lee Wimmer invited us to tour his second-generation family-owned machine shop in Perkasie, PA. This video explores the production processes behind precision-machined parts for both Wimmer Custom Cycle and LS Wimmer Machine Co., and shows how ingenuity and determination are still at the heart of American manufacturing. Today, both companies are now managed by Wimmer’s three sons.

When Lee Wimmer contacted Modern Machine Shop expressing interest in our shop tour video series, he had already been retired from the metalworking world for 20 years. Wimmer founded the LS Wimmer Machine Co. in 1976 inside a former cigar manufacturing facility before purchasing his own building in Perkasie, Pennsylvania in the late ’70s. Several years later, Wimmer leveraged his lifelong passion for motorcycles to establish Wimmer Custom Motorcycle under the same roof, machining patented performance motorcycle parts for a loyal group of enthusiasts.

Lee Wimmer, founder of LS Wimmer Machine Co. and Wimmer Custom Motorcycle, shows off a motorcycle part that he patented and produced. Wimmer has passed the family businesses along to his three sons. Source: Modern Machine Shop

Today, both companies are operated by Wimmer’s three sons, Matt, Greg and Ryan, in the same facility their father purchased back in the late ’70s. In this shop tour video, you won’t see the latest in robotic automation or digital shopfloor connectivity. Instead, you will see a world that represents the heart and soul of American manufacturing. The shop floor of the Wimmer family business is cramped — its 15 CNCs are packed shoulder to shoulder — but the machines are humming and its employees are consistently engaged, with most being skilled in programming, tooling and machining not only steel parts but also plastic parts for a variety of industries.

Today, the business is on track to someday be taken over by the third generation of the Wimmer family. Lee still stays connected to the business while enjoying his retirement in Florida, where he says he’s written two books in the past few years — all typed, he jokes, with one finger on his iPad. The elder Wimmer, as you’ll see in this video, has clearly not lost his sense of humor — a critical trait to maintain while running any family business.

TRANSCRIPT:

Lee Wimmer: It’s been 47, almost 48 years that I started. Journeyman tool and die maker. I finished my apprenticeship in 1972, stayed at a shop for a few years, and learned a heck of a lot.

Then I had an opportunity that came along from a guy who had a shop in his basement who did work for this company that I’m still doing work for. I went over to his place one night and I left there with the biggest smile on my face. That was a golden opportunity.

I mean, this is quite Tetris: 15 CNCs in this building. In this particular area, there are a lot of machine shops. There’s competition like crazy, but most of them kind of have a niche. And I think that’s where we fall in.

Now, what we have here is a block of just 1018 steel, and a lot of it gets machined away. We’ll get around to the finished part. We’re taking it down to this. This amount of machining in there, first operation in here.

The motorcycle end of that came about. Well, let’s see, we’ve been at it for like 25 years. And that just derived out of a passion for bikes. Always had a passion for motorcycles. I got my first Harley, and I just got bit by the bug. I started going to some bike shows with some friends that I connected with. Guys take these bikes and customize them. Paint jobs and this and that, and like, wow, that’s pretty cool.

So my beautiful Springer got stolen on a toy run for charity in Philadelphia. And, you know, within probably the first year, I’m like, I’m going to build a bike from the ground up from scratch. I did, and when people saw that bike, they about fell over because of the stuff that I did on it. And I created parts that didn’t exist. One particular part, and I’ll just take the opportunity to show you right now with this little baby. It’s an engine head breather. That’s a crankcase breather. Nothing like that ever existed. But I wanted something. I wanted an air intake system that was different than anything you could buy. So that became my niche in the industry. This little thing was knocked off by at least seven major companies and finally made in Japan or China or wherever. And I, you know, couldn’t compete with that.

There’s another product here that we’ve been really working on for several years. High compression motorcycles, they’re tough to start because of the high compression, so you put in a compression release, which is what these little things are now. You know, on a standard Harley head, you have to take the head off, set it up in a milling machine, and you have to drill and tap and machine these things in.

This is Jay. He is actually an adopted son, so to speak. He started for me right out of high school. Great work ethic. So I promoted him. We bought our first CAD cam. We had to fly out to Phoenix, Arizona, to learn how to use it. Yeah, so it can’t be all that bad of a place to work. I, you know, kind of talking to a guy, I kind of got an idea of something that should theoretically work. Here is my very first version of it. It was made in two pieces, and they were tig welded together. And the concept of this thing is now you take a spark plug, but there’s a slot in here. And at the bottom, there’s a little hole. So from the inside here, air passage can go through that. It goes into here. And when it’s all tightened up, that little air pressure goes up and is able to vent out through the holes here.

It’ll be big, and hopefully, the patent goes through without any hitches and, you know, whatever. But this is the part today. I wish we had it running in one of the machines down there. To aspiring machinists that are thinking about starting their own business, it’s like you don’t have to go out there and spend $20 million to be making money. You know, I started off with nothing. And, you know, look at the stuff that we’re doing and the quality of the work that we have evolved into doing. You know, every time you get that repeat job and the quantities are good, you tweak it a little, you fine-tune it, and then you’re like, wow, I cut a minute off that time cycle. That’s money in the bank, you know?

I called it the Duel runner, and it basically, I designed it for a Magneti Morelli Fuel Injection because it had two ports. So I designed one that had two ports, and, you know, one of the things that was neat with our product was we offered all different ends of it. Velocity stacks were the first beginning of things that I did. Then I got into filtration when I came up with the idea of coloring them to match people’s bikes. So we made all sorts of different color filters, and the people loved it. Our filters were dry. Dry almost. You don’t need oil on them. When Harley went to their Milwaukee eight motor, we were the first ones to have intakes that fit it. But here’s a prime example, machined from raw stock. It is, it’s just a real fine texture. Black powder coat. Then it goes back on the machine, and we do this cutting and do the engraving in there.

Check out this little baby. This is an acrylic plastic, it is the perfect job for a Swiss machine. We don’t have any jobs that would warrant a Swiss-type machine. Now, here is the part that was the very first part that I did on our Miano. I programmed it, set it up and I ran it, and we used to make thousands of them. This gets milled square, the inside gets done, there’s slots in the end, which. Alright, this is a multi-axis machine. It’s capable of doing that, but it wouldn’t do it real well. So my tool and my background said, hey, I can stamp that. So I made a little die and we a little Arbor Press, because it’s got a square on there. We can orient it with a little fixture that’s got six sides. And the guy sits there and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, perfect. It was a great job, though we did it for a long time.

This is actually, at this point, a prototype part. It’s a version of something that I remember I told you earlier about this one little housing that we made like 5000 a week of. Yeah, this is like a next-gen on that. We’re hoping it flies and then, you know, the orders come in big on it. I think it’s only a 100-piece order right now.

This is our first Doosan, and I’m really happy with it. It’s the lathe master here.

Speaker 2: It cuts cycle time down by at least 50%. The capacity, the versatility of it all. You know, the speed.

Lee: These are aluminum, silicon, bronze. And then they get silver plated. That’s silver plating on them. But, you know, we start off with bar material. They’re heavy. Yeah, this is Monel 400 series. Little cap that goes on the end, and these get screwed in there, and they got to get torqued in. And it gets real warm down here. We have a rotary screw compressor that generates some heat. This is where we keep all the raw material that we do need for different jobs. Obviously, a lot of plastics, brass, aluminum. A lot of the parts that we make come from a two-by-four foot sheet flat. Now, this is PVC. We run it through our table saw to rough cut it, and then it goes in the machine and gets turned into a finished part. Jakey here is so multitasked. He’s one of my best employees ever. He can keep this

cell, basically, he’s beyond an intelligent robot.

This was my first, LNS that I bought. I bought top dollar for it back in the day. I bought it out of Chicago, at a trade show. Finished inventory of all the different parts. This kind of goes along with what I was just saying before about the finish on it. You know, now, this is a zinc plate on here. And it’s still kind of a preliminary because eventually, the part gets powder coated anyway. But I think, basically, they do it just because, you know, to keep it from rusting until it gets to that part. We went from that tiny little part to doing something like this.

And I believe that’s, I think that’s the part or similar part to what he is running down there. But these are just, you know, basically different sizes of the same type of part. This is what they call the ten inch. And this is $200 a foot. So again, when people say cheap plastic, not so much. You know, we do a wide variety. I mean, there’s Teflon, nylon, delrin. They’ll run our kind of sealed PVC. Great PVC. Yeah, part. Yeah. And that’s it.

That’s what started the whole thing, you know, 47 years ago was making those parts. Yeah, look at that. I mean, that’s, I think that’s pretty impressive machining-wise, right? I totally forgot all about, you know, the acrylic, you know, Plexiglas type material. But yeah, talking about some of the challenges. Well, to try and keep it looking good, you know. You know, if you have a piece of steel or aluminum, yeah, you can scotch-brite it, polish it, or whatever. But the only thing you can do with this is you can flame polish it, but you got to be real careful. It’s tricky to do it.

So it boils down to having the right tools, tool geometry, chip removal. Because you heat this stuff up and you’re going to blow that finish. It’s one of the things that, you know, we kind of specialize in and are proud of. You know, the quality, the appearance, the tolerances.

This one still has the protective paper on it. But you know, again, it’s the same. These are all kind of similar things. They’re for metering, you know, a fluid or a gas or whatever going from one place to another. There’s a lot of machining there.

I mean, it’s a pretty good wide variety of work that comes out of this little place. I’m extremely proud of what I accomplished to start from virtually nothing. I mean, a couple drill presses and a few things to evolve to this. To have my sons in it and see them taking it to the next level. The parts that they have done, they probably have added probably 400 parts to the array from when I retired. And the complexity of some of the things that they’ve done, it’s very rewarding as a father, absolutely.

I mean I was just blessed with a mechanical aptitude. I was not into academia. I hated school, I couldn’t wait until I got out of school. My dad was my only true hero in life. I learned so much from him mechanically, wood, wiring. He helped me wire my first house I built when I was 24 years old. Plumbing, everything, aspects of stuff he taught me. I learned so much just from watching and I always said I was blessed. I got the gift to be able to make anything from my father and from my mother I got the gift of gab so I can sell it to anybody.

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Lee Wimmer invited us to tour his second-generation family-owned machine shop in Perkasie, PA. This video explores the production processes behind precision-machined parts for both Wimmer Custom Cycle and LS Wimmer Machine Co., and shows how ingenuity and determination are still at the heart of American manufacturing. Today, both companies are now managed by Wimmer’s three sons.

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