David H. Shaby
Engineering and marketing in automated metalworking at ICON, Boston Digital and the Bendix Industrial Controls Division before starting Compumachine. BSEE, University of Massachusetts Amherst; MBA, Wayne State.
Since 1980
Forty-six years of machine tools
Compumachine was founded in 1980 to give the American job shop affordable CNC. The names on the machines have changed. The idea has not.
The story
Six chapters.
1980 – 1985
Affordable CNC for the job shop
It started with a conversational retrofit kit that put three-axis CNC on a standard Bridgeport for under $20,000. The Compumill milling centre followed in 1981, then four models of it, then two of the first PC-based CAM systems: MEGAN on the Apple IIe in 1983 and CompuCAM on the IBM PC in 1984. CompuCAM became Mastercam. Its founder, Mark Summers, was Compumachine's first employee.
1985 – 1996
The Fadal years
In 1986 Compumachine brought the first Fadal VMC-40 to New England, a full machining centre with a 10,000 rpm spindle for under $50,000, and became the oldest continuous Fadal dealer in the country. Dynapath retrofits and rebuilds of large machines came in 1988. By 1990 there were over a thousand installations; by 1995 over two thousand, from one-man shops to Polaroid, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, GE, Raytheon and Teradyne. CNC turning and EDM joined the line in 1996.
1997 – 2004
Japan, and the Compumill HMC-410
Rather than import through trading companies, Compumachine bought one: Kasahara Machinery of Sanjo City, Niigata, acquired in 1998 to become CKM, Compumill-Kasahara Machinery. The result was the HMC-410, a twin-pallet horizontal machining centre under $200,000 that Modern Machine Shop wrote up in 2003. A Tokyo office opened in 1999, the same year the Vibra-Free ultra-high-speed hard-milling centre arrived with FMC of Niigata: a 42,000 rpm spindle for mould, die and graphite electrode work. Giddings & Lewis and Hüller Hille Hessapp service and sales followed in 2002, Tongtai turning in 2004.
2006 – 2014
Danvers, Okamoto, Hyundai WIA, Hanwha
In 2006 Compumachine and Fadal marked twenty-one years and three thousand machines together, and Compumachine signed with Okamoto for grinding, winning Best New Dealer at IMTS two years later. The company moved into a 25,000 square foot building at 6 Electronics Avenue in Danvers in 2006, next door to Cunningham Engineering and its 42 Compumachine-supplied machines. Hyundai-Kia (later Hyundai WIA) made Compumachine its exclusive New England distributor in 2008 and Dave Shaby chaired its dealer council. The 4,000th installation came in 2010. Hanwha Swiss turning was added in 2012. In November 2014 the Compumachine Technology Center opened at Essex Technical High School.
2019 – 2025
A smaller company, a changing line
The website moved to Wix in 2019 and the line broadened into automation, fiber laser, EDM and Mastercam training. Over the following years the service department, training and Mastercam business were wound down, and the company narrowed back to what it had started with: selling machine tools to New England shops.
2026
Small and large machine tools
Today Compumachine represents four builders, Hankook, Kiheung, KAFO and Neway, from standard vertical machining centres up to the boring mills, gantry mills and vertical turning lathes that take the work nothing else in the shop can hold. Sales are handled by Dave Shaby, as they have been since 1980.
Founders
Three engineers from Massachusetts.
Glen M. Hartzler
Laser systems, industrial automation and CNC integration. With Compumachine from its first day in 1980. BSEE and MSEE, MIT.
Lowell Smith
Thirty years in machine tool automation. BSME, MIT; MSME, Rensselaer.
The website through the years
compumachine.com, 1998 to now.
Captured by the Internet Archive. The line card changes. The name does not.
