Compass Precision Operating Company Adds New Vertical Machining Center
CHARLOTTE, NC – November 11, 2025 – Another year is winding down. But nothing is slowing down at the machine shop that’s home to the Compass Precision headquarters.
Quality Products & Machine, a Compass operating company which manufactures customer, close-tolerance metal components for mission critical applications, officially announced Tuesday it has added a Mazak VTC300C vertical machining center.
“We’ve been very blessed and very lucky to perform very well for our customers, and have the opportunity to bring in more work. But with that, we’ve been at over capacity,” said Quality Products Vice President and General Manager Dustin Jones. “We’ve been pushing machines to the limits, so we just became maxed out to the point where we had to make an investment in another spindle.”
The new machine arrived in September and has replaced a few different older machines. The new Mazak also gives Quality another larger enveloped machine.
It’s been a key addition to the Quality shop floor over the past eight weeks.
“This has been an awesome machine. It’s definitely the newest and most technologically advanced machine in the shop,” said Dustin. “The ease of use, the speed, the efficiency, the up-time has been a huge help.”
The Mazak can support parts greater than 30 inches in the y-axis and larger than 60 inches in the x-axis. Dustin stated a lot of the operating company’s newer work needs to run on a machine that can support that size.
Quality Products installed the Mazak the same week in September that its Trumpf fiber laser also arrived. Just like with the laser, the operating company poured a new concrete pad to set up the Mazak.
Also similar to the laser, the employees at Quality Products had a very quick learning curve with the new vertical machining center.
“We’ve made tremendous investments in engineering and technical talent sources recently,” said Dustin. “They’ve been fundamental in learning this new technology, getting it operational and getting people trained.”
Quality Products previously bought a Mazak laser. Compass has purchased Mazak machines for its other operating companies, and Dustin, along with other employees at Quality, is very familiar with Mazak machining centers from previous stops in his career.
But this vertical machine is the first Mazak on the Quality Products shop floor.
The machine is one of the many examples of CAPEX investments Compass has made at one of its nine operating companies over the past year. Quality’s employees have received the addition very well.
“Our employees can see the investment,” said Dustin. “They can see the results that we’ve had, the hard work we’ve put in this year and the successes we’ve had, and then how well we’ve performed to those. Basically, our employees see these machines as rewards.”
Quality Products 47,000 square foot facility on Westinghouse Boulevard in Charlotte houses a complete complement of CNC vertical and horizontal machining centers, lathes, laser cutters, press brakes, punch presses, welding stations, and inspection equipment. It has about 30 employees and supplies customers down the street, across town, and around the country.
“Compass loves buying new equipment to enhance its capacity and capabilities,” Compass VP of Sales Jim Miller previously said. “We have invested in significant new machinery at each of our operating companies within twelve months of acquisition. Compass buys really good shops, then invests heavily to make them even better.”
“Adding this new Mazak vertical machining center is a great example of Compass investing to keep pace with customer demand,” added Bill Canning, Compass’s President & COO. “This unit was not in our original 2025 budget. But when it became obvious we had outstripped Quality’s current milling capacity, even with multiple shifts, we immediately committed to buy this new machine.”
Compass Precision was founded in 2019 with the purchase of three precision CNC machining companies in the Charlotte area – Advanced Machining & Tooling, Quality Products & Machine and Tri-Tec Industries. Compass bought Gray Manufacturing Technologies in Denver, NC as its first add-on acquisition in August 2020.
Over the next two years, Compass acquired Douglas Machining Services in Winona, Minnesota, R&D Machine in Oldsmar, Florida, Strom Manufacturing in North Plains, Oregon and Bergeron Machine in Westford, Massachusetts.
In July, Compass added a second operating company in Massachusetts with Pocasset Machine on Cape Cod, bringing its number of operating companies to nine.
For more information about Quality Products & Machine and Compass Precision, please contact Gary Holcomb, Compass CEO at gary.holcomb@compassprecision.com.