R & B Tool Supply came from humble beginnings. The company was started in 1981 operating out of a home garage. After two years it was relocated to the California High Desert. In the early days, one piece of equipment was used for manufacturing. A K.O. Lee tool & cutter grinder was modified to perform all necessary spiral grinding and finishing operations. Other machinery was added one piece at a time as finances would allow to enable multitasking.
A few more years passed and the company moved out of the garage to occupy a rental space. The extra room made growing and operations easier. Shortly thereafter, the company evolved into utilizing state of the art C.N.C. machinery. Opportunity came when the entire building was offered for sale. The company bought the building and is still growing.
While working in the carbide cutting tool industry in the early 1970's, the owner of R & B Tool Supply became involved with a company who manufactured wood routing machinery. These router machines were numerically controlled by a perforated tape program. The machinery was revolutionary in that it was part of a system that allowed for very rapid cutting and construction of wooden cabinets with very little wasted wood from 4' x 8' sheets. It proved to produce cabinets in the most economical way for its day.
Several different solid carbide bits were developed for these machines during that time period by the owner of R & B Tool Supply, one of which was the 1+1 style compression bit. These early compression bits became very popular and were commonly used as these router systems were sold and put into use all across the country. The bits were first made in 5/16 and 3/8 diameters available in left hand and right hand rotation. As demand for faster and faster feeds progressed, demand for more sophisticated cutting tools ensued.
More flutes were needed for the compression bit in order for it to last longer and run faster. With 1970 carbide tool manufacturing technology, grinding machinery employed mechanically generated spirals. It was not possible to generate the needed second flute without the aid of a computer. A 4+4 design was able to be built with the older technology during this time period, but found use only for fiberglass type materials in the circuit board industry. R & B Tool Supply bought their first C.N.C. tool and cutter grinder from an Australian based company in the early 1990's. R & B Tool Supply commissioned the very first software that would enable multi fluted compression bits to be generated by a state of the art computer system. A similar but less tailorable software edition was made available by the C.N.C. manufacturer and was offered for sale along with all of their C.N.C. tool & cutter grinders, in turn being sold on a global scale. This software edition was soon purchased by many of the other carbide tool manufacturing companies and put into production.
R & B Tool Supply was the first to pioneer, market, and perfect the compression style bits sold and used in the United States. Our 2+2 version started selling in the Carolina's in the early 1990's. With present day carbide tool manufacturing competition it did not take very much time for a special little router bit to become a common commodity in today's marketplace.