Michael P. Cayley, Sr.

Michael P. Cayley, Sr. started MIDACO CORPORATION in 1969 with a handful of employees as your typical job shop providing a quality metal cutting resource for a variety of manufacturers in their area. Under his direction, they have since grown into an original equipment manufacturer of CNC automation solutions. In many ways their growth has not followed the typical path that most machine shops take. Their unique success story made a turning point in the early 1990’s when they investigated ways to improve their own shops productivity and wound up creating a whole new product line for the machine tool industry: Pallet Changer Systems for machining centers.

Looking to increase in-house production and reduce the machining center idle time due to part loading and unloading, they discovered that what they really wanted didn’t exist. “Our quest was for an efficient, cost-effective pallet shuttle system that we could easy integrate onto our existing equipment,” says Mike Cayley, Jr. (V.P. of Manufacturing and Mike Cayley, Sr.’s son). When they discovered that most existing products were over-priced and under-built, they decided to create their own unit that matched their requirements.

Mike Cayley, Sr.’s son, Mike Jr., got right to designing their very first pallet changer, the (Micro Pallet System) MPS-31, which is so named because Mike Jr. was 31 years old at the time. This system, a 10” x 12” “manual lift-off” pallet, not only fulfilled their needs, but it became evident that it would satisfy the manufacturing needs of other shops. After presenting the system to other job shops it was quickly apparent that they had a winner.

Soon it became the foundation for a full line of manual and automatic pallet changer shuttle systems designed by the “MIDACO Mikes” along with their engineer, Malcolm “Mac” Keith. They created a full line for small and large VMCs, machining centers which do not move in Y-Axis, 5-Axis mills and even large bridge mills with travels up to 190” x 72” and a 32,000 lb weight capacity. Designed to increase productivity on new and existing vertical machining centers they are easily retrofitted in the field and their electric servo drives provide locating accuracies of +/- .0001” repeatability. MIDACO has since become the innovative leader in creating universal Automatic Pallet Changers Systems which can fit virtually any make and model Vertical Machining Center.

One good idea begets another resulting in additional accessories for machine shop efficiency, such as Automatic Door Openers and Access Door Systems ideal for robot loading applications, Trunnion Systems for 4th axis machining, CNC chip and coolant cleaning, Grinder/Buffer Guards and Dust Collection Systems, along with other machining productivity solutions. Today, MIDACO is supplying other job shops, manufacturers and OEM’s around the world.