Apr 19
StevenDeamAerospace Machining, Precision Machining Aerospace Machining, Custom Machined Parts, Precision Machining
Aerospace machining is a subset of CNC machining. Specifically aerospace machining (as you can tell from the name) deals with parts manufactured for use on airplanes, satellites, the space station, or other aircraft. Aerospace machining is defined by its complexity, use of lightweight high strength materials, rigid requirements and specifications, and the strict precision necessary for the manufacture of the parts.
Components made by a cnc machine shop for use in the aerospace industry will typically be designed to be assembled with other components – whether machined or stocked parts. As such, it is vitally important for a machine shop focused on aerospace machining to be able to produce high precision machined parts every time.
Parts may be made from a variety of different materials. At CNC Industries, we have focused on aluminum which is a major component in many types of aircraft. Aluminum machining has it’s own areas of complexity and is very different from steel machining that may be more familiar to automobile manufacturers. Aluminum is a focused material in aerospace machining because it is lightweight yet still very strong. Titanium is also used for many space oriented components, but due to the cost and increased difficulty of machining, is not as prevalent in traditional aircraft.
Apr 14
StevenDeamAerospace Machining, Document Management, Precision Machining communication, Information Management, Ordering, Precision Machining, RFQ, The First Job
In continuing the last post on finding a new precision machine shop for custom machined parts, I am going to go over a bit of what to expect with the first order or two.
Communication is still the key to the process. At CNC Industries, we have often been told that our communication is a large part of the reason that we are among their favored suppliers. Precision Machining is a relatively tricky process still today. The information overload that comes with each part drawing can often lead to overlooked features or specifications. Aerospace components often contain numerous mil-specs, large amounts of technical call-outs, and even purchase order specifications. Even parts that are less complex than aerospace components may have critical details that are easy to overlook. Part Revisioning can cause increased complexity and another chance to overlook some crucial piece of information. If you have not checked yet, it is important to check into your supplier’s information management system.
It is important for the machine shop that you are starting out with to ask any clarifying questions necessary to get the complete picture of the machined part that they are producing. Ideally all questions from the machine shop should have come out during the RFQ process. However, it is not uncommon for the engineering team to take a deeper look at the part as they prepare the production router and fixture. In the RFQ process of a new customer that we acquired we were able to ascertain that they had mislabeled a set of drawings that they had sent out for us to quote. Through our examination of the part we noticed that some of the details seemed to be wrong for the stated use of the part. We consider our discovery of this error on their drawing to be a large part of the reason that we received the initial purchase order.
Another important aspect of the first job is to carefully select what part or parts you will be sending to the new supplier. It has worked best at CNC Industries to have a new customer order a variety of potential parts in the initial order. It is good to have a scope of potential work complexities. If you are to start doing work with a new precision machine shop and only send small simple work to them, you may find that they are not capable of handling the complex machined parts that you want to order down the road. Likewise if you are sending only complex parts and you want to have a single source to deal with for machined parts, you may find that the machine shop is not price competitive on simpler parts. One way to deal with both of these issues is to give at least a relative expectation of cost to your new supplier, ie: ‘for our simple parts we typically pay half of what we pay for the complex parts’. As you can see from our parts profile page, CNC Industries works with a large variety of complexities and quantities on a daily basis.
- – – -
CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.
- – – -
Apr 05
StevenDeamAerospace Machining, Lean Manufacturing, Precision Machining, Uncategorized Aerospace Machining, Custom Machined Parts, job production, Precision Machining
In the last post I talked about the difficulties of precision machining aerospace parts. I would like to address these issues and specifically talk about how CNC Industries handles each of them.
The first issue, namely tight tolerances, is addressed in a few different ways. The first step is to make sure that the equipment being used is capable of the types and quality of machining necessary. Proper maintenance is also an important step, many companies lay-off their maintenance staff at the first sign of a downturn. Maintenance is a key aspect of CNC Industries’ strategy. The second step of ensuring that tolerances are met happens in engineering. Engineering staff creates fixtures, work drawings, and machine code to run the part correctly. Engineering is another key area that CNC Industries believes should not be cut too early. The third step is to ensure that information about the part flows correctly. To aid in this we have written our own ERP system. Job Manager 2 is a real time system that enables information to be updated and transferred throughout the facility so that any changes made are implemented immediately.
The second issue, the amount of material removed, is a prime engineering problem. The fixture created for each part must take into account the changes in strength that the material will go through during the machining process. With fixturing being such an important aspect of creating a good custom machined part, we go through a process we call the Pre-Flight Meeting. In this meeting our top management, quality assurance, engineers, and shop floor supervisors meet to discuss any issues that we see as important to the manufacturing of the part.
The third issue, external quality standards, is again addressed through information management. Our ERP system allows each part to have an unlimited amount of quality standards. The part routers created in Job Manager 2 allow for any and all detailed information to be added to an individual operation. The amount of detail contained in each router, in addition to the real-time ERP system allows us to ensure that all of the information needed to complete a job to the full satisfaction of our customer is accessible at all times.
- – – -
CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.
- – – -
Mar 03
StevenDeamPrecision Machining evaluating machine shops, management, Precision Machining
We at CNC Industries, as a precision machine shop are very interested in how we are evaluated for performance. Traditionally machine shops are evaluated on the basis of their ability to make the parts to specification. While this is still a critical component to a machine shop, we do not feel that it adequately addresses all of the issues.
Precision Machining is certainly based on the actual manufacturing of the parts, the intangibles are as critical to the overall performance of the machine shop itself. Questions that should be asked include:
- Is the company adequately addressing any problems or concerns that come up?
- Does the company follow best practice guidelines?
- Does the company maintain it’s manufacturing equipment well?
- Does the machine shop treat it’s customers with honesty and integrity?
- Does the company perform to it’s promised delivery dates?
- if a delivery date is going to be missed for any reason, does the shop notify the customer of the delay?
- Does the company follow industry standards such as ISO 9001 and others?
Of course there could be many more questions that need to be addressed to fully evaluate a company. But the main issue is that, even in a precision machine shop, it is important to look at the customer service given.
- – - -
CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.
- – - -
Mar 01
StevenDeamPrecision Machining, Technology Continuous Improvement, Job Manager, Precision Machining, Technology
There is a lot of buzz about continuous improvement in the business world today. As a precision machine shop that focuses on contract manufacturing, CNC Industries has a different perspective than am office or a production machining facility. While we do have several production jobs, the bulk of our work comes in short term contracts.
With short term contracts we do not have the luxury of being able to improve upon our performance throughout a physical run of a job. Our customers demand a high level of precision, so we also cannot ‘dial the tolerance in’ over time. Instead we need to focus on getting a repeatable general process developed which allows us to quickly and efficiently switch between our various contracted jobs.
Our continuous improvement initiative needs to account for the fact that our machines may be running different custom parts tomorrow than they are making today. With all of this in mind, we allow each person in our company to suggest improvements both to how we run an individual machined part, as well as suggestions for the overall process of machining, how we get ready to machine parts, ability to keep precision, and any other facet of how our company works. Our Process Change Request system ensures that each employee has the ability to express their thoughts for improvement in a way that will be reviewed in a timely manner.
Through the use of technology – specifically our ERP system Job Manager, we are able to monitor how effective we are from day to day. We are able to track overall shop performance as well as any individual job performance. We make sure that all of our machinery is kept up-to-date with maintenance and we regularly purchase new equipment as needed. As we see areas that are lagging in performance we are able to quickly remedy any deficiencies.
- – – -
CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based Job-Shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation markets. The company presently employs approximately 55 people.
- – – -
Older Entries Newer Entries
RSS
Blog Catalog
Vote For Us