About Steven Deam

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Steven Deam has created 82 blog entries.
Email

Changes to CNC Industries website

CNC Industries is going to be adding to our main website content.  In examining our website we feel that we are not addressing some topics enough on our main site.  While I am attempting to add content to our blog to help fill these voids, we are going to be adding many new pages over the next while to fill in the gaps that we see as present.

The first additions that we have made are aerospace machining and the definition of aerospace machining.  We are focused heavily on aerospace machining, and we want our website to reflect this.  The purpose of having two pages on essentially the same topic is to provide the detail information that not everyone will be familiar with.

While our website is very informative and serves to provide the same information that you will get from most shops, we are not satisfied with meeting the standards.  We want anyone that comes to our site to be able to tell right away if CNC Industries will be a good fit to be a supplier for them.  Our aerospace machining page is the first in a series of pages that is designed to address this issue.

Our Definitions area of the website will become filled with basic information about precision machining, and other topics which relate to CNC Industries.  We will look to explore what defines precision machining and differentiates it from standard machining.  We will of course look at what goes into aerospace machining, industrial machining, medical machining, automobile machining, and military machining and why CNC Industries has chosen the focuses that we have.

April 27th, 2010|Tags: , , , |

What is aerospace 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.

April 19th, 2010|Tags: , , |

Importance of proper quality control in precision machining

Poka-yoke, fail-safeing, mistake-proofing, any way that you call it, quality control is critical to running a precision machine shop.  Quality control comes in many different flavors.  All machine shops will have an inspection or metrology department to check for quality before any parts leave the facility.  It is often less expensive and more efficient to create quality at the source.

At CNC Industries, we focus on creating advanced fixtures to prevent many of the common problems that might occur in the machining process.  Our Pre-Flight meetings are an opportunity to talk through any and all issues that might affect a new custom machined part.   This process is critical when running difficult aerospace precision machined parts or military parts.  With the complexities of the aerospace components that we make, it is vital that all potential pitfalls in production are identified early in the process.  It is at this time we are also determining the type and design of the fixture that we will use to prevent problems in production.

No matter how good the fixtures and the production router are, there is still a chance of problems occurring throughout the process.  At CNC Industries, we have well trained personnel on all machines that are capable of running their own in-process inspections to detect any problems throughout the manufacturing process.  All of our parts are assigned frequent in-process inspections to ensure that no problems creep in undetected.

With several of our aerospace customers performing no incoming inspection it is critical to have adequate inspection processes throughout our production.  Our final inspection process is thorough and performed on best-in-class equipment to provide our customers with the utmost confidence that they are receiving quality parts with each delivery.   At CNC Industries we take full accountability for all of our parts – from the initial purchase order to the final delivery of the machined parts to the customer.

April 16th, 2010|Tags: , , , |

Ordering custom machined parts with a new machine shop supplier

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.

– – – –

April 14th, 2010|Tags: , , , , , |

Needed: Precision Machine Shop for Custom Machined Parts

Many companies that need custom machined parts are not sure of the process of getting started with a machine shop supplier.  In this post I will go over the basic process.  As I talked about in a prior post about evaluating a precision machine shop, it is important be careful in selecting a supplier of custom made parts.  In society today it is normal to simply  go with the lowest price on pretty much any purchase.  With the modernization of production, it is normally safe to assume that any product purchased will pretty much be the exact same no matter where it is purchased.  With custom machine parts, it is important to ensure that the supplier is qualified and capable of making the part.

Large companies will spend a large amount of time vetting a new supplier that makes custom machined parts.  Two recent companies that have started with CNC Industries, spent an average of 6 months in the process of examining our company before sending their first production purchase orders to us.  In the process of examining our company the new customers looked at our production capabilities, our information management systems, our  inspection processes, and the custom machined parts that we have made in the past.

Now a small company will probably not have a team that is used to handling this process.  Many small companies may never have had to order custom parts before.  For those companies 6 months research of a new machine shop supplier is probably not an option that they can consider.  In that case, an examination of the website of the potential supplier is worthwhile of course, but anyone can have a nice web presence.  It is still possible to feel out a new machine shop without the lengthy process that large companies go through.

One way to start is to simply send out a Request For Quote  (RFQ) to the machine shop in question.  I would certainly recommend not simply going off of the price of the quote as the only determinate of which company to go with.  After receiving the quotes, you will probably see a wide variety of prices come in.  After getting these quotes call up a couple of machine shops from different price levels and ask to talk about how they are going to manufacture your part.  You will be able to  get a feel of the company by how they describe the process.  Some questions to ask them:

  • How did the come up with the price that they did?
  • What engineering steps take place before manufacturing?
  • What process control methods do they employ to ensure quality throughout manufacturing?
  • How is their inspection done?
  • Are they certified ISO or any other appropriate certification?

and one other that has been useful to many of our customers:

  • Are there any changes to the part that the machine shop would recommend in order to lower production cost?

We have been able to save many of our customers considerable amount on their prices by making minor non-functional changes to the part to enable easier machining.  Engineers that are focusing on assembly and pure functionality of the parts that they are designing may add features into a part that slow production time considerably but are not necessary to the functioning of the component (undercuts, overly tight tolerances, odd size material requirements, unusual material types etc)

Of course ask any other questions that you see appropriate.  It is important that you feel comfortable working with the machine shop that you decide upon. Our philosophy is that the most important measure of a machine shop is that of customer satisfaction.  We believe in what we call the 3 legged stool: Price, Quality and Customer Service.  Each of these attributes contributes to the overall value of the precision machine shop.

– – – –

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.

– – – –

April 9th, 2010|Tags: , |

Addressing Precision Aerospace Machining Difficulties

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.

– – – –

April 5th, 2010|Tags: , , , |

Difficulties with Precision Aerospace Machining

Machine Shops that work on a variety of different types of parts will know that custom machined parts for one industry may have drastically different issues than those machined parts for another industry.  Aerospace components tend to have similarities in what makes them difficult.  A few of the issues that face  include: extremely tight tolerances, large numbers of machined features, large amount of material removed during machining, and multiple quality specifications.

Let’s look at the tight tolerances.  Airplanes are assembled from a huge numbers individually manufactured parts.  Each of these parts needs to be manufactured to a precise tolerance in order to facilitate assembly.  By themselves tight tolerances are merely a norm in the precision machine shop world.  it is when combined with the other factors that the tight tolerances cause difficulties.

The second difficulty of custom aerospace parts is the large number of machined features.  An individual aerospace component may potentially have several hundred individual features.  When you will have hundreds of dimensional checkpoints, even a single feature that is at the edge of tolerance can cascade and cause future dimensions to be further off.  The only way to ensure that a part is going to be good is to hold the earliest tolerances even tighter than what the prints call for.

Implied in the second point is the amount of material removed.  Removing a large amount of material causes it’s own difficulties and stresses on the machinery.  Additionally the material itself will change dramatically as it loses the tensile strength of it’s original form while being  machined.  The programming and fixturing of the custom machined part needs to account for the changing strength of the material while simultaneously ensuring that tolerances are kept throughout.

Finally, in addition to the other issues, aerospace parts tend to have many external quality standards in terms of fit and finish.  The cosmetics need to be pristine and the painting or plating needs to be done exceptionally well.

The 2 parts pictured below exemplify some of the complexities of custom machined aerospace parts.

Here are some additional custom machined parts that we have made.

– – – –

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.

– – – –

March 25th, 2010|Tags: , , , |

Document Management in a Precision Machine Shop

Document Management is a very tricky and important skill to have in a Precision Machine Shop.  At CNC Industries, we deal with a wide variety of custom parts.  Some are simple and some are very complex parts.  Either way, each part that we machine has a variety of dimensions which may be very critical to the part.  In addition to the physical dimensions, in dealing with aerospace or military manufactured parts, there may be a large number of quality specifications which need to be followed.

CNC Industries uses a component of our ERP system to handle our document management needs.  Job Manager tracks all pertinent documents for all of the thousands of custom parts that we manufacture.    The Doc Manager Module is fully searchable, indexed, and has security implemented.  All uses may see only the documents that they need to, and any documentation that is needed is available quickly.

Gone are the days of the 50 page Job Router.  With our Paperless Doc Manager system, we have been able to save time and money while ensuring that all of our information is kept up to date at all times.  All documents are updated in real time allowing us to quickly react to any engineering or customer changes that occur.

– – – –

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.

– – – –

March 9th, 2010|Tags: , , , |

Evaluating a Precision Machine Shop

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.

– – – –

March 3rd, 2010|Tags: , , |

Continuous Improvement and Precision Machining

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.

– – – –

March 1st, 2010|Tags: , , , |
Copyright © 2025 CNC Industries, Inc. | Aerospace and Defense machining and manufacturing.
Go to Top