Making a part......an idea, from paper to product.

[wrustle]

Had some time the other day to take some picture progress of a part from conception through to the finished product ready to ship out the door.

Here's a look..............at the progress of a Cnc part we manufacture at my company.  Be sure to check us out and like our page at, "Crosby Machine Company, Inc." on Facebook.


The drawing comes in via fax or email and is quoted.  Most of our customers send over a .pdf file of the drawing, and some will send cad files.  Others still will send over a solid model, but I have not progressed yet to the point where I can work with those.



We calculate, material, tooling, labor costs, and lead time, then send pricing to the customer.

If all is good, a contract is awarded to make the part, or parts and the process begins.

Being an all Cnc shop, the first thing we must do is draw the part in cad and make a program to run in the machine.











With the part all drawn, or better yet imported from the customers cad file, we start the programming task.

This particular part has several pockets, a couple of tight tolerance bores, and many drilled and tapped holes.

If you look on the left hand side of the picture below you can see the list of operations to be performed on this plate.

All the green high lighted lines in the drawing show the tool paths.





Once the tool paths are drawn in cad we can then run them on the cam side of our software and verify them on screen rather than find out there's a problem out at the machine, or worse yet......a crash!


Here we see the material blank in the cam simulation.




With part having been profiled, we can now see the holes being drilled into the piece.




Now we can see the pockets have all been machined.






Now the bores have been finished as well.




And lastly, the part is chamfered complete and is finished.  Now we can post the code and get out to the machine.






Andrew, awaiting his next task!





Here we see the part in the machine.  It has been profiled, and the holes drilled.





Here's the piece with the first side completed.






Finally, the finished product waiting to be wrapped, packaged and shipped off to our customer!





Programming is SOOOOOO much fun!!  

I even find myself going in on Sunday mornings for some peace and quiet to program while enjoying my bagel covered with peanut butter!!




Best Regards,
Russ