Manufacturing Disciplines Index

Click on a discipline below for more information and links to frequently used tasks.

• Assembly
• Castings
• Engineering & Design
• Fabrication
• Forging
• Heat Treatment
• Machining
• Machining-CNC
• Metal Finishing
• Mold Making
• Pallets
• Plastic & Rubber
• Prototyping
• Tool & Die Making

Manufacturing Disciplines

CNC Machining - An Overview

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Machining is the process of forming parts by removing material. The advantage of machining is that it can produce very accurate parts that can fit together perfectly in mechanical assemblies. The disadvantage is that removing material requires some time and energy and wastes all the material that was cut from around the part. Also, machining is best for parts with simple geometry, since basic machining consists mostly of linear and circular cuts. However, machining is the only way to produce high precision mechanical parts and the tools needed for other manufacturing processes.

Material can be removed by many methods. The most common method is mechanical, using a sharp metal tool to shave away material. This is referred to as traditional machining. Traditional machining is almost entirely done with two tools, the mill and the lathe. A mill holds the part firmly in place and moves it under a sharp, spinning tool that removes unwanted material in tiny chips. Mills are primarily used to make linear cuts in a part and to create flat areas, but a mill can also make holes in a part by guiding a drill bit, and make slots or threads in a part by guiding specialized tools called broaches and taps. Cutting parts on a mill is referred to as milling. A lathe spins the part and removes material in chips with a stationary tool. This is primarily used to shape the part into cylinders and cones. Cutting parts on a lathe is referred to as turning. .

Traditional machining with mills and lathes can be expensive, since it is time consuming and requires a skilled worker to operate the machines. However, more complex shapes can be machined with less labor when mills and lathes are controlled by computers. This is called Computer Numerical Control (CNC) and its being used more and more all the time. A CNC machine can make parts with very complex shapes and it can make the same part over and over again exactly the same way.

Sharp cutting tools can remove a lot of material quickly, but they also use quite a bit of force to do it. Because of this, they don't always produce perfectly accurate parts. Grinding is a method of removing material using a rapidly spinning abrasive wheel. The abrasive wheel is covered with tiny particles with sharp edges which act like tiny blades. Because the cutting forces are spread out over so many points, grinding produces a very accurate finish on the part. However, since grinding can only remove small amounts of material, it is usually only done after the part has been machined almost to its final form.

Another method of removing material is to immerse the part in water and to create a very high voltage between a piece of copper and the part so that sparks jump between them. The sparks are so hot that they cut away metal from the part. This is called Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM). The main advantage of EDM is that it can be used to cut any metal, even metals that are especially hard to machine traditionally, and it does it without ever touching the part; since there is no force on the part, the accuracy of EDM is extremely high.

There are two common kinds of EDM, wire EDM and ram EDM. In wire EDM, the copper cutting tool is a wire that is guided by a computer controlled machine. The wire cuts a thin line through the part. Many shapes can be produced this way in flat material, but more complex shapes can be formed by ram EDM. Ram EDM uses a shaped copper or graphite electrode, which slowly descends into the part as it cuts leaving a precise impression in the part. The advantage to ram EDM is that it can produce parts with very complex geometry in materials that are hard to work. The disadvantage is that this takes a very long time and sometimes several copper tools must be made because the sparks eventually wear away the copper as well.

Processes Supported

Horizontal Boring Jig Boring Vertical Boring Broaching and Splining Drilling Ram EDM Wire EDM Engraving Gear Cutting Grinding Centerless Grinding Cylindrical Grinding Flat Grinding Internal Grinding Jig Grinding Honing Large Machining Multi-axis Machining Precision Machining

Screw Machining Swiss Screw Machining Turning Milling Saw Cutting Slotting Tapping Thread Cutting Thread Grinding Thread Rolling CNC Drilling CNC Grinding CNC Machining Center CNC Milling CNC Turning