MetalworkingFun Forum

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

Now that's just plain

No more trial runs with wax blocks, all in software.

Thanks for sharing.

Ed

P.S. Excellent selection of bagel condiment. My favorite.

Nicely shown Russ  
and the finished products look great  
 
DaveH

Thanks for sharing Russ. Interesting to see the full process.

Gentlemen, thank you!

Hi Darren, hope all is well down under.  My son is in Australia right now. Townsville, Queensland to be exact.  Been there for 6 weeks with the Army doing war games with your mates.

Back row, third from the left.



Here's another when they went out scuba diving.  He's the one on the left.




and here he is just goofing around while on leave for the weekend............Ummm......he's the one with the goofy face!  lol

Six weeks and he has already found a date I see! Shame he is on the other side of the country, otherwise I would have taken him out for a beer or two.

Whilst the kangaroos are friendly enough, tell him to be watchful for drop bears. They are quite nasty.

"A dropbear or drop bear is a fictitious Australian marsupial. Drop bears are commonly said to be unusually large, vicious, carnivorous marsupials related to koalas (although the koala is not a bear) that inhabit treetops and attack their prey by dropping onto their heads from above."

Sorry Darren, I just had to check.

Steve

Nothing fictitious about them Steve - The Australian Government has issued several warnings, such as this one (caution: graphic content): Drop Bear Warning.

reminds me of snow snakes

Now that is awesome.  Very impressive.  Thanks for sharing, I think.  Except I may start thinking CNC.

Mike.