Medical

Value-added services shorten lead times and increase sales opportunities for parts manufacturers. The decision to bring traditionally outsourced services in-house can be an expensive and scary proposition—one with the potential to either transform a company or send it into bankruptcy. Yet that’s exactly what many manufacturing companies do, and often they are pleased with the results. That proved true for the four companies profiled in the following pages.

I generally consider myself to be a positive person. However, these past few weeks have tested my resolve. It’s not the roller-coaster daily life as a machine shop owner, but the stark reality of losing employees and friends to serious illness that’s been especially hard to take. Thankfully, illness doesn’t always mean death. 

Say “EDM” and most manufacturing folks think mold, tool and die work. Yet sinker, wire and hole-popping EDMs are often employed in conjunction with, or as alternatives to, traditional part-making processes, such as milling and turning. 

Lasers are good for far more than slicing sheet metal and defending against alien space invaders. Without them, many of today’s high-tech products would be impossible to manufacture. Microfluidic devices, integrated circuits, medical stents and catheters, automotive fuel injector nozzles are all drilled, milled, surface-textured and ablated via laser micromachining. 

Ever machined parts so small that they not only fit on a penny but can sit on old Abe’s nose? Cutting parts and part features in this Tom Thumb world often comes with Titanic-sized challenges, such as unexpected cutting tool breakage, deburring parts the size of typical burrs and machine tool spindles speeds that come up short. Sometimes just handling ultrasmall parts is a gargantuan task.