Relationships, whether personal or in business are all about mutual respect. . We can tell instantly when someone has been thinking carefully about machining in their designs. We see tens of thousands of CAD files for turn-milling CNC machining parts every year When we see that process we know we can produce that part quickly and efficiently, which works out great for both us and our customers. At the same time, when we see things that are problematic, it’s our responsibility to communicate those issues to the customer. Here are some things we’re always looking for in designs.

CNC Machining Corners: Rounder is Better

We come across this a lot, but if you take a moment and visualize it then you can see a round end-mill can never create a 90-degree angle in a corner where two walls meet. Adding fillets to round out your corners shows us that you have that knowledge. I mean you can use smaller and smaller end-mills to approximate a sharp corner, but it simply gets you a smaller sized fillet, and a bigger bill. As your partner, we can save you some money if you’re OK with broader, rounded edges and they look pretty good, too.

Turn-Milling CNC Machining: The Birds and Bees of Engineering

Fundamentally, there are two types of machining: milling (using drilling methods) and turning ( using a lathe). Cylindrical parts should be designed with the lathe turning procedure in mind, and very square /orthogonal parts should use milling. They are, in many ways, precise inverses of each other. While both are subtractive processes, with milling the cutting tool rotates against the (typically) stationary material to remove unwanted metal or plastic. Turning does just the opposite. The component spins around a defined axis and the device scrapes off materials as it rotates. Your part may need to go through the two procedures to complete, and in normal situations, we should be able to tell from your CAD file what you want and how to machine it.

Flatten The Horizon: Where Walls Meet Floors

This is kind of the contrary of the previous section. Here, you’re aiming for flatness-a nice 90-degree position where walls meet floors. When a wall meets a floor at a razor-sharp 90-degree angle, the machining process is much more efficient. We do this with sq . end-mills, which are just like any additional end-mill, but they have a flat, rather than a pointy, lower trimming surface. They may be specifically made to mill out material to create a flat surface area. One thing to remember is that when a fillet is applied and you end up with a curved transition between the floor and wall, substantially more engineering time must be spent contouring the fillet, which can make machining times much longer, and more costly than necessary.

The Ins and Outs of Holes and Pockets

When designing for manufacturing, it’s important to know that all those cool holes and pockets work for you and your customers in the long-term. We love to observe features that are sensitive to that. Attention that each features aspect ratio is critical. As a rule, deep openings and pouches ought to be large diameter, and longer standing posts the ribs should be thicker. Generally, the smaller the LXD percentage of a feature, the better. Very few features should exceed an 8: 1 LXD ratio unless you have a significant reason intended for the design.

Assemblies: Breaking up Isn’t Always Hard to Do

Sometimes it’s easier to simplify a design by breaking it up into two or more components, then using bolts, welds, or other methods to join them together later. It’s great to discover designer/engineers pay attention to trade-offs between minimizing the number of parts and the need to make use of assembly. With some CAD models, it makes more sense to reduce machined component complexity by disregarding more complicated parts down into sub-components. This could have benefits to get very complex parts.