Aiming For Custom Machined Parts? Here’s How You Can Cut Costs.
CNC Machining has expanded, improved, and automated exponentially over the past few years. Advanced features and functionalities have been added in the machining process as newer technologies surfaced in the digital world. But with more features came extra cost. This could refute with the general belief of people- automation in parts manufacturing means lower cost. However, with a little bit of time invested in researching the material, design, and tools, one can easily mitigate the costs. This write-up is directed at helping you cut costs when aiming for custom machined parts. Let’s have a quick read!
● Be Careful During Material Selection: The material that you choose for your custom machined parts is decisive in determining its overall cost. Different materials have different properties in terms of their thermal stability, hardness, chemical resistance, malleability/ductility, rigidity, etc. These properties define how easy or hard it is to machine them and design into the parts. While soft metals like brass and aluminum are around four times faster to machine, harder metals like stainless steel or carbon steel for custom steel parts require slower spindles to machine. This can increase the cost by a large margin. Moreover, the cost of the metal itself also varies, thus creating variation in cost.
● Reduce The Need For Tool Changes: Changing tools during machining could lead to greater time consumption, which would, in turn, increase the price for the machining process. The need for juggling between different tools could be eliminated by adding more consistency to the design of your custom machined parts. This consistency could be added to different parts like the tapped holes, internal radii, etc. However, if the need for more complex design persists, you can break the part into multiple components and designing them using single tools only to be screwed together later on.
● Manufacture Complex Parts Using 5-Axis Machining: When it comes to getting custom machined parts, complexity seeps in automatically. In order to streamline and attain the complex parts easily, it is important to shift to five-axis machining. This is the most cost-effective way to get custom steel parts or any other complex machined parts manufactured. 5-Axis machining has coordinated movements, faster cutting speed, and minimum setup requirements that allow efficient manufacturing of more complex machined parts.
● Reduce Machining Time: The total time-taken for CNC custom machining also affects the cost of your custom steel parts. Reducing this time can effectively reduce your costs. Your choice of material and part designs impact the machining time. By choosing a material that is easy to machine and parts that do not require higher tolerances, extra deep pockets, thinner walls, undercuts, or smaller radii, one can ensure a lesser machining time.
● Use Tighter Tolerances When Deemed Necessary: In order to get high-quality, precise, and performance-oriented custom machined parts, tight tolerances are required. However, it can require special measurement tools and additional fixtures which might increase the overall cost. Applying tighter tolerance to critical design areas can help cut down the cost.
Cutting down cost in CNC custom machining is not rocket science. One just needs to invest some efforts and time in analyzing the product requirements and finding the best means to mold those needs. The above-mentioned hacks can be easily adapted to get the required custom machined parts without burning a hole in the pockets.
