Do you have a knack for creativity? You might want to enter the manufacturing industry, mass-produce your craft, and serve various clients of different niches using computer numerical control (CNC) technology!
If you love creating something out of a workpiece like aluminum, alloy, stainless steel, brass, copper, titanium, fiberglass, foam, wood, or plastic, take pleasure in sharing your craftsmanship!
What to Manufacture Using CNC Technology
Various industries need appropriate products or product parts specific to their respective niches. Business individuals or service providers need these products or product parts to offer to their customers or to aid them in serving their clients. Below are some of the industries.
The medical industry utilizes quality disposable products for the facilities, the health practitioners, and their patients. CNC machines can manufacture a wide range of parts, products, and orthotic devices for the medical field like implants, shielded enclosures, MRI machines, and medical instruments that the FDA approved.
The aerospace industry needs CNC machined parts and products such as manifolds, bushings, antennae, airfoils, and others with extremely tight tolerance and those built for speed.
The transportation industry, however, needs those long-lasting and strongly-built components, such as engine parts, brakes, tools, and other necessary parts for trains, trucks, shipping vessels, rails, and more.
The oil and gas industry needs components and parts like valves, pistons, pins, rods, cylinders, and drill bits that need a fast turnaround for refineries and drilling rigs to ensure efficiency in the facility and the job site productivity.
The military and defense industry needs products that abide by government regulations. Most of the time, manufacturing with the government requires utmost secrecy. Products and parts for the military and defense industry include materials for electronics and communication, transportation, and aviation.
The electronics industry needs large product components and housing for the parts, as well as tiny manufactured parts that need laser precision for accuracy of up to 10 micrometers. They include electrical insulation, heat sinks, RFI shielding, and amplifier housing.
Other categories of industries include those for removing metals to make shafts and gears for the automotive industry. Another category is for fabricating, which transforms metal plates using processes like flame or plasma cutting, forming, laser cutting, punching, shearing, and welding, while one other category is for electrical discharge machining (EDM) that remove metal by creating sparks that burn the metal, lettering and engraving, coil winding, and terminal location and soldering.
CNC machines are ideal for prototyping and limited runs. Manufacturers need precision to produce the outputs. Consumers may require you of prototypes before the final mass production. This is to ensure the unlikelihood of product or component failure that might lead to loss of customers or might put lives at risk.
CNC and CNC Machines for Manufacturing
CNC means Computerized Numerical Control. It is the process of manufacturing with the aid of a computer that controls the production equipment. CNC dawned between the ’40s and the ’50s with the “punched tape,” a telecommunication data storage technology that later transitioned to analog and then digital processing. CNC today controls machines for cutting, shaping, and creating a variety of parts and prototypes. These machines include drills, lathes, and turning mills.
Drills
They use spinning drill bits with a stationary workpiece. Drills with CNC technology make precision holes toward your product.
Lathes
They work opposite of the drill. It spins the workpiece, and a cutting tool moves laterally toward the workpiece removing the unwanted material and leaving a useful product or part. With CNC machines, such as the metal lathe, products are with fewer errors, cheaper operations, and less waste of material throughout the manufacturing process.
Mills
These use rotary cutting tools to remove material from the workpiece. It involves boring, cutting gears, drilling, and producing slots within a workpiece. CNC milling machines work more efficiently and accurately than a manual mill can do.
Machining has never been this precise, efficient, and specialized with the aid of computers. You will be able to mass prototype machine parts and offer more specialized products for your clients. Manufacturing with CNC technology will indeed leverage your creativity!
