Sofeast have worked for years with clients who require their components and products to be made with metal machining in China and other Asian countries.
With the accuracy of CNC machines today, there is almost no end to the types of products and components that may be produced. These include everything from smartphone components, to holiday ornaments, through to auto parts.
What is metal machining?
Metal machining is the process of shaping various raw metals into finished products or components by removing material with a machine.
Various machines, such as a CNC machine, are used to cut, turn, drill, or mill the metal until the desired shape has been achieved.
Commonly used metals include brass, copper, steel (alloy and stainless), titanium, and aluminum.
Benefits & drawbacks of machining
Benefits
- Metal benefits from high heat resistance and durability as a material.
- There are many ways to use metal in manufacturing, meaning that it’s a versatile material choice for many items. For instance, it may be forged, cast, welded and soldered.
- Metal is a good value material for manufacturers producing high volumes.
- Metal machining is also a good way to quickly make prototype parts and components when they’re made from metals, due to the machine cost and ease of fast production as you will see on this page: CNC Prototyping.
Drawbacks
- Using metal limits what items can be produced, for instance, some metals aren’t suited to applications where they need to be immersed in water at all times.
- Metal machining equipment is very expensive to purchase, meaning that this cost gets passed on to the importer at times.
- Machining is a longer process than, say, plastic injection molding, and the time must be taken into account when considering delivery.
- Machined products must be finished in order to have your desired characteristics before use, so they will commonly be ground, deburred, or painted before they can be shipped. This takes extra work and time.
Metal Machining Videos
Watch these videos to learn about machining from our senior engineer:
Additional resources related to metal machining
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