Machine Shop Services for the Food Processing Industry

                                                    Quality assurance and quality control are definitive requirements when it comes to food processing industry machines and replacement parts. Some of the most common equipment involved in food processing include bottling and canning machines, automatic bottling lines and semi-auto bottling machines. An assembly line manufacturer in the food processing industry makes use of these and other equipment. Companies in this industry handle an enormous amount of food on daily basis, at the same time requiring to remain highly efficient and observe strictly all sanitary regulations. For this reason, quality food processor parts are an absolute necessity when it comes to food processing equipment.

Machine shop services for food processing industry include production of assembly line equipment parts and custom food processor parts, reverse engineering, replacement parts, and repair & maintenance. Some of the key processes and technologies involved are CNC milling, production sawing, waterjet cutting, stainless steel fabrication, etc. Most quality machine shops offering their services to the industry would satisfy ISO 9001:2008 quality system specifications. Many would also use a special humidity- and temperature-controlled quality lab for their food production sector jobs.

Materials also play a very important role when it comes to manufacturing of food processor parts. Many parts require corrosion and abrasion resistant materials. Some of the common types of stainless steels used in this sector to manufacture burr-free parts include the precipitation-hardening variety of stainless steel, ferritic stainless steel and austenitic stainless steel. The common parts manufactured for this sector come with a variety of applications, as consumable parts, repair parts and custom parts.

Machine shops specializing in this sector also require to be able to come up with innovative solutions for purposes of increasing efficiency and reducing maintenance costs. The amount of daily production means a lot to an assembly line manufacturer in a food production plant. So, repair and replacement need to be finished in the shortest possible time so the daily production activity of the plant is not hampered. Many shops currently use abrasive waterjet cutting to cut down on lead times as well as developed CNC programming for quick adaptation of processes to complex shapes and small parts runs. Waterjet cutting is particularly beneficial for food production parts since it generates the minimum of airborne pollutants and does not require any secondary removal since it does not produce any slag.

As way of an example, a machine shop with waterjet cutting facilities can cut to needed shape a 304 austenitic stainless steel plate, required for many food processing assembly jobs, all by themselves. The technology allows to program, load and cut the plate to the desired shape in a matter of 20-25 minutes. In addition, the precision of the process makes unnecessary any secondary drilling operations, since it is able to drill holes to prescribed size quite accurately at the first go. These are some of the processes and technologies used by a machine shop (catering to food processing industry) to increase efficiency n the production of assembly line equipment parts iand offer optimal value to their customers.

Print Press Machine Shop Services: Repair Parts, Replacement, Maintenance

                                                    A print press machine shop looks after the printing industry's manufacturing needs, maintenance requirements, printing press parts including replacement parts, custom parts, etc. Repair parts for printing industry include accessories for the graphic arts sector and aftermarket replacement parts for offset and letterpress printing presses from all leading brands including Townsend, Davidson, Hamada, AB Dick, Gestetner, Chief, Multilith and others. All quality machine shops catering to the printing industry will use latest CNC/CAD technologies to build the parts and the parts will meet and often exceed OEM quality. Apart from the replacement parts, many shops will also offer a complete range of accessories which include dampening units, rollers, chemicals, inks, infrared dyers, powder spray, rebuild kits, etc.

Repair parts

The most common printing press repair parts include gripper bars, wash-up blades, suckers, water bottle valve/cap for 1- and 2-color presses, rollers and roller kits for different models. Some printing press machine shop facilities, for example, offer roller kits for Presstek, Heidelberg, Kodak and Ryobi models. The kits will typically include one doctor roller, and a number of distributor rollers and form rollers. Roller kits often come handy as a cost-saving option than if one went for individual items. Dealers in repair parts will also offer bindery and other related pressroom equipment such as paper cutters, sprayers and dryers, paper drills, folders, corner rounders, etc.

Print press machine shop services

However, all dealers in printing press equipment may not offer all the services provided by a machine shop specializing in printing press parts manufacture, repair and maintenance, replacement as well as reverse engineering. The key processes involved in machine shop services associated with printing press include, grinding, turning, milling, press work and welding.

On-site cylinder repair services are a crucial activity for any machine shop serving the print industry. On-site repair generally takes care of issues like repair of cylinders suffering damage due to low spots, cave ins; honing and line-boring of side frames, etc. In-house services, on the other hand, cover areas such as welding and machining of journals to return them back to their original dimensions; sleeving back the journals and metal spraying them; rebuilding of O.D. s with Chrome or metal spraying; preloading bearings; manufacturing and installing bearers; welding and milling gaps to factory specifications; etc. Some of the key sectors served in the printing press industry include web press printers, food service packaging, medical packaging, industrial packaging, agriculture packaging, sheet fed printers, etc.

Turnaround time for the jobs differ according to the nature of the task. Most repair works save rollers and cylinders are done in 1-2 days. Full cylinder rebuilds, however, takes 2-3 weeks whereas roller rebuild and repair works typically take 1-2 weeks. On-site cylinder repair can be done in a matter of few hours if the damage is not too severe.

Medical Equipment Parts Manufacturing: Sectors, Processes & Technologies

           Medical equipment industry covers instruments, implants and equipment for diagnostics, monitoring, therapeutics. These include surgical instruments, implantable monitors for diabetic and cardiac care and knee replacements and hip implants and other reconstructive devices. A medical equipment manufacturer may cater to all these sectors or may limit their activities to one or more medical industry sectors. For any machine shop, medical equipment parts manufacturing is challenging on many counts. All instruments manufactured for the industry must meet the strict specifications laid out for that piece or group of equipment. Medical parts manufacturing also very commonly involve high degree of custom and precision machining, product development for metal parts, prototyping & testing and a good deal of micromachining and micromanufacturing. For this reason, clients will only team up with machine shops and medical instrument makers who already have proven capabilities in medical device manufacturing.

Industry Sectors

Surgical Instruments; This is one of the largest sectors in the medical equipment industry. Surgical robotics, sutures, dilators are among the most common equipment manufactured by a surgical instrument manufacturer. Key technologies for a surgical instrument manufacturer include surface treatments, micromachining and materials.

Orthopedics; This is another major sector and many a medical instrument maker will specialize in devices such as arthroscopy, spinal implants, knee replacements and hip implants, orthobiologicals and other reconstructive devices. Processes such as casting, grinding, machining, rapid manufacturing, metal injection molding and polishing are central to this sector.

Dental Instruments; This is one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry with accelerating demands for drills, implants, imaging equipment and other instruments. 3D imaging, additive manufacturing and machining are some of the key technologies used in this sector.

Cardiovascular Devices; This sector includes drug sents, defibrillators and pacemakers and the key manufacturing processes include assembly, micromolding and power sources.

Diagnostic Apparatus; Examples of this sector include magnetic and ultrasound resonance instruments, endoscopic devices, etc. A highly competitive sector, the key technologies involved here are micromanufacturing, IT and imaging.

Apart from the above, there are also other important sectors in the medical device industry and they include diabetes devices, internal fixation devices, blood transfusion equipment, urology devices, neuromodulation devices and more.

Processes & Technologies

The highly regulated environment as well as the constantly evolving character of the medical equipment industry means that the medical equipment manufacturer, in order to maintain his competitive edge, must be familiar with the most up-to-date technologies, processes and methods relevant to his field of specialty. Some of the key processes and technologies involved in medical equipment manufacturing include 3D imaging, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, measurement & inspection, quality systems, surface & coating treatments, micromanufacturing, laser and assembly. For biocompatibility reasons, materials also present some unique challenges to the medical instrument maker.

MDM Machine & Technology: One-stop Shop for Machine & Manufacturing Needs St Louis

MDM Machine & Technology: One-stop Shop for Machine & Manufacturing Needs St Louis

Our job shop St Louis caters to a diverse consumer base that spans across a large array of industry including Defense, Aircraft, Medical, Telecommunications, Alternative Energy, Transportation, Commercial Applications, Agriculture, Pharmaceutical and many more. We provide machine and manufacturing, production, reverse engineering and assembly services and put special emphasis on problem solving and new-age innovation techniques in a bid to provide our clients with satisfactory, comprehensive and cost-effective solutions.

The core set of axioms that drive our efforts at our machine shop St Louis include quality production, fast production times, lean production, solution-focus and customer-orientation. Regardless of the nature and scope of the project, we view every single project as a mean to develop a long-term relation of trust and value between us and our customers. It is this value-driven approach which sets our job shop St Louis apart from a number of similar facilities from and around the region.

Let us break it up a bit.

Quality Production and Fast Turnaround Times: Quality production is, of course, the primary requirement of a job. With 50 years of experience in machining and manufacturing and with a large number of highly qualified and experienced programmers and engineers working as part of our overall team, we are able to devote proper attention and expertise to every project that we handle. Once we are able to pinpoint the specifications and requirements of a project after our initial assessment, our production team will take over and will ensure quality and quick turnaround time. Our machine shop is equipped with the most current innovations in the machining field which include CNC machining with the help of CAM, CAD, and other current software applications. At the same time, it also helps that our staff is highly qualified in manual machine and manufacturing process—a skill that comes to great aid even when you are performing tasks with computer-controlled tools.

Lean Production: This is a term which first came into circulation in the aftermath of Second World War and the Japanese company Toyota is normally credited with the introduction of this concept in the field of assembly line production. A lean production method diverges from the traditional Ford assembly line production in the way it does not involve maintaining any prior and anticipatory resources. On the contrary, all resources necessary to production (materials as well as tools) are ordered and supplied closely in line with the requirements of any particular project. The basic idea here is to minimize waste so that the cost of production can be kept to a minimum, too. At our machine shop St Louis, we can apply the philosophy and method of lean production mainly thanks to our diverse fields of action which allows us to build partnerships with suppliers of all hues and descriptions.

Solution-focus and Customer-orientation: Another important part of our approach is to keep customer’s preferred performance indicators always in focus and fabricate the project at our machine shop St Louis according to the same. Be it prototype development, reverse engineering jobs, rebuild and repair, or precision machining, programmers, developers and engineers at our job shop St Louis will always give greatest attention to customer specifications and will custom-design each project keeping in mind the customer requirements. Yet another point that sets us apart in the machine and manufacturing industry.

MDM Machine & Technology: Bringing Value to Customers Through Most sophisticated Lean Production Practices

MDM Machine & Technology: Bringing Value to Customers Through Most sophisticated Lean Production Practices

MDM Machine & Technology is a machine and manufacturing company operating out of St. Louis, Missouri. We like to define ourselves as a technology-driven modern machine shop serving a wide array of industries for their machine, manufacture, design, reverse engineering, production, assembly, and training requirements. As a CNC machine shop, we harness all the benefits of the new-age innovations toward streamlining our different production processes following the principles of lean production so that we can offer the best value to our customers. At the same time, our vast knowledge of and experience in the machine & manufacturing sector and in manual machining, derived from our 50 years+ presence in the industry, means that we can bring this knowledge to exploit best the modern technologies available at hand. This way, we bring the best of both worlds and fuse the same to ensure optimum quality and value to the services we offer.

At our St Louis machine shop, we serve a diverse base of clients covering industries like Telecommunications, Transport, Aircraft, Defense, Medical, Pharmaceutical, Industrial Solutions, Alternative Energy, Commercial Applications, to name just a few. At our precision machine shop St Louis, we also work with a diverse range of materials that include aluminums, brass, mild steels, tool steels, bronze, copper, cast irons, surgical steels, stainless steels, plastics, titanium, inconel, exotic plastics, phenolic, PEEK, ABS, GPOs, derlin, nylon, UHMW, PTFE, composites, woods, ceramics, graphite, and more. This gives an idea of the high-mix capabilities of our CNC machine shop, custom machine shop St Louis, and auto machine shop St Louis. At the same time, MDM is also open to orders both high-volume and low-volume and aims to provide equal value to every job it handles.

The core services that our precision machine shop St Louis offers are:

Custom CNC MachiningPrecision CNC MachiningCNC Production MachiningPrototype DevelopmentSpecialized TrainingReverse EngineeringFinishing and Assembly

Each of the above sectors covers a lot of ground and a wide array of activities and processes. At our CNC machine shop as well as our auto machine shop St Louis, we work with 2- and 4-axis CNC lathes, 3- and 5-axis CNC machining centers, 5- and 6-axis SWISS turning, CNC mill, CMM measuring, Wire EDMs, auto CAD, Solid Works, master CAM, surf Cam, etc. At the same time, we also host facilities for manual production and manufacture working with manual mills, grinders, manual lathes, etc.

In addition, we also offer specialized training programs especially for companies with in-house machine shops looking for specialized skilled labor for handling the machines and machine parts involved. We custom-tailor our training programs to fit the machines, production, and processes specific to our clients’ needs. This helps create a quick and effective workforce—something that even the best local tech schools cannot provide all the time. This becomes possible since our engineers and programmers have real-time experience of handling a diverse array of functions and activities and therefore, when they communicate this real-world knowledge to students, the latter often find it of great value. There are very few St Louis job shop facilities that offer training programs and this in itself should speak volumes about the highly qualified knowledge and experience we claim to have and benefit from at MDM.

Since our client base is diverse and we are always looking to expand our scope and build long-term relationships with our customers, we maintain a stance that enables the addition of new machines, staff, and processes to meet manufacturer’s needs. This, again, is something very few St Louis machine shop facilities can claim to do. In fact, there is a tendency prevalent in the industry that when a machine shop, even when it has diverse capabilities and experience to benefit from, looks to narrow its scope of operations once it has landed a large and consistent customer from a specific industry. Similarly, many shops handling high mix, low-volume jobs for a long time gradually narrow down their scope owing mainly to their inability to find an effective way toward lean production. And the ones that refuse to go down this path invariably suffer a reduction in growth rate and revenues and this ultimately leads to lower quality in production.

In stark contrast, MDM can continue to provide the greatest value to its customers thanks to our considerable investment in lean research which does not only track and review essential flow metrics, but also advices us on how to use that material flow metrics to streamline our various production processes in a way which will minimize waste and maximize value to our customers. This, ultimately, allows us to provide greater value to our clients than various custom machine shop St Louis and St Louis job shop facilities which work for specialized industries/areas.

Custom Machining for the Hobbyist: Advantages of Owning a Personalized Machine Shop

Custom Machining for the Hobbyist: Advantages of Owning a Personalized Machine Shop

A functioning home or custom machine shop housing smaller versions of industrial-type equipment enables a hobby machinist to perform a variety of tasks. No matter whether you are a model builder, an amateur machinist or a do-it-yourselfer, a self-sufficient custom machining shop with a few basic machine tools and equipment would open a world of possibilities to you. Entrepreneurs, car restorers, vintage tool fabricators, inventors, artists, astronomers—all of them can reap rich benefits from a personal hobbyist machine shop. They can make good use of it to complete their own projects and complement their particular pursuits, but it is also a fact that once the basic tools are in place (both manual and CNC machines and those helping you to work with materials like metal, plastic, glass or a combination of them), they will also encourage many different ideas and will act as a veritable aid to widening your scope of interests and activities.

Hobbyist Machine Tools

Some of the most common hobbyist machine tools include mini-mills, mini-lathes, grinding machines, bandsaws, different custom parts, as well as hobby CNC machines, all of which are smaller versions of large industry style machining devices. It is a fact that many ideators who do not have direct access to machine shop services or have very little knowledge of actual machining skills and processes, suffer from this lack of knowledge and access in the way their designs and ideas often turn out to be unnecessarily complicated. This means that if they approach a machine shop for building a prototype of their design, either they get rejected or the costs go up to an impractical amount. The result is that the ideas remain unrealized in a majority of the cases.

However, when you have the basic tools and acquaint yourself with their functioning, you will have a better idea of the whole process and consequently, your designs will become simpler and more practicable. There are many hobbyist and amateur machinists out there who regularly come up with beautiful models of their own thanks to their hands-on knowledge of custom machining and machine shop operations.

We are talking off-road vehicle & R/C parts, weapons accessories & gunsmithing, making receivers, model steam engines, astronomical clocks, electronics equipment, motorcycle and clocks accessories—in fact, the activities and products manufactured are just as diverse as they come. Some of the hobbyists are also devoted to producing home-made machine tools and CNC machines from the scratch and if you can follow them, you can save up huge by building your own machine tools for your home custom machine shop. And the wonderful thing is that many of these individual entrepreneurs share their knowledge with the machine enthusiasts out there through their blogs and websites, so that you can benefit well from their experience. A very valuable database of these blogs/websites can be found here at http://www.cnccookbook.com/CCResourcesInd.htm.

In addition, if you are living in St Louis, Missouri, you enjoy the special advantage of buying custom parts and other small-scale machinery at a cheaper rate than other parts of the country. Thanks to its convenient location in the Midwest and its excellent connectivity through road, rail, air and water, the town of St Louis, Missouri avails the cheapest shipping rates for obtaining raw materials and this directly helps all the machine shops in the region—big or small.

Products of Precision Machining—Medical, Aerospace, Automotive & Metrology

Products of Precision Machining—Medical, Aerospace, Automotive & Metrology

When it comes to modern machine shops, one can find shops of all hues and descriptions. There are general machine shop facilities that will concentrate on high mix, low-volume jobs offering their services to clients from different industries while there are others who narrow down their operations to cater to only high-volume jobs. In contrast to both, the most highly sophisticated machine shops serve a diverse range of customers, accepting offers of varying volumes and at the same time, offering the best value to the customers. This is made possible by the use of complex lean production strategies and techniques that are particular to the work specifications of the machine shop in question. Without going into the details of that, in this article, we will rather discuss the product requirements of industries as diverse as medical, aerospace, automotive, metrology, etc.-all of which, however, can be effectively managed by a state-of-the-art high mix modern precision machine shop.

Precision machine shop

No matter whether it is medical drilling devices, aerospace equipment, or custom automotive tools, all machineries or parts of them require some level of precision machining skills. Most modern shops perform their precision machine works with the help of software programs such as TurboCAD or AutoCAD. These programs prepare computer-generated 3D blueprints which need to be adhered to the very last detail to ensure the integrity of the product. Every general machine shop requires to perform a good deal of precision machining since it reaches to all industries and every technology.

Medical Machine Shop

A medical machine shop needs to tackle challenges which are often specific to the manufacture of medical parts. The medical parts include all kinds of orthotic devices, surgical implants and the plethora of other medical instruments. The challenges faced by a medical machine shop involve machining titanium, small-scale machining, machining plastic, small-batch machining as well as custom machining.

Automotive Machine Shop

Products and work operations of an automotive machine shop likewise cover a great range. There is auto parts manufacturing, motorcycle parts, engine rebuilding, design services, prototyping, industrial machining, to name but a few. Most modern machine shops will normally integrate these different activities following the principles of lean production.

Metrology Machine Shop

The most common products manufactured in a metrology machine shop include small, medium, large, shop floor and horizontal arm CMMs, automated solutions, laser scanners, hand tools & gauge, laser trackers systems, industrial theodolites, multisensory systems, and more.

Aeorspace Machine Shop

A typical aerospace machine shop will cater to aeorspace and defense industries. The most common products include Actuators, Bushings, Housings, Panels, Castings, Splined Shafts, Gears, Valve Bodies, Couplings, Connectors, etc. Manufacturing processes involve mechanical and electrical assembly, complex turning and milling, gun drilling, grinding, kiting, EDM, etc.