Back on April 21^st and 22^nd, several of us from John Prosock Machine were exhibitors at the Valley Forge Design 2 Part expo.At this expo, we had the opportunity to get in front of numerous quality engineers, purchasing personnel and top administrators from the key OEMs in the Northeast.Overall, we felt that the show exceeded our expectations.We were able to discuss with dozens of potential customers the CNC mill and lathe capability of our precision machine shop.We came away with over 40 solid prospects that we are now seeking to turn into satisfied customers for our machine shop.

Even in the midst of the economic downturn companies were out in force.For many the economic strain is forcing them to rethink their supply chains and make sure they are getting the best pricing for their outsourced machining.

The fun part for us was to meet a bunch of very interesting people in the manufacturing world.Our industry is full of the best of the best.

Design 2 Part has been organizing large scale events like these for over 30 years.Machine shops, manufacturing companies and suppliers of all kinds have found this opportunity a key to garnering new business for their companies.Over 80% of the companies that exhibit at the expo return for more shows.They have been driving business to their exhibitors business to our exhibitors because of one thing, QUALITY.

We found this to be true at every level of the conference.(Not so much for the food though)

All in all it was well worth our investment.We have received several rfq’s for machined parts already.

We hope to go back next year.If you want information and dates, click on the link below.

http://www.boothinfo.com/schedule

Recently, Bill Kennedy of Cutting Tool Engineering magazine interviewed our shop Foreman, Claude Kennedy, for his monthly piece called, “Part Time.”  Bill asked Claude to describe a particularly challenging CNC machined part that would be an example of our long line of success stories.  Here’s the article:

Holding Firm

John Prosock Machine, Inc. is a Quakertown, Pa., job shop that handles prototype machining as well as production and assembly jobs. Founded in 1982, the shop today has 10 mills, 13 lathes, and about 30 employees. Typical production runs range from 100 to 2,000 pieces, and the shop serves a wide range of customers; “we pretty much do anything,” said plant manager Claude Farrington, “medical work, driveline components, heavy equipment, parts for remote-control cars, you name it.” The shop machines a variety of materials including common steels and aluminums as well as plastics, titanium, and other exotic alloys.

Describing the machining of a prototype aluminum trunion housing for a powerboat steering system, Farrington said the actual machining of the complex-appearing part was not too difficult; “it was a matter of trying to figure out how to hold it.”

The roughly 11 ½”-long, 5 ½”-wide housing was intended to be mounted on a boat’s transom and house an electronic linear actuator. It is part of a system designed to provide instant steering response when activated by controls at the helm, eliminating the slow reactions of a cable system.

Prosock Machine received a DXF file from its customer and loaded it into the shop’s Mastercam CAM package to program milling operations. Lathe work was programmed at the machine.

The housing was machined from a 12″ x 6″ x 3 ½” 6061T6 aluminum block. It was clamped with the long dimension standing vertical in a Kurt vise with aluminum soft jaws on an Excel 810 VMC. One end of the finished housing would feature a single 1.850″-dia., 3.850″-long boss, but to start, two identical bosses were machined side-by-side. “We machined two so that when we flipped it over we could use them to align the part in the vise. Later we cut the one off that we didn’t need,” Farrington said.

The twin bosses were machined with a 1 ½”-dia. HSS endmill, run at 3,000 rpm and a 30 ipm feed rate, taking a 4″ length of cut. Farrington described the toolpath as “a figure 8 around the bosses,” stepping down 0.200″ on each pass.

Then the housing was flipped over in the vise and one of the bosses was located against a stop. On the other end of the finished housing would be two bosses that were not identical, being of different diameters and offset from each other by 70˚. One boss, in line with a boss machined earlier, was 2.100″ in diameter. The other boss was 1.514″-dia. Because this second set of bosses were closer together than the first pair, smaller endmills were used to machine them. The bosses were roughed with a 7/8″-dia. HSS hogmill and finished with a ¾”-dia. HSS endmill, both run at 1,200 rpm and 10 ipm with a 4″ loc. The two bosses were 1.360″ long, but one was set back (x “?) deeper in the part than the other.

Water-soluble coolant was applied throughout the machining process. Farrington described the HSS tools the shop employs as “generic,” and said all the solid-carbide tools it uses are from Mill Monster, while inserted milling and turning tools are from Kennametal.

When milling of the second set of bosses was complete, the smaller diameter one was drilled and reamed. A 1 1/16″-dia. HSS drill, run at 600 rpm and 4 ipm feed and pecking each 0.200″, drilled to a depth of 7.7″. As the tool pecked in and out of the workpiece, flood coolant from the spindle cleared the chips from the hole. A 1.103″-dia. reamer then finished the hole to a tolerance of +/- 0.0004″. At this point, the housing was removed from the mill and the extra boss created in the first operation was cut off with a band saw, leaving a short stub to be faced off later.

Next, the part was clamped horizontally in the vise and a 3″-dia. shell mill, run at 2,500 rpm and 20 ipm, face milled the housing to height of the next feature, a 3.5″-wide, 2.7″-long, 0.72″-deep pocket that would hold the actuator electronics. A ½”-dia. carbide endmill run at 3,500 rpm and 25 ipm, roughed out the pocket, leaving 0.050″ extra stock on the sides and 0.010″ on the floor. Then a ¼”-dia. carbide endmill finished the side profiles and bottom. A very small pocket in the bottom of the larger feature required the application of a 1/32″-dia. carbide endmill. Outside each corner of the pocket a hole was drilled 0.433″ deep with a 0.114″-dia.(?) drill, and tapped with an M3.5 x 0.6 tap.

The next operation involved milling the back of the housing. The part was flipped over in the vise, the 3″-dia. shell mill faced away excess material, and a ½”-dia. carbide endmill roughed and finished the details. The sharp edges of a lug created in the operation then were rounded with a radius mill.

Next, the housing was moved to a Eurotech turning center for turning, facing, and boring. With the 2.100″-dia. boss clamped in the chuck, the (now) single 1.850″-dia. boss on the other end of the part was turned down to a 1.765″ diameter for a length of 1.653″, using a DNMG 431 insert run at 700 rpm and a feed rate of 0.008 ipr. The same tool then faced off the remaining stub of the extra boss removed earlier. Farrington said the eccentric shape of the part posed no problem in the lathe; “It was a pretty good size diameter to hold on to, and we didn’t spin it at very high rpm.” A NTF2R threading insert then cut an M45 x 1.5 thread at the end of the boss.

Next, a 1-5/16″-dia. drill, employed at 400 rpm and 0.010 ipr with a 0.250″ peck cycle, drilled the boss out to a depth of 9.665″. A 1″-dia. KMT boring bar run at 500 rpm and 0.007 ipr finished the bore to a diameter of 1.37″, +/- 0.002″.

The part then was turned end for end in the lathe and chucked on the 1.850″-dia. boss, behind the thread. A 13/16″-dia. drill made a 2 ¼”-deep hole in the 2.100″-dia. boss at 500 rpm and 0.005 ipr, employing a 0.250″ peck. Then a 5/8″-dia. boring bar created a chamfer and a counterbore in the front end of the hole, and behind that cut a bearing diameter of 1.0004″, +/- 0.0004″.

For the final operation, the housing was clamped horizontally in a Haas indexer mounted on the table of the Excel VMC, again held on the 1.850″-dia. boss. A ½”-dia. carbide endmill, run at 2,000 rpm and 18 ipm, milled a series of lengthwise flats, positioned via the indexer at 10˚ intervals. Then the same endmill circular-interpolated two 0.775″-dia., 0.354″-deep counterbores in the end of the 2.100″-dia. boss. After machining, the housing received a 0.005″ – 0.010″ thick blue anodized coating.

Farrington said that total machining time for each part was roughly 1½ hours. He termed this job a typical small volume (“The customer wanted three, we made five”) prototype job, involving ongoing consultation with the customer’s engineers as the design evolved during the prototyping process.

For more information about John Prosock Machine, Inc., call (215) 804-0321 or visit www.jprosock.com

There’s a great publication called “Cutting Tool Engineering” magazine that has been supporting the manufacturing and CNC machining world for years. Bill Kennedy is a contributing editor of the magazine. He has selected John Prosock Machine as a subject for his text article in his “Part Time” column. He will be doing an interview with our shop manager about a machined part that we have recently made for a customer. We will post the article when its finished. In the mean time here’s one of Bill’s recent articles.

BY BILL KENNEDY,

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

A manufacturer developing a small electric motor with a cast aluminum housing wanted to work with a prototype before investing in tooling for producing the castings. Innovative Machining Inc., a job shop that handles engineering design and both production and prototype manufacturing, engineered a way to efficiently machine the

prototype from aluminum bar stock. Measuring 6″ in diameter x 3″ long, the complicated front half of the housing had a 1.85″-deep cavity on one end, a variety of holes and a contoured channel on the other, and an array of cooling fins around the OD. Using an IGES CAD file supplied by the manufacturer, Innovative created turning and milling toolpaths with Mastercam CAM software to machine the housing from a 6″-dia., 31⁄4″-

long bar of 6061-T651 aluminum. Initial roughing took place on a Mazak Quick Turn 20N CNC lathe. A 0.850″-dia. hole was drilled through the center of the part’s axis, and the hole was counterbored at a diameter of 1.378″ to a depth of 1.0″. A grooving tool held in a boring bar cut a 0.056″-wide, 1.464″-dia. keyway 0.30″ deep in the counterbore. Then the part was turned end-toend in the lathe chuck and rough-bored to within 0.100″ of final dimensions.

The rest of the process required three setups on a Haas VF-3 vertical machining center. Programmer Seth Cross said one of the main challenges in making the part was “timing,” or aligning, the part in the three fixturings to ensure correct relationship among the housing’s complex features. For the first setup, the part was clamped on the VMC’s table with custom-made aluminum soft jaws, and located using the center bore made previously on the lathe. First, a 1⁄2″-dia. SGS Ski-Carb endmill, run at a 7,500-rpm spindle speed and 50-ipm feed rate, roughed the inside of the part. One pass left 0.010″ of excess stock in the cavity, and a second pass finished the casting bottom. Cross said maintaining the required 32 Ra surface finish was difficult, because the cavity’s depth made it a long reach for the cutter. The solution was to “slow everything down.” Next, 18 flats, each 0.700″ wide, were milled around the cavity wall with a 5⁄16″-dia., 2-flute Garr endmill run at 2,400 rpm and 10 ipm. A 45º chamfer mill, ground for use as a spotting tool, marked locations for two holes in the bottom of the cavity and for 14 other holes along its rim. Then a 3⁄4″ drill made two through-holes in the cavity bottom at 1,146 rpm and 4.58 ipm. In a cutout area in the cavity bottom, a 1⁄4″ drill run at 4,584 rpm and 22.92 ipm started a hole that was finished to a 0.150″ depth with a 1⁄4″ flat-bottom drill applied at the same parameters.

In the locations spotted earlier on the housing rim, a 3⁄16″ stub drill made six 0.750″-deep holes at 4,584 rpm and 16 ipm. Then, after a No. 31 (0.1200″-dia.) stub drill made two 0.05″-deep holes in the rim at 7,162 rpm and 13.5 ipm, a No. 30 (0.1285″) reamer run at 3,357 rpm and 30 ipm brought them to final dimensions. Next, a long spotting drill, run at

2,292 rpm and 10 ipm, located three places where a No. 43 (0.89″) drill run at 9,048 rpm and 12.6 ipm made three 0.270″-deep holes. Those three holes were threaded to a depth of 0.220″ with a 4-40 tap at 800 rpm and 20 ipm. Cross said one of the major challenges

of this first setup was tapping these holes. They were so close to the cavity walls that there was insufficient clearance for tool extensions, so he was forced to apply an extended tap at reduced cutting parameters. To complete this setup’s operations, which took about half an hour, a chamfer mill cleaned up the bottom of the cavity at 1,500 rpm and 45 ipm. For the next setup, the housing was flipped 180º. Cross made a fixture plate

with pins to fit the 3⁄4″ holes drilled earlier. “We slipped the part down on the pins and bolted it through the counterbore in the center,” he said. The 1⁄2″ Ski-Carb endmill was applied first, at 9,168 rpm and 73 ipm, to facemill the end of the part, leaving 0.070″-wide x 0.093″-high rings of material around each of the three large through-holes. Then a 3⁄16″, 2-flute endmill machined a twisting, 0.5″-wide x 0.75″-deep channel around the top of the part at 9,000 rpm and 30 ipm. Cross said, “It took a while to machine the channel. I had to step down in light steps—0.100″ or 0.125″—so I didn’t break my tooling.”

Next, a 1⁄2″ chamfer mill, ground as a spotter and run at 6,000 rpm and 12 ipm, located six points on the rim where a 3⁄32″ drill then made 1.5″-deep holes at 5,496 rpm and 13.8 ipm. Next to each of those holes, a No. 2 (0.221″), applied at 3,885 rpm and 15.6 ipm,

drilled through the part. A 3⁄8″ Ski-Carb endmill counterbored those six holes to a depth of 0.885″. This set of operations took about 1 hour. The third milling setup was on a vertical rotary table, which served as the Haas machine’s 4th axis. The housing was clamped onto the table in a 3-jaw chuck. The fixture, featuring locating pins, was designed to hold the part about 4″ away from the chuck to provide tool clearance. The housing OD has seven flats along its axis.

Six are 0.560″ wide and one is 1.7″ wide, and they were milled with a 1⁄2″ Ski-Carb endmill at 9,000 rpm and 76 ipm. Then a chamfer mill spotting tool, run at 6,000 rpm and 10 ipm, marked one hole location in each narrow

flat and nine locations in the wide flat. A 0.261″ G-drill run at 3,291 rpm and 15.6 ipm then drilled two holes in the wide flat, located 0.400″ from the front of the part. A 1⁄4-28 STI tap threaded those holes at 800 rpm and 28.57 ipm to prepare for later insertion of helicoils. Then, between the 0.261″ holes and the front of the part, a 1⁄4″ Ski-Carb endmill made two 0.600″- dia., 0.375″-deep holes at 5,612 rpm and 42 ipm. The same endmill, run at 6,112 rpm and 42 ipm, also made a 3⁄4″- dia. through-hole centered 0.700″ from the housing’s back edge.

Around the 0.600″-dia. hole, a No. 43 (0.089″) drill run at 9,648 rpm and 12.6 ipm made four holes 0.375″ deep, which were then threaded to a depth of 0.250″ with a 4-40 tap at 800 rpm and 20 ipm. Holemaking concluded after a No. 17 (0.173″) drill run at 4,965 rpm and 15.3 ipm made a 0.370″-deep hole in each of the 0.560″ flats, 1.050″ from the back edge of the housing. The holes were threaded with an 8-32 tap at 800 rpm and 25 ipm. A final machining challenge—80 cooling fins, each 0.34″ deep, arrayed axially around the housing—was overcome with two cutters designed by Shawn Gibbs, Innovative’s general manager, and Dean Kerbs, shop floor manager. Each cutter was tooled with three carbide inserts. One cutter machined a 0.026″ radius at the fin base and a 0.027″ radius at the top, and the other, engineered to make the fins positioned next to the axial flats, produced only the base radius. The cutters ran at 1,900 rpm and 19 ipm. Run time for the operations in the third setup was 45 minutes. Postmachining operations included selective anodizing of parts of the housing service, and installation of helicoils. Three prototypes were produced. Gibbs noted that the housing “had a lot of difficult challenges,” but it’s typical of Innovative’s work. In many cases, he said, solving customer problems on specialized prototype parts leads to production-level contracts on other jobs.

For more information about Innovative

Machining Inc., Wheat Ridge, Colo.,

visit www.innovativemachininginc.com

or call (303) 421-1006.