20 Minute Blog

I spend a lot of time trying to learn more about the machining industry, because I work with a lot of CNC machining companies. This is an industry that is filled with technical language that the average person has never heard of — heck, starting with the name of the industry? CNC machining.

I recently encountered the most frustrating technical jargon response. Two of the major machines used in CNC machining are CNC routers and CNC mills. I wanted to know what the difference between them was, so I asked a client. I first got an unrelated history lesson of machining and finally got down to the answer. Guess what? The difference is what they’re being used for. If you’re machining word, it’s a CNC router. If you’re machining metal, it’s a CNC mill. But you use the same damned machine to do both.

Why the heck would you have two different names for the same frickin machine? It’s like they’re trying to confuse us outsiders.

Got a client at work that makes all kinds of cases, with a ton of different kinds of aluminum carrying cases — this ranged from gun cases to archery cases to make-up cases. This is another example of a client whose product I can understand: aluminum cases? Okay, yeah, I got that. Certainly the variety can be a bit staggering (I mean, we’re talking hundreds of different cases here — and that’s just the aluminum ones).

Aluminum aside they also make all manner of plastic molded cases, and a chunk of those are actually waterproof cases. One of the interesting things about working with an actually consumer-oriented client is that suddenly I’m working with products that I actually want! Sometimes it’s just cool black diamond hatch design aluminum storage cases that look like they could have a rimbaldi device inside. I don’t really have any use for it, it’s just cool. The cases even come with that cutout foam.

But sometimes I even have practical thoughts for it — specifically using the cases for photography equipment. I do a chunk of photography, including the kind that requires me to cart around giant lights and tripods and stuff. Right now I have a fairly crummy soft-sided case that the lights more or less fit into with much bulging. But if I could have a couple of their big ol’ plastic or aluminum cases with the EVA foam inserts I could cut out exactly the shape that I need to cradle the ridiculously expensive lights and their fragile bulbs (and those bulbs are $35 a pop too).

Or even better, I could get one of the really big aluminum cases on wheels — they’re typically sold as trade show cases or product cases — and I could just wheel those lights around, because they are heavey. I could also, of course, make wee cutouts for the tripods and clamps and other junk that I need. The best part of it is that I would no longer be wrestling with the laws of physics trying to get everything to fit inside the damned case. Just plunk it into the hole in the foam and snap the latches shut, then take off.

Yup, I can see that looking through these cases every day could be an issue!

Big fun at the day job today, where I was working with the metal stamping companies again. I know — sounds thrilling, right? But in this case it was actually pretty interesting, since we’re putting together a cool infographic about the metal stamping industry, including a focus on stainless steel stamping companies specifically.

The basic idea of the infographic is that you present a whole bunch of factoids in an interesting and graphical way. These factoids are supposed to be the kind of thing that people find interesting and make them go “hmm.” For example, with the metal stamping industry one of the things I learned while researching was that it ships about 11 billion dollars of product domestically. By itself this is a big but not terribly interesting fact about stainless steel metal stamping. But we can then compare that number against other well-known industries. Specifically we can look at the music industry at 4.4 billion, or the movie industry at 8 billion — next to those you’re suddenly surprised at how huge this metal stamping thing is and how you’ve never heard of it (all that info comes from the census bureau by the way, from their 2007 update).

This is of course just one little factoid that’s going on the infographic. As you can imagine the goal of the metal stamping industry infographic is to inform about the industry and about stainless steel stamping, and not to promote a particular viewpoint or to persuade (which is another common use of infographics — sadly those ones are usually filled with pretty biased, misleading and even outright incorrect facts).

I like working on these kinds of projects, which are far more interesting than press releases and updating copy and sell sheets. It’s fun putting projects like this together, and then work on how to promote them.

I have to say, of all the clients that I work with regularly at my day job, I kinda like the forging companies the most, or at least one in particular. Well, there are other clients that I like too, but the open die forging place is definitely very high on the list — the guys who make forged crankshafts and rounds and blocks. Part of this is that I like the client contact. He’s a nice guy, he’s easy to work with, we chat a bit but not very much and the meetings rarely take more than 20 minutes.

Their actual industry, custom open die forgings, isn’t terribly interesting as these things go. Forging is an industrial industry, and none of the industrial manufacturers are super interesting from a business standpoint. In fact pretty much across the board the consumer manufacturers and resellers are the more interesting product lines to talk about.

But the nice thing about custom forgings is that it’s not a very competitive industry. There might be a lot of forges out there, but it’s nothing compared to, say, jewelry shops or plumbers. Not only that but these guys have a very specific niche within the custom forging industry: they aren’t huge and they don’t try to compete on price at all. In fact they openly acknowledge that for many types of custom forgings they’re more expensive. However, what they have is very fast turnaround times.

In the forging industry, a chunk of the business is crankshafts. Not just making crankshafts for new things, but making crankshaft to replace old ones that have died. And most forged crankshaft manufacturers have really long lead times. When you have some giant industrial press that’s shut down because the crankshaft went out, you care a lot more about lead time than price, especially when the difference is often a couple weeks vs a few months.

So we have a nice client with an uninteresting industry, but a low competition one and a very specific niche that even fewer people try to compete for. It means making progress in promoting the company is easier, and the process is pleasant.

I’ve talked a bit before about machining equipment and how we work with a lot of machine shops at my work. The nice thing about this is I often feel like I have a pretty good handle on the whole CNC machining terminology, working with enough of it day in and day out. As always, just when I feel like I understand a section of the industrial market, I come across something to prove that I don’t know what I thought I knew. In this case it has to do with both vertical machining centers and 5 axis CNC machines — both coming from the same client.

So, in less than 20 minutes (since I wasted some time on that intro paragraph) here’s what I’ve learned about these two concepts that, it turns out, are thoroughly known by anyone in the machining industry.

Vertical Machining Center

The client I was talking to was using the term vertical machining center a lot. I did some research online and learned that the term is not just very common, but it’s also a significantly searched term on Google. The problem I had was literally no site I could find explained what the heck a vertical machining center actually was. I found the same issue with 5 axis CNC machining, it’s worth noting. Everyone brags about their 5 axis CNC machining capabilities, but they all assume that if you’re looking for it you already know what it is.

But starting with vertical machining centers. Despite that fact that they called “machining centers” — something that makes me think of large buildings filled with CNC machines — it’s actually a single CNC machine. Also, the machine does not necessarily have a vertical orientation.

Instead the vertical machining center just refers to a CNC machine in which the cutting element — the thing that actually cuts the metal — is aligned vertically. Think of a drill press — the drill bit is oriented up and down, vertically. Apparently there are also machining centers (which again are just a single CNC machine) in which the cutting element is aligned horizontally. Unsurprisingly these are horizontal machining centers.

I never did get a good answer on why they’re called machining centers, rather than just machines — which is after all what they are.

5 Axis CNC Machines

So I’ve been hearing the term 5 axis CNC machine forever, and in fact most vertical machining centers are in fact 5 axis CNC machines. My issue with this terms is what the heck are your 4th and 5th axis? I mean, 3 axis CNC machines (which are also a thing) I can get. You’re able to move up and down, forward and backward, and side to side.

Right there you have it, all three dimensions. You don’t get more than that without making up things, like time as the 4th dimension, for example. So how the heck can you have more than those 3 axis? You can move everywhere with just those three.

Well, the explanation actually makes a lot of sense. In a 5 axis CNC machine the surface that holds the item being cut can move along the normal X, Y and Z axis (side to side, forward and back, up and down) but in addition to that it can also rotate along the X and Y axis. Once you picture that in your mind you can see how it does indeed allow for additional motion that can’t be replicated with just 3 axis.

Apparently the reason this is desirable is that it lets your vertical machining center machine more complex parts without having to stop and change the setup of the vise that’s holding the metal being machined. This is important not just because it means you get the job done faster, but because it adds precision to the machining job. If you stop and manually adjust the vises and actually reset the object being machined, you’re inevitably going to get it positioned slightly differently — it’s just not possible to set it up perfectly. So the 5 axis CNC machine lets everything cut from one single setup, giving a lot more precision.

And darn it all — I went over 20 minutes. I need to use fewer words.