Thursday, August 19, 2010

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words




A few years back I walked into a machine shop to see first hand all of the machinery and equipment needed for a typical machine shop to crank out a multitude of products.

This picture above is a summary of my visit.




One can readily see the tremendous investment in equipment as listed on the left needed to machine the displayed parts and components quite common to many industrial applications. One can also imagine all of the time consuming operations necessary to machine just one part from a block of metal: drilling, tapping, milling, routing, mitering, deburring, sandblasting and other finishing. In some cases, hours per piece can be consumed to yield a finished product.

One can see by the text in the middle just how many marketing areas there are for a machine shop, and this list is hardly exhaustive.

Now, look at the picture without the machine and equipment list on the left. Instead, envision one liquidmetal die casting or injection molding machine instead.

Then, look at all the parts pictured, a second time. All of them may be net-cast with liquidmetal in minutes. Double click on the picture to enlarge it.