Fabrication

Designing extrusion with fabricating in mind is crucial to developing and manufacturing cost-effective products. By incorporating extrusion profile features, fabrication operations can be reduced or eliminated and in turn save total piece price.

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Some examples are:

• Screw-chases – used to eliminate drilled and tapped holes

• Bolt chases – to eliminate through holes, and encapsulate bolt heads

• Snap fits which allow joining multiple extrusions together without any fasteners

• Joining extrusions with pins if they are too large to extrude

Even adding serrations to the surface of an extrusion to break up the extrusion surface, hide die lines, and eliminate the need for anodizing.

We know that every company needs a different level of volume – and many products will have to go through prototyping before production. We specialize in three volume levels: High volume, medium volume, and prototype runs.

We have multiple tooling manufacturing areas and we build all of our own fabrication tooling to handle our production needs.

For high volume parts, we utilize sophisticated multi-pocket mill fixtures and punch tooling. The fixtures offer the ability to machine parts in different planes, reduce the amount of handling and re-fixturing, and even allow for more control over tight GD&T tolerances. We also incorporate automation into our machines to help customers meet a price point, such as dedicated tube cutting machines that chamfer and cut tubes at a very efficient rate. Also, work cells are developed with dedicated machinery that is customized and specialized for a particular application to reduce costs.

For lower volume parts we can utilize our 40+ machine CNC department and utilize simple tooling like vices or simple blocks. This reduces the tooling costs while still retaining the tolerance capabilities of CNC machines.

We also realize the need for tight lead-times during the sampling and prototype phases of a products life. We are able to offer rapid prototyping turnaround by using our gantry routing machines and prototype with basic fabrication tooling for parts up to 12’ long. We develop these products in a tool room environment to improve lead times and to give even more insight into the development of the products being manufactured.

To learn more about our fabrication capabilities or how to design with fabrication in mind, please contact our sales team for a copy of our Engineering Guide for Aluminum Extrusions.