CNC turning and milling, backed by manual capability for one-off and development work. Available in support of fabrication or as a standalone service to your drawing.
Overview
A machine shop that is not an afterthought
The CNC machine shop exists first to support fabrication: machined bosses, spigots, bushes, pins, shafts and mating faces that a fabricated assembly needs in order to actually fit together. Keeping that capability in-house removes the most common cause of delay on a fabricated assembly, which is waiting on somebody else's machine time.
It is also available as a standalone service. If you need components turned or milled to drawing and nothing else, you can use the machine shop on its own without buying a fabrication package around it.
Manual capability sits alongside the CNC plant, including a Colchester Mastiff centre lathe. For a single development part, a repair, or a component where programming time would exceed cutting time, manual is frequently the right and cheaper answer, and we will say so.
Capability
Machining to your drawing, model or sample part
Prototype and first-off components with dimensional verification before batch release
Machined features on fabricated assemblies: bores, faces, spigots and mounting details
Replacement components reverse-engineered from a worn or broken original
Repeat batch production against a schedule or call-off
Manual machining where it is faster and cheaper than programming
Applications
Typical work
Shafts, spindles, pins, bushes and spacers
Flanges, adaptors, housings and end caps
Machined details on fabricated frames, chassis and structures
Obsolete or unobtainable spares remade from a sample
Motorsport and prototype components
Jig, fixture and tooling components
What we need
To quote accurately
A dimensioned drawing (PDF, DWG) or a 3D model (STEP, IGES, Parasolid, SolidWorks)
Material specification, or the duty, if you want us to advise
Tolerances and any critical dimensions, called out explicitly
Surface finish requirement and any surface treatment
Quantity and whether the part will repeat
A sample part where the component is being reverse-engineered
Missing something from this list? Send what
you have. Most enquiries can be priced from a dimensioned sketch, and we would rather ask
one question than quote round a gap.
Plant
What is on the floor
Capability we own and operate, rather than capacity we buy in and
mark up.
The machine shop exists first to support fabrication: the machined
bosses, spigots, bushes, pins and mating faces a fabricated assembly needs in order to
actually fit together. Keeping it in-house removes the most common cause of delay on a
fabricated assembly, which is waiting on somebody else's machine time.
One-off · prototype · small batch · repeat production
Sizing a job
Send the drawing. We will tell you whether it fits the machines
Machining
Manual is sometimes the right answer, and cheaper. We will say so.
For a single development part, a repair, or a component where programming time would exceed cutting time, the manual lathe wins. A machine shop that only ever recommends its most expensive process is selling, not engineering.
Yes. Send the worn or broken original, or a good photograph with a rule in frame, and we will produce the drawing and the manufacturing route from it. Worth saying: a failed part is evidence, not just a pattern. The failure mode frequently shows that the original design was marginal, and copying it faithfully reproduces the failure. That assessment is reverse engineering; the machining that follows is this page.
No. The machine shop supports the fabrication work and is also available as a standalone service. A customer needing only turned or milled components can use it without buying a fabrication package around it.
Mild and alloy steels, stainless steel, aluminium, brass, bronze and engineering plastics. If the material choice is still open, tell us what the part has to do and we will advise. Material selection is usually a bigger lever on both cost and service life than tolerance is.
Send the drawing or the model. We will tell you whether it fits, and if it does not we will say so rather than quote round it. We deliberately do not publish machine envelopes, because a table of maxima answers the wrong question: whether a part is economic to make here depends on setups, workholding and quantity at least as much as on whether it physically fits.
On a single component, on simple turned work, and on modification of an existing part where programming time would exceed cutting time. Manual is frequently faster and cheaper for those, and we will say so rather than run everything through a CNC because it sounds more impressive.
Yes. Bores, faces, spigots and mounting details machined after welding, which is often the only way to hold a relationship between features across a welded structure. Keeping the fabrication and the machining in one place removes the handover where that kind of work usually goes wrong, and removes the argument about whose distortion it was.
Related capability
Rarely one process on its own
Most jobs cross two or three disciplines. Quoting them together removes handling,
transport and the interface risk that comes with splitting a job across suppliers.
