Our CNC machines can mill or turn your parts in as little as a day if you upload your CAD model to our automated quoting and design analysis engine before you ship them. Despite all of the advancements in technology that have made this possible, the human element is still critical—and is frequently the source of recurring problems in parts designed for CNC machines.
1. Stay away from features that necessitate unnecessary machining.
One common blunder is to 3d plastic printing services a part with areas that do not require machine cutting. Unnecessary machining increases the run time of your part, which is a key factor in determining your final production cost. Consider the following illustration, in which the injection molding specifies a critical circular geometry that is required for the part's intended application. A square hole/feature in the middle of the part is to be machined, and then the surrounding material must be removed to reveal the finished part. That approach, on the other hand, necessitates a significant increase in run time to machine away the remaining material. In a more straightforward design, the machine simply cuts the part from the block, eliminating the need for any additional, wasteful machining of excess material after the initial cut. The CNC lathing change used in this example reduces machine time by nearly half, as shown in the graph. Keep your CNC products as simple as possible to avoid extra run time, pointless machining, and, ultimately, additional cost.
2. Avoid text that is too small or raised.
It is possible that your components will require a milled part number, descriptions, or your company logo
Alternatively, you may believe that some text simply looks really cool on a particular part
Text, on the other hand, comes at a price
Furthermore, the cost increases proportionally to the size of the text
This is due to the fact that the very small endmills used to cut the text operate at a relatively slower speed, resulting in increased run time on your part and, consequently, increased final cost
You do, however, have some options
If your part can accommodate larger text, cutting it will be significantly faster, resulting in a reduction in cost
3. Stay away from tall, thin walls.
Wall features on part designs are notoriously difficult to design. Cutting tools for CNC machines are made of hard, rigid materials such as tungsten carbide and high-speed steel, which are used in the cutting process. Despite this, the tools deflect or bend slightly when subjected to machining forces, just as the material they are cutting does. This can lead to issues such as an unattractive rippled surface on the part and difficulty meeting part tolerance requirements. It is also possible for the wall to chip, bend, or break. The greater the height of your wall (our maximum is 2 in. (51mm)), the thicker the material may need to be in order to increase its rigidity. Thin walls of less than 0.020 in. (0.508mm) are susceptible to breaking during machining, and they may flex or warp as a result of this.
4. Do not include small pocket features that you may not require.
In order to reduce overall weight or to accommodate other components of an assembly, some parts are designed with square corners or small internal corner pockets. But our larger cutting tools are unable to cut through internal 90-degree corners or small pockets because they are too small in size. Creating those entails picking away at the corner material with smaller and smaller tools as the material becomes more and more fragile. It is possible that six to eight different cutting tools will be required. All of those tool modifications increase run time, which, as you might guess, increases the cost of your project. To avoid this, first determine how critical the pockets are in terms of their importance.
5. Avoid creating holes that can't be threaded by following these guidelines.
Threaded holes can be easily added to your machined parts by our team. However, designing threads in such a way that our quoting software will recognize them—and in such a way that they will be machined into your part—can be difficult. Our quick turn process has a fixed number of threads that are always available. The hole diameter that will correspond to one of those threads is sought after by our software when CNC Machining Prototype analyzes your part, which is done automatically by our software. The software searches for holes with diameters that are within the range of the thread you're looking for, such as a UNC or UNF #5-40 thread. If the diameter of the thread does not fall within that range, you will be unable to assign that thread to your component. This is frequently the case when customers call, and it is at this point that we direct them to our quick-reference Threaded Hole Guidelines page. There you'll find a list of the different types of threads that we have available.
