A customer came to us with small, thin Acetal and ABS plastic parts looking for a competitive bid for an initial 50-piece order. Another shop was manufacturing the components, however, the lead time and cost were too high.
Solution:
The parts, as shown, are 2.5 mm thick with partial depth features and a dimensional tolerance requirement of 0.1 mm.
CNC machining was the only way to manufacture this part and meet the required tolerances. The customer provided sample parts, and after inspection, it was clear that the previous manufacturer had struggled to hold and achieve the required tolerance on the part’s overall thickness and feature locations. As a result, the parts were warped, and the thickness varied from end to end.
Small, thin parts can be challenging to machine, not just due to the small features but because they are difficult to hold. Over the years, we have implemented many common strategies to hold small parts, including custom soft jaws, double-sided tape, super glue, vacuum tables, partial depth machining with tabs, and a combination of methods with varying levels of success.
During this experimentation period, Renovo CNC developed a novel method of securely holding small, thin parts, allowing us to completely machine the part with one fixture setup. For this customer, we reduced their part price by 40% and reduced the lead time to our standard seven working days. Since then, we have made hundreds of custom CNC machined small, thin parts for this customer and others.
Contact Renovo CNC or upload your model file and select the instant quote and instant price option to see what we can do for cnc machining thin parts for you today.