Exotic Metal Shop

 

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Exotic metals machining: As a premier machine shop, we have significant experience with the machining of various metals. Our Aerospace customers usually seem to use Inconel, Aluminum, Stainless Steel and Titanium. Our Medical systems customers seem to prefer Precipitation hardened Stainless Steel, Extra Low Inter Grain (ELI) Titanium (for example 6Al4V which has 6% Aluminum and 4% Vanadium) and the purified metals like VAR (vacuum arc remelt) alloys of Stainless and Inconel. While performing micro machining or micron toleranced machining, the purity of the metal and its grain structure is critical. Microscopic imperfections would be unacceptable. Our Communications customers often prefer the Invar and Kovar materials because of their very low CTE. If you have a specific project, our manufacturing engineers would be pleased to discuss with you their manufacturing experience related to your design ideas. Below are some general comments based on our Experience: Invar & Kovar (difficult to machine. Their high nickel content makes them gummy to cut; While being machined, this metal tends to shift around and swell. Very malleable. Molybdenum (offers excellent refractive and thermal coefficients. We do Machine it and EDM it but it cannot be left in the water tank too long – it corrodes easily). Titanium (it is less exotic than is commonly believed and actually quite easy to machine) Gold & Silver (Not too often, as you can expect) High Purity Copper (needs to be handled with special cotton gloves because body oils can contaminate the surfaces permanently!) Hard Milling of Stainless Steel (to avoid further heat treatment after machining, we can offer hard milling up to 62 Rc – true 5 axis milling and not grinding!) Inconel (We are currently turning and milling hardened Inconel with 40 Rc. Inconel is very abrasive to tooling).