The Precision Machined Products Association is proud to serve its member companies in the precision machining industry.
We know the value that is added by our industry to our everyday lives: Ground and Aerospace Transportation, Safety, Appliances, Food Packaging, Tools, Off Road Equipment, Medical Devices- all of these markets rely on products made by precision machining shops to make their technologies work.
We are excited to provide information, resources, and networking opportunities that advance and sustain our members.
The precision machining industry is known to the statisticians in Washington, D.C. as NAICS 332721: Precision Machining.
Precision machining is defined this way: “This U.S. industry comprises establishments known as precision turned manufacturers primarily engaged in machining precision products of all materials on a job or order basis. Generally precision turned product jobs are large-volume using machines such as automatic screw machines, rotary transfer machines, computer numerically controlled (CNC) lathes or turning centers.”
The last year for which the U.S. Census shows data for our industry is 2006. That year, there were 2,528 firms and 2,582 establishments. The figures tell us that there are few multi-site precision machining companies in the United States.
Our industry employed about 76,640 men and women to make highly engineered, precision products in 2006. Our products typically are components of some other device (like a car, airplane, satellite, appliance or cell phone). They are not finished products that you would expect to buy at a store. Our parts are the technologies that make the other technologies work. That’s because we can produce to high precision and in the needed quantities.
What is the bottom line for this industry? The latest data for Value of Product Shipments of NAICS 332721 is for 2005. The precision machining industry created $9,791,795,000 of product shipments that year.
That’s $9.8 billion of sales.
For more info, read our article in Production Machining Magazine here.
Author: Miles Free
Great question came in the other day.
“Since the computers control the machines, why do we need to have physics in our graduation curriculum?”
I won’t tell you the State Board of Education that was looking at removing Physics from the high school curriculum.
Apparently they don’t see a need for a person entering the Precision Machining workplace to know any physics.
If they don’t understand the forces around them, how can they keep from getting hurt?
Here’s what I shared with them.
Since everything is computer controlled– that’s the new MAGIC, right?- why would any high school graduate going into the workplace these days need to know any physics? I’m guessing that, “so they can understand how the electricity that powers his machine the computer, and the lights,” isn’t a good enough answer.
1)Power and Work: All machines are horsepower rated. This determines what jobs they can perform. Materials are machined based on horsepower per cubic inch of removal per minute. By the State Board’s reasoning, “Since the clock takes care of the minutes, are we okay to just not know any of this?”
2) Mechanics: This is our craft! We need leverage, thread pitch, gear ratios, belts and pulleys. We calculate the surface feet per minute of rotating tools or workpieces, given the RPM and diameter. Even the computer needs this info. Cams, clutches, springs, motors, friction and frictional losses- these are physics. Bearings, force, stress, strain- these are applicable to understanding the machining task regardless of machine control type. Compressed air- expansion, horsepower required, volume, fluid flow…
3) Heat: Heat is the enemy in machining operations. Why not learn a little bit about this? Savvy shops today are using infrared thermography to detect bearing wear in equipment. Some kinds of tool failure are caused by heat. Understanding insulation, conduction, thermal expansion and contraction are key if the parts will be in spec after they have cooled down post machining.
4) Sound: Decibel measurement is important as applied to occupational exposure. Harmonics come into play on tools and workpieces as oscillation- chatter. Water hammer in plumbed systems and fluid power applications.
5) Light and optics: Non-contact gaging using lasers, optical projectors for quality control; optical flats for high precision measurements rely on counting interference bands… We use portable spectrometers for product sorting. Someone in the shop will need to have an understanding of spectrums, wavelengths, and emissions if they are to be more than an idiot operated go/no go gage.
6) Magnetism: Magnetism can cause surface finish problems if chips cling to work. There are several types of magnetic tests performed in our shops and those of our suppliers. They use eddy currents, permeability, gauss, oersteds, saturation, coercivity. We employ magnetism for proximity detection of parts, magnetic workholding , and for testing. It goes with out saying that it is magnetism in the electric motors that drives our machines.
What do you think about this topic? Do the people showing up looking for work have what it takes to understand your process? Or are they merely able to do what they are told?
After two weeks of disgust at the ongoing spill of oil into the Gulf of Mexico by the BP Deepwater Horizon leak, a friend of mine on facebook sold her car.
I congratulated her for her leadership, moral courage, and willingness to do her part.
Giving up your sole automobile as a political statement is a courageous act.
In her honor, here is a partial list of a few of the other things we would have to give up if we were to try, as she did, to eliminate petroleum and petroleum products from our lives.
You see, one 42 gallon barrel of oil yields about 19.4 gallons of gasoline for our cars. Fuel for our cars is not even one half of the barrel!
Among the other 22.6 gallons are thousands of items:
Shop Goods:
Metalworking fluids including oil, various solvent s and mineral spirits, grease; synthetic rubber, detergents/ cleaners, epoxy, safety glasses, tool boxes and racks, water pipes, trash bags, electrical tape, cable ties, paint, dyes, fan belts, even the roofing materials above our heads and insulation on our wiring.
Home Health and Sanitary:
Heart valves, artificial limbs, soft contact lenses, combs, toothbrushes, toilet seats, shampoo, pharmaceuticals (including vitamin capsules, antihistamines, anesthetics, aspirin, cortisone) toothpaste, deodorant, perfumes, cosmetics, and lipstick.
Everyday Living:
Telephones, computer cases, television cabinets, speakers, cameras, refrigerators, dishwasher parts, car battery cases, golf balls and bags, purses, basketballs, football helmets, cd’s and dvd’s, ice chests, sunglasses,watch bands, sweaters, yarns, and fabrics.
Americans consume petroleum products at the rate of three-and-a-half gallons a day and more than 250 cubic feet of natural gas per day each!
Not just as fuel…
List of petroleum based products original source. (Ranken Energy lists just 144 of the over 6000 products made from petroleum.)
Photo credit for Deepwater Horizon response equipment: why quality is job one in all our shops.
“If U.S. manufacturing were a country by itself, it would be the eighth largest economy in the world.”
Guest post by Patrick McKenna, Vice President, Nevada Heat Treating, Inc.
It happens to me fairly often. I’ll be at a party, or out to dinner with a group of people, and after someone in the group finds out I’m employed in manufacturing they will say “it’s really a shame that nothing is made in the U.S. anymore.”
It happened to me again last weekend. So I decided to look into the topic a bit more. I know we still make “things” here in the United States. I see it on a daily basis. Just how true is their comment that manufacturing has vanished in the U.S.?
I performed a little research on the topic and found the following statements in NAM’s (National Association of Manufacturers) “The Facts about Modern Manufacturing” 8th Edition (www.nam.org).
“Between 1947 and 2008, both manufacturing GDP and overall GDP rose over sevenfold. It is generally unnoticed that the quantity of manufactured goods has continued to grow, leaving many people with the incorrect notion that little domestic value is produced in the United States anymore.”
“Manufacturing production is now at the highest point in its history and is keeping pace with that of the overall economy in terms of physical output.”
“…the quantity of manufactured goods produced in the United States has kept pace with overall economic growth since 1947, as both GDP and manufacturing have grown by about seven times.”
“Over the last ten years ending in 2008, manufacturing value added has increased 22 percent.”
“Total manufacturing activity in the United States—measured in terms of physical output—continues to grow.”
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The United States still has the largest manufacturing sector in the world, and its market share (around 20 percent) has held steady for 30 years.”
“One in six private sector jobs is still in or directly tied to manufacturing.”
“Fifty-seven percent of all U.S. exports are in manufactured goods.”
“If U.S. manufacturing were a country by itself, it would be the eighth largest economy in the world.”
“U.S. manufacturing share of global manufacturing value added has barely budged from its 1980 level of 22 percent.”
Is the U.S. manufacturing sector still facing challenges? Yes
Has China gained market share of the global manufacturing sector? Yes
Does U.S. manufacturing face increased pressure from legislation? Yes
The U.S. manufacturing industry has challenges like every other business sector, but to the people who say that manufacturing has disappeared, I would offer the following quote…
“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”– Mark Twain
“What I can say is the Obama administration is business-friendly. We want to help with our actions, not with our words, “ says Nicole Lamb-Hale, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Manufacturing and Services. She made this comment during a keynote address at Industry Week’s “Pathway to Manufacturing Prosperity Conference” last Thursday in Chicago.
Article reporting this here.
Thank you Dr. Jekyll.
And now for Mr. Hyde?
“To those who have, for far too long, abused workers, put them in harm’s way, denied them fair pay, let me be clear: There is a new sheriff in town.” Secretary Hilda Solis’ comments following her swearing in at the Department of Labor.
Back to Dr. Jekyll:
“We have to nurture manufacturing here. It’s something that traditionally has been a backbone for U.S. economic growth.”
Industry Week reports: ‘ There has often been a sense of distrust between industry and the government sector which has only strained in recent years. That can only change, said Lamb-Hale, in baby steps. So what do you think?
Is the current administration business friendly?
Photo credit
But give OSHA the Booby Prize for “most ambiguous” News Release on their website announcing the rule.
In its Trade News Release, May 21, 2010: “Occupational exposures to hexavalent chromium can occur among workers handling pigments, spray paints and coatings containing chromates, operating chrome plating baths, and welding or cutting metals containing chromium, such as stainless steel.”
Link.
Cutting metals containing chromium, such as stainless steel!
Our industry cuts stainless steel in our machines at ambient temperatures every day. Not to worry, no hex chrome involved. Our machine cutting processes are not “oxidative.” They don’t make the chromium in stainless steel “hexavalent.”
Here’s what another place on the OSHA website says about forming hexavalent chromium from stainless steel :
“Hexavalent chromium can also be formed when performing “hot work” such as welding on stainless steel or melting chromium metal. In these situations the chromium is not originally hexavalent, but the high temperatures involved in the process result in oxidation that converts the chromium to a hexavalent state.” Link.
What the OSHA Trade Release should have said was “HOT WORK TORCH CUTTING” that can generate a metal fume.
In the mean time, even if OSHA can’t speak with precision, we just want to let you know that if you happen to do HOT WORK welding or torch cutting on stainless steels, decorative or hard chrome electroplating or any other process involving – say- chromic acid, that June 15th, 2010 is the effective date for the direct final rule requiring employers to notify their workers of all hexavalent chromium exposures.
Everybody else- just relax.
It’s still safe to use stainless steel to eat your food. To make your cookstove and kitchen appliances. Your pots and pans. And to machine precision parts on your cam type automatic or cnc precision machining lathe or mill. Photo: Sur la Table
Its still okay to use this too, just don’t take it on a plane.
Case Knife
Blue- footed Booby
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Listen as you watch.
Until you get this saw, you better keep the guards in place on your equipment!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3mzhvMgrLE&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
1000 G’s Deceleration!
While this is an amazing technology, it reminds us to keep our wits about us and guards in place on our equipment. Enjoy!
Guest post by James Pryor.
Indirect costs are 4 to 10 times the actual direct costs of an accident or serious OSHA violation.
We all know the direct cost of a failed safety program – an accident that results in Fines, Medical Costs, Temporary Total Disability, Permanent Partial Disability, Penalty Ratings on Workers Comp, and increased Actuarial Fees.
But what are the indirect costs?
But here are 7 indirect costs to consider the next time you think that safety training isn’t worth your time:
- Downtime
- Accident Investigation
- Additional Training
- Replacement Wages including benefits, pension, social security, unemployment and workers compensation premiums
- Production slow down
- Equipment damage, replacement and associated costs
- Miscellaneous costs such as customer perception
Indirect costs plus direct costs have been estimated to be as much as 1% of total sales.
Thats about $10,000 per $1,000,000 in Sales.
What else can you invest in today that will have such an impact on your shop’s bottom line?
Photo
It feels like our industry just finished a year long work out at the gym.
Based on this, I’d say we have lost a lot of weakness as we cut waste and reduced capacity.
Now that we are out of the Gym, and back to a “new normal,” are we still managing like we were in the gym workout?
Or are we managing in light of the new business environment?
We lost weight and built organizational muscle able to do more with less.
Now that we are out of the Gym, shouldn’t we be focused on rebuilding our business, and less on losing weight…
What do you think?
See our article in Production Machining Our Year in the Gym
Photo credit