Machining

Delivering Excellence Through Precision Machining

At NETFORM & Vickers, we offer a comprehensive range of precision machining services, designed to meet the diverse needs of our customers. Our commitment to precision, quality, and innovation is at the heart of everything we do.

Our capabilities include:

High-Volume Production: Leveraging our state-of-the-art machinery and automation, we excel in high-volume production, ensuring consistent quality and efficiency.
Prototyping: We work closely with our customers to develop and refine prototypes, ensuring the final product meets their exact specifications.
Light Assembly: Beyond machining, we offer automated light assembly services. With the aid of Red Rabbit, we seamlessly integrate assembly processes into our production line for a variety of components. This not only ensures precision but also results in cost savings by combining machining and assembly in one streamlined process.

State-of-the-Art Machining Capabilities

At NETFORM & Vickers Engineering, we harness the power of advanced technology to deliver superior machining services.

Our capabilities include:
- CNC Machining: With over 130 CNC machines, we offer precise, consistent, and efficient machining services.
- Automated Machining Cells: Our automated machining cells, powered by over 50 Fanuc robots, enable us to handle high-volume production with unparalleled efficiency.
- Non-Automated Machining Cells: For specialized tasks, our non-automated machining cells provide the flexibility and precision required.
- Light Assembly: Beyond machining, we offer light assembly services, providing a comprehensive solution for our customers.
- Various Materials: Vickers has extensive experience working with a wide range of materials. We procure ductile and gray iron castings, permanent mold and aluminum sand castings, high and low-pressure die castings, steel forgings, and a variety of bar stock products. This diverse material expertise allows us to meet a wide range of customer needs and specifications.

Our commitment to technology and innovation, combined with our extensive experience, allows us to deliver exceptional results across all our machining services.

The Art of machining for cold forming

The very nature of the cold forming process requires material with highly formable properties. These properties do not lend themselves easily to machining. Chip management is particularly challenging due to the machined material not wanting to break during machining.

In addition, the nature of cold forming requires that excess material over the finished components is minimized. This result in very small depths of cut during machining. These two factors together combined make machining of cold formed components a definite sub-process all to itself, in terms of speeds, feeds, insert design and so on.

Over 20 years, NETFORM has developed the art of machining of these cold formed components

Full range machining capabilities

NETFORM initially focused on basic turning operations. Over time, the range of machining processes has expanded to include:

Turning
Milling
Drilling
Broaching – Straight and Helical
Notching
Balancing
Robotic Deburring

Cellular Manufacturing

Cellular machining cells form the basis of post-processing activities at NETFORM-Shelby.

Parts move from operation to operation automatically in single part flow, with robots used extensively throughout the manufacturing cells. These cells are capable of manufacturing hundreds of thousands of parts to stringent quality standards typical in the automotive industry.

Operators manage these cells to ensure production goals are met, as well as ensuring that parts are made to specification.

Quality

The stringent quality requirements of the automotive industry dictate an organized and thorough approach that is a key element of the manufacturing cell design phase. The approach taken is driven by the component being manufactured, with options available that include:

Bench-based gaging, linked to a Quality Management System (QMS)
In-machine laser gaging providing 100% component checking for feature presence and/or size.
Special-built, dedicated inspection gages, installed in line, for 100% part validation and process control.
In-line vision cameras used for feature presence, burr detection etc.

These physical quality approaches are then married to the operator’s quality responsibilities for production.

This approach has resulted in a quality rating at NETFORM of the highest order, along with the IATF 16949 quality certification for both plants and PPM’s less than 2.