Machine-Ready Blanks are pre-machined, square or round, cut-to-size pieces of raw metal. They are saw cut, then ground and milled so that they are square and flat at tight-tolerances.
By TCI supplying steel or aluminum blanks that are pre-machined to your exact net shape, it allows your CNC machines to get right to final machining, without prep time.
Our customers use Machine-Ready Blanks in both tooling and production.
The accuracy of pre-machined blanks provides close tolerances and consistency from blank-to-blank. This eliminates material preparation, reduces set up time, streamlines fixturing, reduces scrap and can increase overall throughput by 25% or more, without increasing overhead.
If you are looking for ways to improve your machining processes and become more lean, here are ten things about Machine-Ready Blanks you should consider:
Watch the following time lapsed video to see how much time you can save by starting your next job with machine-ready materials.
“Machine-ready blanks cost more than oversized stock.”
You’d be surprised. TCI is a master distributor with a wide partnership of material suppliers. We are adding value to low cost material, and passing those savings on to you. Couple that with your decreased cycle times, and the TCO simply can’t be beat. The time saved in your shop almost always exceeds any increase in “raw” material cost, especially on production runs.
“Blanks aren’t useful on my horizontal mill, or when I vise.”
Any time saved is increased productivity and gained throughput. Calculate how much time you spend squaring up your parts (facing, squaring, parting-off) and multiply that by your quantity. Even if it’s just seconds per part, it can come out to hours or days by the end of the job. That time saved can be spent working on your next job.
“It takes too long to get blanks that are squared up. It’s much faster to get oversized stock.”
With TCI stocking material on our floor, we are able to get parts on your dock in the same time-frame as your current supplier, even with our squaring and flattening processes. Better yet, place a blanket order, and we’ll keep stock on the shelf for JIT (Just in Time) releases, when you need them.
Using our material or yours, we provide tight-tolerance Machine-Ready Blanks that arrive ready to go directly from receiving to finish machining.
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