Which way to grow? welding, EDM or 3D metal printing

[Chips1987]

Hello all, I are looking to grow our AS91000 certified machining business that works with tight tolerances. I would like to add something else to our business but I am not sure what would be the best thing to add. Some ideas are adding a welding shop so we can be a one stop for some of our customers or get into wire EDM and make splines and gears. Another idea was to get into 3D metal printing. What do you think? or should we just stick to what we know how to do best, make chips.


What else do you provide that you think could help us grow? Any advice would be appreciated

thank you in advance.

 

[wmpy]

For us, we have never added services unless our customers needed them. In the past, we had farmed out surface grinding, centerless grinding, thread rolling, and induction heat treating. All of those processes have since been brought in house. But this was only done because there was an ongoing need. It's a much safer bet to do it that way than to speculate on what services you could sell.

 

[mneuro]

Need more info.
What machines do you have now? Why type of work do you do? I assume aerospace because of the cert but who knows. What size parts? What do you subcontract now? What are your customers asking for?

 

[Chips1987]

Thank you for all the replies. the path we are expanding in is the government contracts section and we will see where that brings us for now. From What i heard, this is a long process to get through.

To answer Meuro's questions, We have both milling and lathes, Most of them are Hass'es. We do commercial and aerospace parts. we try to stay with the more complex parts- 5 axes as they tend to be more profitable. We can turn up to 12 inches and mill 24 X 40. Our customers are not asking for anything but machining but we would like to grow and have more diversity.

 

[Booze Daily]

A lathe with a barfeeder, or add one to one of your your current lathes. You will be able to do larger qty orders with less manpower and not as steep of a learning curve as opposed to learning a whole new process.

 

[michiganbuck]

Because surface grinders can be so easily set up for such a great number of duties with a minimum of fixtures I would suggest a manual and an automatic surface grinder.
Not uncommon that a tickle on a part can be faster than trying to pull tenths or thousandths with a mill.
Yes best to have grinders in a separate area.

 

[triumph406]

Because surface grinders can be so easily set up for such a great number of duties with a minimum of fixtures I would suggest a manual and an automatic surface grinder.
Not uncommon that a tickle on a part can be faster than trying to pull tenths or thousandths with a mill.
Yes best to have grinders in a separate area.

yes you want to keep the Grinder hands away from the civilized side of the shop