The Importance of CAD Models in Manufacturing

CAD (computer-aided design) models have changed the way the manufacturing industry designs and manufactures parts. There’s no doubt that since CAD technology, there has been a huge turning point for the better. Before CAD, designers used paper, pencils, rulers, compasses, and other tools to go about their drafting. It was cumbersome, time consuming, and a nuisance at times especially when there were changes being made to the design. Continue reading

Estimating and Planning Manufacturing

Estimating and planningEstimating and planning to manufacture product is one of the most important stages of the entire manufacturing process. Both set the stage for how the manufacturing will be performed as well as determine the cost. Here at VIP, we find these two stages of pre-manufacturing to be the most important to invest time to ensure parts can be made effectively and with the capabilities in-house. There’s nothing worse than bidding a job without fully estimating the costs and planning out the manufacturing process, and find out you underbid it or you didn’t have the right equipment or tooling to actually fabricate. Here at VIP, we take everything into account when planning and estimating. So for this blog post, we are going to share some of the important types of information we look for in order to properly estimate and plan a request for quote:

Remanufacturing: A New Type of Manufacturing

remanufacturingWhat do you mean a new type of manufacturing? Manufacturing is creating a product out of raw material, labor, machines, and tools. How can there be a new type? In recent years with the ongoing mindset to conserve resources and prevent waste, many companies are exploring the business of REmanufacturing; meaning taking a product that is no longer in use, at the end of its product life, or salvaged material in order to create a new or refurbished product. Continue reading

Sheet Metal Punching vs. Stamping

Those who are not familiar with the sheet metal world can often confuse the difference between sheet metal punching and sheet metal stamping. It sounds like one in the same since the two verbs sort of mean the same thing…right? This blog post will distinguish the difference between the two. A good reason to distinguish the difference is because the manufacturers of punching and stamping are almost always different. You wouldn’t go to a sheet metal fabricator who specializes in punching and ask for stamping, and vice versa. This is due to the different equipment involved in achieving punching versus stamping.

To give you a quick glance at the difference between the two, take a look at the different characteristics below: Continue reading

Realistic Manufacturing Quantities

“I’d like a quote for 1, 5, 25, 50, 100, 1000.” I’m sure you’ve seen or heard people request quantities like this before. From a manufacturers’ point of view, this can cause an issue with quoting a price. Reason being, the difference of how a part is manufactured when making 1 as oppose to 1,000 are polar opposites because they will be made differently. You may be asking yourself, ‘why when it’s the same part,’ right? The answer to that solely depends on the actual part being made, but let’s do an example.

Say you’re fabricating a sheet metal enclosure where there are several bends, holes, welding, and hardware. When fabricating low quantities, here are the factors that need to be considered: Continue reading