It was, perhaps, inevitable that the success of Just-In-Time production would find its way to the CNC machining process.  Suppliers and wholesalers have for decades now shown the incredible benefits of JIT inventory control.  There was an inexplicable disconnect between being able to restock consumer electronics in a day and having to wait months for […]

There’s a real Renaissance happening in medicine today, and Advanced CNC Machining is playing a part.  When COVID-19 hit in 2020, the first vaccine was rolled out in a matter of months thanks to years of research into mRNA.  Prior to that point, the fastest vaccine development had been four years. Putting Advanced CNC Machining […]

Manufacturers talk a lot about quality.  Everyone wants to be known for putting out quality products.  “Quality is our job.” “No one beats our quality!”   Well, “Quality” is a great buzzword, but how can you tell what they mean -if they mean anything? In the realm of CNC machining, there are a couple of common […]

Environmental sustainability isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when someone mentions CNC machining, but Macfab has made environmental responsibility a key component in our business philosophy.  As we see it, doing what we can to promote sustainable manufacturing makes sense for us and our customers. Our operations are tightly integrated.  We use the […]

You can’t escape stories about artificial intelligence these days.  The Internet is blowing up with tech’s drive to roll it out and tales -from humorous to frightening- about early results.  But rest assured; artificial intelligence is coming. AI is not new in itself.  Early systems have been in use for years.  These are not the […]

Macfab is both pleased and humbled by the opportunities we’ve been given over the last 35 years.  There’s no mistaking that it’s been difficult work.  There have been challenges, and we’ve faced each one head-on.  At year’s end, it’s traditional to look back with gratitude and forward with expectation.  This year, though, we have a […]

The old adage is “measure twice; cut once”.  It’s as true today as it ever was, only in the world of quality CNC inspection, we measure a lot more than twice.  The complex shapes, delicate features, and tight tolerances of precision CNC machined parts demand higher accuracy than ever before.  It’s those once-impossible designs that […]

When you organize your CNC machine shop to reduce waste, downtime, and inefficiencies, that’s called lean manufacturing.  The underlying principles of lean manufacturing were formed almost a century ago at Toyota Motor Works.  In the years since, countless books and papers have been written on the topic and it has become the dominant system in […]

CNC machining summons images of strangely shaped aluminum plates or steel gears being formed by spinning bits. The machines are huge and complex. But precision production has a softer side, too with plastic machining. We’ve all seen metal parts replaced with engineered plastics to save money or weight. It’s easy to think that they just […]

For decades, manufacturing process R&D has been an integral part of shaping MacFab’s service capabilities and technological advancements. Our lessons learned include “what not to do” as well as “what to do”. Although many of our research projects were, at the time, product specific, the knowledge and experience gained were transferable to a variety of […]