Gold-plated tungsten wire is useful in filtration, printing, copying, and other applications, and as an alternative to precious metals in some medical devices.

For EDM electrodes, copper tungsten offers excellent electrical conductivity, DC arcing resistance, thermal conductivity, and wear resistance.

In material sourcing for the production of precision parts, avoiding non-standard material sizes can help to control costs and optimize for manufacturability.

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Learn how better materials for resistance welding electrodes speed up your welding operation. This white paper is designed to help you make a successful electrode materials choice.

While graphite is often used, the properties of copper tungsten make it an ideal material for EDM electrodes for certain applications.

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Metal tubing continues to play a critical role in medical device manufacturing, but with the array of available plastic materials it can be hard to determine which material is the right one.

Metal Cutting Corporation uses visual and mechanical methods of metal inspection to help ensure that small parts meet customers’ manufacturing requirements.

For deburring of small metal parts, mass production requires the action of hand tools to be re-created by mechanical devices suited to high-volume applications.

How do you qualify a new sourcing partner and ensure an efficient and problem free experience? Considering these points will help you make a decision you can feel confident about.

To avoid the challenges of verifying OD/ID concentricity, try to use other applicable GD&T symbols in place of concentricity in tubing drawings and designs.

Wire EDM cutting advantages and disadvantages for 2-axis cutoff depend on factors including the material used, part parameters, and surface finish requirements.

Get an expert machinist’s perspective on how CNC metal cutting has evolved in the age of tight tolerance, micro-machining of small parts.

Learn why the characteristics of titanium tube make it a good choice for medical devices and other applications that require strength, light weight, and corrosion resistance.

Our name might not give it away, but precision cut off of tight tolerance, small metal parts is at the core of our business.

Learn how additive manufacturing (AM) — one of today’s fastest growing technological innovations — is changing the face of contract manufacturing everywhere.

Unfortunately, consistent results aren’t always guaranteed. Learn what you can do to ensure calibrated measuring yields accurate results.

With a metric tolerance chart, you need to account for the upper and lower tolerance spec limits when converting between standard and metric measurements.

Learn more about Metal Cutting’s certification in the ISO 9001:2015 standards and commitment to quality management practices.

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Dopants raise the recrystallization temperature of tungsten wire and other wires, giving non-sag properties to tungsten light bulb filaments and other products.

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There is also axis straightness, a characteristic we deal with often here at Metal Cutting Corporation. Axis straightness controls how much bow or curve is allowed in the axis of a part. (Read more about measuring straightness.)

The centerless grinding process is ideal for finishing small cylindrical metal parts that require a tight tolerance and high-volume production. Learn some of the fundamentals of this process.

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Copper tungsten electrodes combine the thermal resistivity of tungsten with copper’s resistance to DC arcing, making them a smart choice for EDM of carbides.

Waterjet cutting is typically used to cut complex shapes from large, flat sheets of metal but may not be the best choice for 2-axis cutoff of small parts.

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Utilizing a controlled environment helps to minimize the effects of heat expansion and other temperature issues on the measurement of metal parts.

Learn about the variables to consider when choosing the best resistance welding electrode material for specific resistance spot welding applications.

Tungsten wire continues to be a product that has a large number of diverse applications, for many of which there is no known substitute. Find out why tungsten remains widely used.

The straightness properties of tungsten wire make it valuable for small diameter tungsten probes used in semiconductor wafer testing and neural activity testing.

Pull rings for medical devices can be cut from 304 grade stainless steel tube or Swiss machined to provide specialty features and use other materials.

Over time, we’ve developed a special appreciation for tungsten and what it can do. Learn some interesting facts you may not have known.

Get answers to common questions about dissimilar metals regarding high and low conductivity electrodes and friction stir in the construction of an electrode.

The characteristic of flatness is useful in helping to ensure even wear across a surface. It is also useful where two surfaces must meet flush and form a tight seal, as with two surfaces bolted together with a gasket in between.

In January 2019, Apple touted the tight flatness tolerance of its new iPad Pro models. The company said the new iPad Pro was manufactured to “[allow] for no more than 400 microns of deviation across the length of any side — less than the thickness of four sheets of paper.”

Eddy current testing is an important method of nondestructive testing. See what you may not have known about the process.

Industry Trend No. 3: Rising labor costs overseas are one factor in the move away from outsourcing and toward reshoring of some businesses and factories.

Learn how to prevent and detect surface flaws in the glass to metal seals used in the manufacture of a wide range of electronic products.

With its unique properties, tungsten wire is used in a wide range of industry applications, from tungsten filament wire bulbs to tungsten thermocouples.

Thin-wheel abrasive cutting is an ideal method for high-volume 2-axis metal cutoff that requires precision, tight tolerances, no burrs, and a smooth end finish.

When designing a part, remember that different tolerances may require different processes, and not all processes can produce results to the same tolerance.

While laser cutting can produce a small kerf and tight tolerances, other precision cutting methods may be preferable for 2-axis cutoff of small metal parts.

Specifying the magnification level and details of how a material surface must be examined helps to ensure that parts will pass inspection and meet your needs.

Learn the advantages of copper tungsten electrodes for resistance spot welding of wire harnesses in battery electric vehicles (BEVs).

Learn the key parameters for choosing a method of 2-axis precision cut off of metal parts based on part type, material type, and part dimensions.

For intricate geometries, sharp corners, unparalleled wear resistance, excellent cutting speeds and machinability, copper tungsten is the material of choice.

Learn the vital components of an effective quality control program and its role in ensuring that metal parts meet their requirements for design and function.

When polishing metal parts for 3D printed medical devices, the goal is to achieve the proper surface finishes while maintaining the device’s complex design details.

Coordinate measuring machines (CCMs) allow for a type of 3D measurement, creating virtual planes to which a part’s surface profile can be compared. So, a CCM can be used to measure points across the length and width of a part to check that the entire surface is within the flatness tolerance.

Surface finish requirements are just some of the details critical to completing an RFQ that will help you optimize for manufacturability.

Learn how the properties of copper tungsten reduce or eliminate the challenges posed by those materials when they are used in their pure forms.

Adherence to ISO 9000 standards by an organization tells customers that it is committed to implementing structured quality management practices.

Second, measuring the surface flatness of the cut end on very small parts — such as tubes with a diameter of 0.040″ (1.016 mm) and other tiny parts we typically produce here at Metal Cutting — is virtually impossible.

Proper electrode design and construction is essential to ensuring consistent weld quality, minimum electrode sticking, and maximum electrode life. Learn how electrode design can impact your prod line.

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A metal surface finish chart is a handy guide to standard surface finishes and characteristics such as measurement units, conversions, and typical Ra values.

It may be tempting to assume that a very tight tolerance should be your default choice. But, when they aren’t essential, it could increase your costs needlessly.

Instead, our customers typically are more concerned with parallelism, angles, and the perpendicularity of the end cut rather than surface flatness. Additionally, our customers are looking for end cuts that are burr-free, especially with parts that need to mate with other parts.

OD grinding is used to shape the external surface of objects between the centers and excels at removing circular defects and restoring or creating roundness.

Learn how potting can be used to create a tightly sealed package for electronic switching devices, such as the flat ribbon in semiconductors.

Parallelism can be used when two surfaces need to work in sync and at a constant distance from each other. It can also be used when you have a part that needs to fit between two planes that must reference each other.

Learn some common myths about plastic and reasons why it may not be a better choice than metal tubing for medical device applications.

The key to calibration tolerance is understanding both what a device is capable of doing and the tolerance to which the device has been calibrated.

Flatness is a measure of a surface’s form compared against itself, indicating that all the points along the surface lie in the same plane. Symbolized in GD&T by a parallelogram, flatness allows you to limit waviness or variation in a surface without tightening its dimensional tolerance.

Consider the methods used for heat treating metals, as well as the effects, when specifying your requirements for the cut-off of small metal parts.

Third, the flatness of a part can’t be measured by placing it on a table and running a height gage over the part. That’s because the table would then be part of the data — and so, you would be measuring parallelism, not flatness.

While honing and lapping are both used to fine-tune the finish and dimensions of metal parts, the two processes differ in where and how they achieve results.

In small parts manufacturing, ASTM International and other organizations publish standards for flatness tolerances for steel, aluminum, and other materials, in forms ranging from plates, sheets, and bars to wires, rods, and tubes.

It’s critical to choose a supplier you can envision working with for the long haul. Review these practical guidelines to make the right decision.

For measuring and inspecting the ID of small parts tubing, pin gages or optical measurement systems help ensure that small tubing will meet specifications.

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The flatness tolerance zone is the area between two parallel planes, into which the surface in question would need to fit in order to qualify as “flat.” The flatness tolerance would be the allowable distance between those parallel planes.

While an automatic lathe can do simple 2-axis cutoff of metal rods and tubes, it is designed for more complex, multi-step machining operations.

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Learn more about the principles of centerless grinding and how it can be used to achieve tight tolerance surface finishes on small cylindrical metal parts.

Follow these tips on how to choose a vendor for cut off metal parts and get the results you want for your precision manufacturing needs.

Flatness, then, is a characteristic of a three-dimensional (3D) object as it exists between the two parallel planes that delineate its tolerance zone.

Metal Cutting utilizes lapping and machining as well as other techniques to achieve flatness vs. parallelism for metal cut to length.

Surface finish requirements are among the details that are critical to creating a complete RFQ that will help to optimize for manufacturability.

Learn why manufacturers, designers, and engineers need to keep metal expansion from heat in mind when they create part specifications and decide how precise the part’s dimensions need to be.

Learn about the role that tight tolerance plays in optimizing for manufacturability, and how to specify tolerances to ensure part quality and control costs.

Unlike flatness across the plane of a single surface, perpendicularity compares the orientation of adjoining surfaces. In GD&T, perpendicularity tolerance is usually used to control either two 90° surfaces or an axis in relation to a particular reference point on a cylinder.

A fully complete RFQ tells a story about the buyer, the company, and the end product and its use — information we can use to provide the right quote (and the right price).

At Metal Cutting, where we produce thousands of rods, tubes, and wires cut to length every day, we don’t often work with flatness tolerance for the surfaces we cut, due to their very small sizes.

Surface grinding services utilize precision surface grinding methods to make cubic metal parts square and parallel or the ends of metal rods perpendicular.

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Learn why precision CNC Swiss machining is used in the production of medical electrodes made from MP35N® for electrical signal delivery devices.

When choosing a resistance welding electrode for any application, a thorough understanding of material properties helps to avoid production line issues.

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In comparing common tungsten uses in 2007 and today, it is clear that tungsten remains one of the most widely used and beneficial of the refractory metals.

Surface flatness is an indicator of all points along a surface lying in the same plane, with the highest and lowest points within the flatness tolerance range.

Industry Trend No. 1: Increased exporting and global trade has a positive impact on revenue, growth, and competitiveness, while expanding a manufacturer’s customer base.

While CNC machining can produce an array of complex, precision metal components, there are some challenges to the process you need to be aware of.

By providing detailed and complete specifications up front — including clear and carefully thought-out tolerances for surface flatness and other important characteristics — you can play a truly vital role in optimizing for manufacturability and helping us manage both costs and quality.

Learn how tungsten as an alternative to precious metals can help you achieve uncompromising quality and still keep your budget on track.

Precision tubing plays a vital role in helping to ensure the accuracy of liquid dispensing systems used in many biotechnology and laboratory environments.

Electrochemical cutting (ECC) combines electrochemical erosion and grinding to produce a burr-free, shiny surface to a tight tolerance of ±0.005” (0.127 mm).

Different precision metal cutting options vary in characteristics and appropriate applications, making the choice not quite so easy. This guide will help.

Cold sawing can do high-speed, burr-free cutoff of rods, tubes, and extrusions, but it is not ideal for very short lengths, smalls ODs/IDs, or hard metals.

While automation plays a growing role in precision machining, lights out operation is still more a fantasy than a reality for most small part manufacturing.

How does laser cutting compare with other precision metal cutting methods? Watch this video to learn some of the pros and cons of this metal cutting method.

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Along with positioning, cylindricity, and other geometric tolerancing characteristics, flatness tolerance may be indicated on an engineering drawing to help ensure the metal parts that are produced will have both the correct form and the desired functionality.

High precision internal grinding methods such as ID grinding and honing are used to achieve smooth finishes and tight tolerances on bore, hole, and tube IDs.

Flatness is notoriously hard to measure. First of all, there really is no such thing as “perfectly flat” (or “perfectly” anything!).

The electrochemical grinding process is a highly specialized method that combines surface grinding, chemistry, and fixturing, and has limited applications.

GD&T cylindricity is a three-dimensional tolerance feature used to indicate both roundness and straightness along the entire axial length of a cylindrical part.

The creation of new specialty metals offers alternatives to stainless steel for components used in medical device applications.

Learn how best practices as well as material and design considerations have an impact on the life and effectiveness of resistance spot welding electrodes.

Tungsten, also known as wolfram or volfram, has a high melting point and other interesting properties that are useful in many industries and products.

Surface straightness, on the other hand, is two-dimensional (2D). Its tolerance zone exists between two parallel lines and is an indicator of flatness along one line on a part’s surface.

The characteristics of the precision tubing used in liquid dispensing systems can significantly affect the fluid dispensing process and testing accuracy.

Learn how the right electrode material, design, and construction can help to prevent bonding problems in resistance spot welding electrodes.

Along with using CNC machining to create a stronger plastic and aluminum enclosure, the tighter flatness tolerance was part of Apple’s response to complaints about bending issues in various devices.

Industry Trend No. 2: Manufacturing globalization and regionalization provide opportunities for partnership, innovation, competitive advantage, and growth.

Laser printing of metal is popular for a number of applications, but can you‭ ‬use it for printing of metal for‭ ‬such large quantities of such small parts?

Surface flatness is one of the Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) standards used to communicate how a part should be manufactured. It can also be an important consideration when optimizing for manufacturability.

Thousands of resin compounds have been developed to expand the design options for tubing in medical devices. Yet, there are number of myths. Learn why plastic may not be a better choice to metal tubing in medical applications.

Learn 7 simple rules to help ensure that calibrated measuring yields accurate and consistent results for your small parts manufacturing.

Explore the advantages of pure tungsten and pure molybdenum as alternative materials for use in spot welding electrodes.

Incandescent bulbs made with tungsten wire filaments continue to be used in automobile turn signals despite the parallel adoption of newer LED technology.

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Learn why resistance welding electrodes require a material with the right combination of thermal conduction, electrical resistivity, and reactivity.

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The process of creating a vacuum atmosphere, either repeatedly or in one-time production, is an important part of electronic component manufacturing.

We can also use our OGP SmartScope system to measure multiple random points along the surface plane of a part to make sure the highest and lowest points are within the allowable tolerance range.

Custom bushings that are Swiss machined for use in catheters and other medical devices allow the devices to function at a high RPM while resisting wear.

When a single part has multiple tolerances that conflict, the tighter, more challenging tolerance must guide production and ultimately drives the part’s cost.

At Metal Cutting, we typically fixture the part so that the surface to be measured is level; we confirm this by finding three opposite points on the part surface that are the same height.

Learn about the five major challenges to consider when choosing CNC machining services and a partner for the manufacture of complex and precise small parts.

Instead, you need to make sure the points along the surface of the part are within the flatness tolerance zone, comparing the surface to two imaginary parallel planes.

Finding a supplier who can deliver quality and on-time service can be tough, especially when it comes to the medical device and other heavily regulated industries. This guide makes it simple.

Choosing the right resistance spot welding electrode for an application depends on understanding critical properties of the different electrode materials.

Learn how to optimize for manufacturability through a unified approach to product design and the creation of a thorough and detailed request for quote (RFQ).

Looking at it another way, the tolerance zone is the highest and lowest (±) acceptable points across the plane of the surface that is being measured.

Learn how the guide bushing and other features of modern CNC Swiss screw machines eliminate deflection to improve efficiency, consistency, and accuracy.

For the complete range of GD&T features, from parallelism, perpendicularity, and angularity to circularity, straightness, and flatness, the goal at Metal Cutting is always to keep production cost effective while delivering the very best quality for our customers’ products.

When measuring the perpendicularity of small metal parts, consider the effects of a part’s diameter, length, straightness, and manufacturing method.

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At Metal Cutting, we typically measure perpendicularity in terms of a part in relationship to its end cut, comparing the side of a rod, tube, or wire to the end cut we put on that part. (Read more about measuring perpendicularity.)

Double disk grinding provides dimensional accuracy for metal part applications that require tight tolerances, parallelism, flatness, and thickness control.

Any surface will have flaws under the right magnification. In this video we explain the inherent challenges with blanket requests and how to overcome them.

Calibration standards for devices and equipment used in measuring, inspecting, and manufacturing of precision metal parts can pose some unique challenges.

Unlike flatness, which does not consider any other data or features, parallelism compares the orientation of opposite surfaces. While there is also such a thing as axis parallelism, in GD&T it is most often called out for controlling parallelism between two surfaces or features.

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Circularity tolerance based on diameter helps to control roundness and ensure that small precision metal parts fit properly, move smoothly, and wear evenly.

The Swiss machine has evolved and improved since the original Swiss lathe was invented, making the modern method an important part of precision CNC machining.

Learn why a small diameter metal probe requires choosing a material that is strong enough to maintain the probe’s shape, straightness, and direction.

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What is lapping? In the right hands, this little-known process can produce parts with highly polished ends, tight length tolerances, and extraordinary flatness.

Chromacity · Chromacity Lasers is a spin-out from Herriot Watt University, one of the UK's leading technical universities with a focus on photonics. The ...

In circular runout vs. total runout, the first controls variation in circular features of a part while the other controls variation in the entire part surface. Learn the difference and how to measure them here.

Unfortunately, consistent results aren’t always guaranteed. Learn what you can do to ensure calibrated measuring yields accurate results.

People often ask Metal Cutting Corporation if we do “metal fabrication” — and the truth is, the answer depends on how you define the term.

As important as inspections are, 100% inspection requires time and cost without a guarantee of 100% compliance. See what a sampling plan is and how it solves this challenge.

While the most familiar use of tungsten (incandescent light bulbs) continues to fade, the unique range of properties continue to make tungsten wire irreplaceable for a number of products and applications.

Precision metal grinding is often the best way to remove small amounts of material and achieve the right finish or tight tolerance dimensions on part surfaces.

With these RFQ tips, you can not only speed up the quote process, but also ensure you get the part you want and a cost estimate that is as accurate as possible.

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We then put a height gage on various other points across the part to note any differences and check that the entire part is within specifications for flatness.

Learn how precision cut off and stamping compare in achieving distortion-free flatness, a sharp edge, and the precise exterior diameter needed for a spacing ring.

The properties of tungsten wire are valued in the medical device industry, for use in electrocautery, electrosurgery, neural probes, and other applications.

Eddy current testing is an important method of nondestructive testing that is often used to inspect for flaws in the surface or sub-surface of metal materials.

There are 5 key areas that should never be left blank when filling out your request for cutting quote. Do you know what they are?

However, customers do on occasion ask us to help them achieve a specified flatness tolerance — for instance, on parts that have a larger surface area, that have been machined, or that were pre-made and supplied to us by customers for additional finishing.

With profile of a line vs. profile of a surface, the former controls variation at specified cross sections while the latter controls the entire feature surface.

For some medical device applications requiring biomaterials, tungsten and gold-plated tungsten wire may be suitable alternatives to precious metals such as gold.

Learn the vital components of an effective quality control program and its role in ensuring metal parts meet their requirements for design and function.

Precision CNC Swiss machining is often used to produce bone screws and anchors with the features needed for a wide range of orthopedic and dental applications.

Design of mid-infrared amplifiers based on fiber taper coupling to erbium-doped microspherical resonator. Mescia, Luciano; Bia, Pietro; De Sario, Marco; Di ...

Learn about the advantages of precision CNC machining in the manufacture of small, complex parts requiring tight tolerances, smooth finishes, and repeatability.

GD&T tolerances provide manufacturing guidance that must balance the need to make a part functional with the need to produce the part cost-effectively.

In these instances, we make good use of our lapping equipment to attain smooth, flat surfaces that meet customer specifications.

Small gages such as pin gages or pin plug gages are useful tools for inspecting IDs and making sure small diameter metal tubing meets specified tolerances.

Precision flat lapping and other lapping techniques can be used for small parts requiring tight control of surface finish, flatness, thickness, and parallelism.

Feb 14, 2019 — The s-component of the field is the projection of E that lies along the axis orthogonal to the plane of incidence, while the p-projection lies ...

Learn about the important role of machining and tooling in the manufacture of metal parts for today’s fuel injection systems.

Learn why infiltration, density, and other properties of an alloy such as copper tungsten are important to  the quality of spot welding electrodes.

A statistically valid sampling plan in quality control provides a high level of confidence that if the sample is acceptable, the entire lot is acceptable.

The metal shearing process can be quick and inexpensive for cutting some simply shaped parts, but it has disadvantages including burrs and end deformation.

With the eddy current testing ‬procedure, there are a number of variables that ‬have an effect on ECT, what it can find,‭ ‬and ‬what it cannot find.

Metal Cutting’s methods for cutting metal tubing, such as thin wall steel tubing for medical devices, are unique compared with machining and laser metal cutting.