years the company has acquired 13 additional machine tools. These include a large capacity CNC turning center, a fi ve-axis CNC mill, and a wire EDM. “Expanding our CNC departments has allowed us to take advantage of opportunities that were previously outside of our capabilities, as well as provide ad- ditional capacity. In essence, this has allowed us to pick the low hanging fruit from the opportunities previously deemed untouchable,” Blow says.
Since Astro isn’t a production facility, they frequently use CNC equipment in ways opposite to its intended conventional use on higher-volume lots. Astro utilizes Mastercam when parts are very complex, they require a lot of 3-D surfacing, or for reverse engineering. The latter is used frequently when Astro is called to rebuild older equipment. A FARO arm from FARO Technologies (Lake Mary, FL) in the QC lab is used to obtain part data creating an electronic fi le that can be imported directly into Mastercam to create toolpaths. With this approach, Astro can quickly supply parts
for older equipment on very short lead times. Now customers who are repairing or rebuilding their own equipment come to Astro for reverse-engineered parts. It is a new profi t center for the company.
“Expanding our CNC departments has allowed us to take advantage of opportunities that were previously outside of our capabilities.”
Astro Machine Works' CAD/CAM capabilities are support-
ed by Prism Engineering (Horsham, PA), which is its reseller for both Mastercam and SolidWorks. As part of its main- tenance agreement Astro gets phone support as needed. Prism is frequently called to deliver reliable customized postprocessors for new equipment or special applications. In
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