Stecker Machine Blog

Designing a new part is one thing. Manufacturing it is a different story.

Talk with any customer of a CNC machine shop, and you’ll no-doubt hear an example of their part design being altered, refined, and/or improved thanks to a CNC manufacturing engineer. Of all the CNC engineering services provided by a machine shop, having an influence on the design itself may not be what you think of first.

Yet, without that insight, there’s no way to determine a part’s design for manufacturability (DFM). And, when you consider all the reasons why a part needs to be more manufacturable — to handle high volume production, to maintain high quality, to make the process easy and, the big one: to keep costs low — it’s clear that a CNC engineer’s modification of a part design is critical.

Let’s explore how that’s done and why it’s so valuable.

Not every CNC machine shop is the same. That may sound like typical “marketing speak,” but it really makes a difference, especially when it comes to taking on new work.

Some shops are content with machining what they know and handling familiar project types and quantities. Their work is solid, and they create a fine, safe business.

“Design changes.” Those two simple words can cause even the most experienced parts manufacturer to panic.

After all, design changes are notorious for adding time, headaches, and unplanned dollars to a project. They’ve also been known to sabotage solid business relationships. Yet, they’re inevitable in manufacturing; as much as we try, they come with the territory.

Imagine for a moment a manufacturing technique that’s lasted for more than 6,000 years and is still highly valued today. That’s metal casting. The types of metal used have evolved — from gold around 4,000 BCE to bronze and copper (the oldest known casting is a 3,200-year-old copper frog from Mesopotamia) to iron around 1,000 BCE. After all, since prehistoric times, the progress of civilization itself has been named after the metal casting processes most used during that span: the Copper Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age.

These are demanding times. For a new product design to be considered successful today, its planning must also scrutinize the manufacturing process that will be used to build it. Modern designers look to specific design for manufacturing (DFM) guidelines to reduce costs while also simplifying how a product is produced, reducing design rework, and maintaining overall quality. You may also see the term design for manufacturing assembly (DFMA), too, which is the same principle.