From our shop floor
Real jobs, filmed on the machines that cut them. Turning, milling, five-axis work, extruder dies and screws, honing and threading — each one a part that went out the door to a customer. There are more than a hundred on our YouTube channel; these are the ones worth starting with.
Newest first. Click a thumbnail to play it here — nothing loads from YouTube until you do.
Four-axis spiral milling of a diverter for a polymer extrusion line, cut from solid 4140 HT bar. The video covers the last operation, where the spiral channels that split and route the melt are milled into the body.
A tapered keyway broached on the CNC mill, 7/8 in wide and reaching 9-1/2 in deep. The insert was ground back at the corners to clear the taper and reach full depth.
A titanium sleeve roughed first, heat treated, then finished on the Doosan Puma and the Mori Seiki. An aluminum sample part was run first to prove out every operation before the titanium was cut.
CNC turning and deep-hole drilling of a large steel mold, turned on the Okuma LB4000EX and drilled on the Millac 761V. Extended chuck jaws made here hold parts larger than the chuck normally takes.
A bronze casting taken through facing, end milling, drilling, chamfering and tapping on the Mori Seiki NTX2000. The main bore was turned on a lathe first, then the casting was held in a shop-made fixture.
A thin-wall aluminum part taken from 23 lb of stock down to a finished 8.8 oz. Thirteen tools and about three hours of cycle time, after a long programming and setup effort to get it running.
A 5-3/8 in trepanning tool made here, about fifteen hours of machining to build. Trepanning saves the core instead of turning it into chips, leaving a usable slug of 4140 for the next job.
The shop’s largest indexable drill running in the Okuma LB4000EX and its 50 hp spindle. It put a hole through a 10 in long piece in 72 seconds.
Turning and milling a twin-screw extruder adapter for a long-standing plastics customer, and why a part like this has to be balanced before the off-center milling is done.
A five-axis prototype that came here from a shop that could not run it. Programmed in Mastercam and cut on the Mori Seiki NTX2000.
A repeat job combining trepanning and rope threading on the Okuma. Both the threading and the trepanning tools were developed here to make the job run and to make the inserts last.
Prototype aluminum parts milled on the Okuma Genos 560V and programmed in Mastercam, for a customer building hardware bound for space.
A heavy rope thread cut with a standard triangular insert instead of the usual custom form tool. Useful when a form insert is not worth the lead time.
Three sizes of trepanning tool designed and built by the shop’s manual machinists. This is the largest of the three, running on the CNC lathe for a high-quantity job.
Second-side turning of a 15-5 PH heat-treated stainless adapter for the plastics industry, on customer-supplied material.
A breakdown job for a long-standing customer: reverse engineered from the sample part, material pulled from stock, finished and out the door in two days.
Drilling on the Okuma lathe with a 4 in indexable drill. A pilot drill leads it in so the hole stays straight, and the same tool runs in aluminum, steel and stainless.
A customer sent a drawing from 1972 with no casting and no model. We modeled it, programmed the CNC work in Mastercam and did the manual turning on the big Poreba lathe.
Cast iron turning with tight tolerances on the bores. Cast iron, cast steel, cast stainless and cast aluminum all come through here regularly.
A turret shaft machined for a paper machine builder, the largest of its kind to go through here. Manual turning by the shop’s senior lathe hands.
Finish milling of a large extruder screw on the Mori Seiki, the second half of the job. The screw was reverse engineered from a worn original with no print and no model.
A spiral die that splits the melt into four channels, part of a large extrusion head. Turned and polished to a 4 RMS finish on the Okuma, then four-axis milled for the spirals.
Roughing a large extruder screw. The customer supplied a worn screw with no print and no model, so step one was reverse engineering it into a usable model.
Handrail milled for the New York City subway, replicating hand-forged railings from a century earlier. Four setups on the Okuma vertical mill.
Five-axis drilling on the Mori Seiki, one operation in a five-piece job that also took in turning, three-axis milling and four-axis spiraling.
Second-side turning of an extrusion adapter, start to finish in about six hours including programming and setup. A good look at how a single low-volume part actually gets made.
First-side turning of an extrusion adapter: 200 lb of 4140 HT alloy steel at 11-1/8 in diameter, held in hard jaws on the DMC DL30.
How soft jaws get cut on the DL30, hand-written in MDI on the older controls. A small thing, but it is what keeps a part running true.
A heavy cut in 4140 HT on the Okuma turning center, run dry for the camera so the chip formation is visible.
Turning a 416 stainless shaft, stepping the depth of cut from .125 in up to .300 in per side.
Coring a large threaded flange on the Poreba rather than drilling and boring it away, so the 4140 core is saved as stock for a future job.
Brake hubs turned for the Rochester Institute of Technology Formula SAE team. They asked for sponsorship and we offered machining time instead.
A spiral die for the plastics industry machined from a 13 in bar of 4140 heat treated steel on the Mori Seiki NTX2000.
A heavy left-hand internal thread in 1026 carbon steel, cut with a custom insert and bar on the Doosan Puma after drilling and boring.
A three-layer die for the plastics industry, milled from 16 in round 4140 HT stock using five-axis port milling programmed in Esprit.
A follow rest built here so long Acme-threaded shafts could be supported while threading. It bolts to the carriage and follows the tool.
A threaded part run complete on the Mori Seiki NTX2000, a few thousand of them over the life of the job. Programmed in Esprit.
Tube honing on the Sunnen: 24 in OD, 20 in ID, 105 in long. Larger and much smaller bores run on the same machines.
If one of these looks like your part, email the print to sales@zalamachine.com or send it through the quote form. We review every RFQ within one to two business days.
