At Focused on Machining, customer satisfaction guides our actions every day and we’re constantly striving to elevate our performance. To measure our progress, we recently conducted a survey to gather feedback from our clients on key areas like customer service, product quality, and delivery times.

At Focused on Machining, our name reflects our precision machining expertise, but our focus extends far beyond that. Every step of the customer experience matters to us, from initial communication to machining to shipping. Delivering your parts on time and in perfect condition is a key part of our process. That’s why we’ve introduced custom foam packaging and reusable shipping crates for specific projects. This new shipping option offers better protection, more cost efficiency, and a smoother overall experience for our customers.

As Veteran’s Day approaches next month, I want to share the story of my journey from the Air Force to owning Focused on Machining, a precision CNC machine shop in Colorado. For many veterans, finding the right path after service can feel daunting, but I believe my experience can help offer a potential roadmap. My journey from military aircraft maintenance to running a manufacturing business has been deeply rewarding and I encourage veterans to explore opportunities in this field as they transition to civilian life.

At Focused on Machining, we bring years of expertise across a wide range of materials such as stainless steel, titanium, Monel and Inconel. Here, we’re focusing on our experience with 7000 series aluminum, a strong alloy that’s a popular material choice in a variety of industries. 

We’ve talked in the past about how long-term manufacturing contracts benefit customers in the right circumstances. And among long-term contracts, certain scenarios will offer even more savings. One of the most notable is working with us on a “family of parts,” a set of similar parts that we can machine at significantly reduced pricing.

If you’re looking for manufacturing partners who can help you meet FAR requirements, I hope you’ll consider Focused on Machining for CNC machining services. We have a reputation for machining complex parts fast and at an incredibly high quality level

Focused on Machining offers lights-out machining as part of our CNC production machining services. These capabilities allow us to run orders around the clock so we can provide faster lead times, lower costs, and better flexibility. 

When you order repeat parts from a CNC machine shop, you can’t be fully confident the parts will be consistent from one order to the next until you understand the shop’s approach to documentation. At Focused on Machining, we have a fully digitized solution that allows us to offer unbeatable consistency and efficiency when it comes to repeat orders. Like many of our other solutions to manufacturing challenges, it all ties back to our ERP system.

Building complex assemblies requires more than having the right capabilities and expertise on the precision machine shop floor. It’s just as important to have the right software working behind the scenes to facilitate the process. 

Running a precision machine shop during an industry-wide labor shortage, a global pandemic, unprecedented supply chain disruptions, and some of the most contentious presidential election cycles in history has certainly been one of the most interesting challenges of my life. 

Customers are often shocked at how quickly our CNC machine shop can turn around an impressively detailed and accurate quote for a complex assembly. Our secret? Our advanced digital quoting software. If you’re wondering what goes on behind the scenes, here’s a peek behind the curtain. 

At our Colorado CNC machine shop, we primarily machine Inconel for rocket jet engine components. We’re adept at machining the many different grades of Inconel, though we mostly work with Inconel 625 and Inconel 718. 

Our Colorado CNC machine shop is in the process of pursuing CMMC 2.0 compliance, which will prove to the US Department of Defense that we meet rigorous cybersecurity standards. Now that we’re several months into the process, we’re here to provide an update on our status—because transparency and accountability matter to us. 

A recent trend in aerospace machining is that parts are becoming so complex that traditional equipment and approaches are no longer sufficient. Aerospace buyers often need parts with exceptionally tight tolerance features on opposite or multiple sides, which can be difficult to achieve with a standard CNC mill. At Focused on Machining, we’ve found great success leveraging multi-axis machining with zero-point fixturing to take on the most challenging aerospace machining jobs. 

If you find yourself placing repeat orders for the same parts multiple times in a year, consider establishing a long-term contract with your manufacturing partner. Not all shops provide contract manufacturing services, but those that do are almost always open to discussing this option with customers. That’s because long-term contracts benefit buyers and precision machine shops alike. 

One of the most important truths in manufacturing is that you get what you pay for—from production machining services to secondary processes like plating. Just as machine shops' costs and lead times vary depending on capabilities, certifications, and quality, so is the case for plating vendors.

Many shops view source inspections as a necessary evil. Source inspections can indeed be cumbersome for shops whose processes are still mostly manual—there’s no denying that. Fortunately, at Focused on Machining, our robust ERP system allows us to facilitate source inspections easily. In fact, we’ve even come to really appreciate source inspections and the customers who require them. 

Reducing the costs of machined parts can be as easy as having a conversation: always communicate with a shop about your purchasing intentions.  If you plan to place a particular order on a recurring basis, the right contract manufacturing services partner can talk to you about opportunities to obtain the best costs over time with a long-term contract. 

You get what you pay for in manufacturing. Unfortunately, many buyers learn this lesson the hard way—something we’ve seen firsthand at our AS9100 machine shop. We’re happy to work with buyers now to get them the parts they need. But imagine the time, money, and stress they could have saved by having us machine their parts in the first place. 

We see it all the time: A customer wants an inexpensive prototype delivered as soon as possible, so they order one from an online marketplace. Everything seems okay at first, but eventually, they find out the hard way that when you choose the cheapest option, you get what you paid for.  

Any manufacturer pursuing CMMC 2.0 compliance will tell you that the process is rigorous, to say the least. Focused on Machining is currently working to achieve Level 2 certification, which has a long list of 110 requirements aligned to NIST SP 800-171. We anticipate that our journey to CMMC certification will take us a total of 18 months when all is said and done. 

As an aerospace machining shop committed to innovation and continuous improvement, it was only a matter of time before we progressed from standard CNC milling to multi-axis machining. Keep reading to learn how our multi-axis machining capabilities empower us to deliver unparalleled precision and efficiency, setting us apart from other shops offering contract manufacturing in Colorado. 

Effective 2024, companies providing manufacturing services for the US Department of Defense (DoD) will be required to maintain a new certification called CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification), proving they meet rigorous cybersecurity standards.

While a tolerance of +/- 0.0005” was once considered tight, we now regularly see prints with microscopic tolerances down to +/- 0.0001”. For visual context, a +/- 0.0003” tolerance is like taking a piece of hair, which is about 0.003”, slicing it into ten pieces, and having one of those pieces represent the permitted variance.

Have you ever placed an order online and checked your email inbox for a confirmation email, only to find nothing there? It’s a stressful experience. Without that confirmation email, you have no way of knowing for certain whether your order actually went through. 

Never one to shy away from an opportunity, our aerospace and medical machine shop is committed to being the small shop customers need in this challenging climate. Keep reading to learn how we’ve improved efficiency to meet even the tightest deadlines. 

There’s no shortage of precision machine shops that will build a part to print without giving it a second thought. Don’t get us wrong; there’s something to be said for nailing all the specifications on a blueprint. But in many cases, simply adhering to a part’s specifications can lead to significant fit, form, and functionality problems. This is especially true when manufacturing parts destined for an assembly. 

Focused on Machining has built a reputation as a top aerospace machine shop. We love the work we do for aerospace and space customers. But we want anyone reading this to know that our expertise extends into another major focus area: medical CNC machining.

When shops quote customers high costs and long lead times for anodized parts, often it’s because the masking requirements are exceedingly complex. In some cases, complex masking requirements can double the price of a part. 

Keep reading for our AS9100 machine shop’s insights into complex masking and tips for getting your parts faster and more cost-effectively. 

When we quote you a lead time at Focused on Machining, you can be confident that we’ll meet it.

That’s because, unlike many shops that base their quoted lead times on instinct alone, our aerospace machine shop takes a much more strategic approach. Specifically, we leverage our ERP system to build a detailed schedule that accounts for many factors—from material sourcing and outside processing to our shop’s internal capacity.