February was a busy month for Ceramic Substrates, with a new member of staff joining the team, visits to our Factory from customers, travelling to a very good customer to assist technically with a new application and a varied assortment of enquiries.
Tom, a CNC Engineer is a new member to the team. Upon finishing his studies in 2011 at Kings College London, gaining an upper second class degree with honors in Bachelor of Engineering; Mechanical Engineering; Tom then went on to gain experience working for other like minded Engineering firms before joining Ceramic Substrates.
Jon our Head CNC Engineer, has faced several challenges this month with machining very fine intricate components, like this one:-
This Macor Optic Ferrule Ceramic has a hole drilled through. This particular component is going into a connector on a medical machine.
Machining tolerances for Macor are surprisingly tight, up to 0.0005in. (0.013mm). Macor MGC can be machined to a fine surface finish and polished. This versatile and unique technical ceramic is an outstanding engineering material and is machinable with ordinary metalworking tools.
One of the projects our Tool Room have been working on is for a Crucible Cap for a local Manufacturing Company on the Isle of Wight.The tooling for this job is now completed and the samples are in the kiln.The samples should be ready early this week for approval before the production run. This component is produced by dry pressing on uniaxial presses. The tooling consists of a die in the profile shape of the component with a top and bottom punch with surface features, spark eroded then polished.
Sean our Production Manager and his team of Factory Operatives have been fulfilling a wide range of orders which has also kept our Tool Room guys busy, for many tools have had to be set on the machines to produce the Components. Whenever a tool is set onto a press, samples are made and fired before the Production run, no matter how many times the components has been made in the past.