Capacity and Capabilities
Superior Machining and Welding Services IN Anchorage
To summarize the following; we have a tremendous capacity between our equipment, our shop, our people, and our resources. We are here to serve the economy; Alaska is a diverse, demanding, and massive community and we necessarily have to have a tremendous capacity to have served all of our customers for the past 65 years and to continue doing so into the future. The community is growing and we plan to grow with it.
Machining Capacity:
2 Lodge and Shipley Oil Country big bore lathes used primarily to turn large parts and chase tapered threads on oilfield collars/ cut precision tapers on boat shafts, props, and couplers. Machines have front and rear chucks with a set of hydraulic rollers to accommodate material lengths in excess of 40 feet, as well as 11-1/2” spindle hole with 28 inch swing over ways.
We chase: 60 degree, NPT, acme, buttress, square, round, API, metric, and other thread forms ID and OD, single and multi-lead, tapered and straight.
We have a 5 axis Horizontal Boring Mill manually operated with 38 inches of travel in X, Y, and Z with 22 inches of spindle feed as well boasting a 3000lb table capacity.
3 Axis Horizontal Boring Mill with larger table dimensions and greater travel.
8 Other smaller lathes each with different characteristics strategically laid out around the shop 5 of which can be loaded with an overhead crane.
3 Bridgeport style vertical knee mills with rotary tables, 90 degree head, and dividing head giving us the capability to cut spur gear teeth or make OD splines on a shaft.
We use the latest cutting tools and have some of the finest grades of carbide and the newest coatings available as well as special grades of ceramic, cermet, and CBN. We’ve successfully machined 56RC hard face welds, hard bushings, and even bearing diameters with time saving ceramic tooling where before costly grinding operations had to take place.
On the note of grinding we have an 18 inch Blanchard grinder capable of an incredible degree of flatness and surface finish capable of holding a standard thickness tolerance of +/- .00038” commonly used to prepare oilfield directional drill timing rings. We also have a Dumore precision tool post grinder used for centerless grinding between centers on one of the lathes.
We have a 24 inch vertical shaper with 12 inches of stroke and available 4 inches of taper able to cut internal keyways and splines. It can handle a part up to 4 feet in diameter.
We have a 2 axis CNC tool room lathe capable of creating complex internal and external profiles and threads on small parts. What it lacks in capacity it more than makes up for with its incredibly high repeatability, capable of repeating all points of geometry within tenths of the programmed dimensions.
Our CNC adapted Bridgeport mill is unlike any other with an aftermarket motor modified in house and an entirely custom CNC controller engineered and assembled in house which combined with the motor gives us faster feed rates and heavier depths of cut with far greater accuracy and repeatability than any commercially available CNC adapted knee mill. We have plans to build a fourth and potentially fifth axis for the mill in the future.
We’ve recently added a 4x8 CNC plasma cutter with Oxy-Fuel capability able to cut materials from 18 gage up to 1” in mild steel. We have plans again for adding a router to bring large plastic cutting online.
We’ve got a small 40 ton hydraulic press and a large 160 ton hydraulic press for straightening shafts, bent cylinder eyes, dog bones, links, forks, plates, and other twisted or bent objects.
We have an 18 inch HE&M relay controlled horizontal band saw capable of feeding up to 48 inches of material and as little as .010” on its own and repeating a cut material length within .010” which helps produce a uniform fabrication. That saw is complimented by a 14 inch vertical band saw used for scrolling and smaller jobs.
We boast one of the best 3D CNC programmers in the state of Alaska able to utilize abstract mathematical concepts and clever machining practices to cut down cycle times and increase work output without increasing mechanical input. All of our manual machinists combined boast over a hundred years and multiple generations of experience with a wide range of backgrounds from around the world.
Welding Capabilities:
We’re setup to weld nearly anything. We have 2 Lincoln TIG machines, 2 Miller buzz boxes, and a Miller CPU controlled power supply with a steel wire feeder and aluminum wire feeder with feed gun. The materials we weld regularly are mild steel, alloy steel, T1, chromoly, stainless steel-all grades including 17-4PH, cast iron, cast steel, aluminum. We’re one of the most successful companies in Alaska to weld repair cast iron. Our customers have also said that we have some of the nicest aluminum TIG welds in town and on more than one occasion we’ve had to re-do our competitors work. We do a lot of shaft and bore buildups for re-machine to OE specs on marine and heavy equipment applications. Other materials we can weld on request are silicon bronze, Inconel, Stellite, Hasteloy, Turbaloy, HSS, titanium, copper. We also do quite a bit of brazing using special brass alloys ranging from low temperature, light repairs, up to a special 100,000PSI brazing rod for demanding high temperature applications up to 1200F degrees.
Because of the vast range of welding services we offer we don’t carry any welding certifications but our people have previously held a great number of certifications, certificates, and degrees, for welding and maintaining all those processes in all those metals for all the ranges would cost us a fortune so think of it as a cost savings and know that should your requirements demand certification we have no problem certifying for the work given a sufficient lead time and project size.