Barber-Nichols has an innovative 43,000 sq ft, world-class manufacturing facility, including capabilities for machining, quality control, and manufacturing support operations.
5-axis CNC mills are capable of movement in all three linear axes (X, Y, Z) and two simultaneous rotary axes. This allows the workpiece to be moved in conjunction with the tooling for ease of access and precision when creating detailed or hard-to-reach features.
Barber-Nichols’ mills have travel with the capability to machine parts up to a 30-inch cube.
CNC Lathe turning is a subtractive machining method in which a workpiece is rotated around its horizontal axis, and the shaping tool moves along the length to create the desired geometry. Lathe turning is ideal for round or cylindrical parts where high precision and repeatability are critical.
Turning centers have up to 40-inch swings and 72-inch travel on the Z axis.
Barber-Nichols can perform high-precision ID/OD and surface grinding with industry-leading machines. Combination ID/OD grinders can hold multiple wheels, allowing several different operations to be combined into a single setup, eliminating the need to move parts across several machines as would have been required in the past. This allows our machinists to meet tight tolerances with high repeatability in hard-to-machine materials like high-nickel superalloys commonly used in the aerospace and defense industries.
This process is most commonly used in turbomachinery on critical sealing surfaces in pressure housings and to achieve the necessary roughness in critical areas on high-speed shafts, like bearing lands and seal locations. Barber-Nichols’ ID/OD grinders are capable of up to 24 inches in diameter and 36 inches long.
Wire EDM is a cost-effective method of removing material and creating complex shapes in hard, electrically conductive materials. By utilizing electrical discharge through a fine strand of wire, EDM imparts less stress into the workpiece and reduces tooling wear compared to traditional subtractive techniques.
Our wire EDM can work with parts up to 16×12 inches and 9 inches tall.
Electro-Chemical Machining, or ECM, is a rapid, cost-effective, stress-free machining process that produces a high-quality finish. It is specifically well suited for removing material in complicated geometry by anodic dissolution from hard to conventionally machined materials. BN is one of the few companies in the world that use this process and has utilized this process for over 40 years to manufacture turbine blades, turbine nozzles, and internal complex shapes for aerospace, defense, cryogenic, and advanced energy industries.
Our ECM machine can work with parts up to 36 inches in diameter.
As additive manufacturing (AM) gains more prevalence across industries, it is especially important to understand what makes a good candidate for AM. Here at BN, we don’t just print “best-effort” parts – we design, analyze, and optimize designs to print parts that meet your requirements.
Additive Manufacturing is being increasingly explored to improve performance, decrease time-to-market, and/or reduce cost. However, industry standards on material properties consistency, design factors, and inspection are still in their infancy.
We can print approximately up to a 10-inch cube.
Barber-Nichols is an AS/EN/JISQ 9100:2016 and ANSI/ISO/JSQ 9001:2015 registered company and, by these standards, follows a well-documented system that ensures product conformance to all customer-specified requirements. BN has a full complement of dimensional inspection measuring tools, including Optical Comparators, manual and fully automatic Coordinate Measuring Machines:
