| Established in 1952 | |
Page: 4090 |
Micro Surface Engineering, Inc. is a 58-year-old, fully integrated, family owned and managed, California Corporation. We are located in the central manufacturing district of Los Angeles, California. The 36,000 square feet of industrial buildings that comprise our facilities are family owned.
We can provide our customers with engineering assistance based on over 58 years of experience in precision manufacturing and metrology. Our company has extensive capabilities, and we are small enough to provide personal service. This broad array of experience includes precision engineering, kinematic couplings, bearing technology, the metallurgy of balls and rollers, ball sizing and dimensional metrology.
Our Bal-tec™ division is one of the top six precision ball manufacturers in the United States. Our goal is to satisfy the niche market for custom made precision balls, cylinders and associated products.
The basis of our business is our unique ability to quickly manufacture custom made precision and ultra precision spheres and cylinders and a myriad of modified forms needed by industry.
We have our ball inventory available for immediate purchase on our web site shopping cart.
Many of these components are modified with flats, holes, and threads; or are attached to other devices. We have developed extensive machining, grinding, welding and E.D.M. capabilities. Our precision ball making capacity extends from subminiature balls in the .005-inch diameter range to monsters that are over 17 inches in diameter and weigh over one thousand pounds.
We have state of the art C.N.C. Vertical Machining Centers up to 50 inches. We have state of the art C.N.C. turning centers up to 36 inches in diameter. These machines are D.N.C. and are programmed and controlled from our in house C.A.D.- C.A.M. computer system.
Our E.D.M. (Electrical Discharge Machining) department includes seventeen die sinking machines. We have one horizontal E.D.M. machine with a 60-inch capacity. We have four Fast Hole E.D.M. Drilling machines and three state of the art, computer controlled, wire-cutting E.D.M. machines. We have one very small hole, E.D.M. drilling machine that can theoretically go down to 0.002 inch diameter. We have one bath tub size machine and one with a vertical free board of over three feet.
Our cylindrical grinding equipment includes two Studder and three Tshuden machines as well as B & S and Landis Universals. The center less grinding capacity includes Cincinnati and Landis machines. Our internal grinding capability includes Studder, Bryant and Healed machines. Our Blanchard grinding capability for flat surfaces, includes 42 inch, 36 inch and 16 inch capacity machines. The plane surface grinding includes two mammoth 48-inch machines and numerous 30-inch, 24-inch, 18-inch, 12-inch and two 5x10 inch super accurate Taft Pierce machines.
We operate a complete lapping department for flat, parallel, cylindrical and spherical parts. This department has the capacity to hold gage block tolerances in all of these geometries.
We have three slicing and dicing machines for cubing up hard brittle materials as the first step in producing precision balls.
Our Jig Boring capacity extends from our gigantic P & W #3 E-C.N.C. machine down to the very petite #1A-S.I.P. We have a completely equipped # 3 Moore jig grinding machine with all of tooling, air spindles from 40 to 120 thousand RPM and the Ultra Precise rotary table with extensions, plus the large size plate with everything.
To round out our machining capacity, we have more than 100 conventional chip making machines that include: vertical and horizontal milling machines, Harding and Casanova Lathes, broach, vertical and horizontal shapers and drilling machines. We have the capacity to do the special problem jobs all within our own facilities.
Our complete in house tool and cutter grinding facility gives us immediate access to sharp accurate tools. This department includes a fully tooled #2 Cincinnati T & C grinder, a Cincinnati Monoset, a tap grinding facility, full drill sharpening capabilities and all of the off hand grinders needed.
Our welding capabilities include A.C. and D.C. arc, MIG, projection, resistance and capacitance discharge, and as well as TIG. We can do Brazing by torch, atmosphere protected furnace, and induction brazing with reduction and/or a protective environment.
Our de-burring and polishing department includes belt and disk sanding; vapor blasting, vibratory finishing and back stand polishing machines.
Our inspection and calibration capabilities place us in the top ten facilities in the world. We have six Moore measuring machines from the giant #22-32, four axis laser machine down through the spectrum of the M4 and the #3 to the small but exquisite #1 ½.
Our roundness measuring capabilities include five Talyronds, two Indironds and two Federal Air Bearing machines. Some of these machines have total error budgets in the plus or minus one micro inch range (+ or - 25 nanometers). For the ultimate in sphericity measurement we have developed a research instrument that has the capability of determining sphericity on the order of plus or minus one nanometer, which is one twenty fifth of one micro inch. See our paper "Measuring Sphericity" on this web site.
For surface texture evaluation, we have several micro-inteferometers including the Johansson Multimi, multibeam micro interferometer, three Zeiss Black Boxes, and a laboratory Proficorder. These instruments give us the ability to resolve surface quality well below one tenth of one micro inch Ra.
The Talyrond machines have selected filters that will isolate the waviness part of the spectrum from geometry and surface finish. This is an important capability, because it is an absolute evaluation that is traceable to N.I.S.T. It is not some company's personal opinion based on some contraption or the other, without repeatability or trace ability.
We also have the Bendix waveometer for both balls and bearing races.
Our metallurgy lab includes two research metalographs and two conventional metallurgical microscopes, two macro graphs, a 60,000 pound and 6,000 pound universal tensile and compression testing machines, a low capacity universal tensile and compression testing machine, a Sharpy and Izode impact test machine, liquid cooled belt and disk sanding machines, three Buhler metallurgical polishing stations, four Leitz Miniload setups for Vickers and for Knoop micro-hardness test. We have a Wilson 4JR Rockwell hardness test machine, a Kentall superficial hardness test machine, a Steel City Brinell hardness test machine, hydraulic presses, specimen mounting presses, a liquid cooled Buhler abrasive cut off saw, a Buhler liquid cooled diamond cutoff saw and all of the miscellaneous equipment needed to operate a full capability metallurgy lab.
Our extremely well equipped main ball-grinding department is temperature controlled at 68 degrees Fahrenheit ( 20 degrees Celsius ). This eliminates the size measuring problems associated with temperature and greatly improves our delivery by eliminating the soaking time required to thermally equilibrate the balls for measurement.
This department is augmented by our large ball grinding department for producing balls from 1.5 inches to 17 inches in diameter, our fine precision ball grinding department for grade 5 and grade 10 balls and our ultra precise ball grinding department is set up for our ultimate quality balls. It is located in a temperature controlled clean room.
For producing large diameter and exotic material, we have extensive CNC turning capacity.
One of the newer additions is a C.N.C. ceramic machining and grinding center for all manner of ceramic ball modifications.
Most ball blanks are produced by cold heading individual spherical shapes from rolls of wire or cylindrical bar stock. We have 40 cold heading machines available for producing ball blanks from 1/8 inch to over 5/8 of an inch diameter.
Small quantities of larger diameter ball blanks are usually machined on one of our five highly automated C.N.C. turning centers.
We have converted our tool room facilities over to full blown CNC turning and machining centers. This effort has been an outstanding success. Output is up over 40%, and the quality and uniformity have improved.
With over 500 machines of every description, you would think that is enough; but to meet our customers' ever changing needs, we just keep adding more.
We are in the very difficult process of tucking 66 more ball grinding machines into our already densely populated ball making system. This will increase our off the shelf deliveries. We have almost completed a 23 machine "stand by" ball grinding department. This reserve capacity will be used to reduce delays caused by surges in orders, which has always plagued us.
We have initiated a separate ceramic and tungsten carbide department.
We have added fifteen more machines to the precision department to increase production of grade 5 and grade 10 balls.
Our ultra precise department now has its own Talyrond inside of the facility, to reduce bottlenecks in the main lab.
We have been forced to move all surface grinding and all cylindrical operations from the Huntington Park plant into the main plant on East Slauson Ave.
We just ran out of room for the new CNC equipment that we have added there. It has been a little painful, but the worst is behind us.
We have started to add Solidworks™ drawing files to the Kinematic Components Catalog 105B.
We expect these changes to improve service and to help us hold the lid on costs.