News

A major U.S. aerospace-engine parts manufacturer—renowned for producing small, high-performance turbine engines—decided to shift from labor-intensive machining to fully automated, robot-tended cells. After a two-year internal study of capacity constraints and hiring challenges, the company committed to a plant-wide transformation that required every element of the machining system to be robot-friendly, including the 10-inch Northfield air chucks they had relied on for years.

Precision workpieces often demand unique fixturing to achieve the required accuracy. When a leading North American fuel systems manufacturer needed to super-finish grind a complex cylinder face, our team designed a custom solution to ensure perfect stability and repeatability.

A full-service medical device contract manufacturer needed a way to laser-weld very thin-wall stainless-steel tubing—6 mm and 8 mm diameters—without marring or distorting the parts. The tubes also had to be fed deep into a rotary fixture to reach the weld zone, all while maintaining precise concentricity.

The subject of this month's Northfield Profile is the foreman of our lathe department, Philip Fraher. In 1974 and 18-year old Phil was working in a gas station, when one of the founders of Northfield came in for gas. He...

In December of 2000, Modern Machine Shop ran a feature article on Northfield Precision and Chicago Dial Indicator titled, Aligning Critical Bores.

Medical Engineering Always looking for a chance to innovate, the Northfield team were excited to bring their years of work holding expertise to the medical industry, creating parts for joint replacement. Brief: Deliver the appropriate tolerances requested, including: concentricity, accuracy,...

Brief: A Biomedical engineering customer set Northfield the following brief. To create chucks to hold heart valves, after coating, to finish grind. They were required to have multiple small internal grip collets and stops to allow fast tooling change over....

Engineering, is all about innovation and mastering the latest technologies to create cutting-edge solutions. For engineers specializing in precision workholding, diaphragm chucks are rapidly becoming an essential tool in their arsenal. These chucks offer a range of features and benefits...

In the world of manufacturing, precision is not just a desirable quality; it's an absolute necessity. One of the key components that contribute to precision machining is workholding chucks, and among them, collet chucks stand out for their efficiency and...