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Prototek expands manufacturing space by 30000 sqft to increase rapid production and quality

Posted On : Apr-16-2011 | seen (788) times | Article Word Count : 488 |

With the ability to have a whole paint shop, powder coating shop, and plating room under one roof, Prototek can process custom sheet metal parts and precision machined prototypes with a finish in a single day in most cases.
Prototek moved to a new location at 244 Burnham Intervale Road, Contoocook, NH to a 40,000 square foot building. This has allowed the addition of a new sheetmetal manufacturing cell, larger plating room, 1,100 square foot stereolithography laboratory, more stock material for faster turnaround, and much more! This new, larger building has improved every aspect of Prototek. But, even that wasn't enough! There's another 2,500 sq. ft. addition going up by the hardware and shipping department! Now with all the space they could need, Prototek filled its new floorspace with state of the art machines to aid in the rapid production of precision sheet metal fabrication, rapid machining, and stereolithography.

In the stereolithography lab, Prototek has added two Viper Si 2s, which are the most accurate SLA machines, holding a tolerance of about .003"! They also have a full workbench for cleaning the polymer like parts, and two post curing apparatuses for further hardening of the parts. On the opposite side of the room is a Z510 3D printer, which produces 3D colored parts, and a 60 watt laser engraver for masking and gasketing prototypes and for thin plastic parts that can't be cut on the 40,000 watt lasers. It is also capable of engraving crisp, clear logos and text into black anodized and painted parts, or etch black images or text with CerMark spray. This will spray on tan, then wherever the laser hits, will turn permanant black, being resistant to all chemical reactions. Then the tan residue just gets washed off. This looks great and is much more accurate than silk screening, leaving perfectly crisp black text.

With the ability to have a whole paint shop, powder coating shop, and plating room under one roof, Prototek can process custom sheet metal parts and precision machined prototypes with a finish in a single day in most cases. This translates to cost savings for the customer, where there's no need to send customer's parts elsewhere, and maintaining Prototek's standard of quality is overseen and supervised the whole way through production.

A lot of organization and planning went into the setup of the building. Jobs from customers come in the front office, and precisely flow down the length of the building, first being programmed, then laser cut or punched, then deburred, bent, formed, hardware inserted, welded, painted, powdercoated or plated, then engraved, part marked or silkscreened, then the whole part gets a final inspection, and the parts gets wrapped up and go out the door. All employees are cross trained very well, where basically anybody in the shop can run any machine or task. This allows for perfect manipulation of the focus of attention, so each day and every hour it's possible to move parts along in the most efficient manner possible. This, again, increases productivity and decreases turn times, which has been Prototek's niche in the rapid prototype sheet metal and machine business since 1987.

Article Source : http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Prototek expands manufacturing space by 30000 sqft to increase rapid production and quality_59473.aspx

Author Resource :
This document is written by Bruce Isabelle who started Prototek Sheet Metal Manufacturing in October of 1987 that is specialized in rapid prototyping of custom precision sheetmetal fabrication for the hi-tech industries.

Keywords : sheetmetal fabrication, rapid sheetmetal fabrication, prototek sheetmetal fabrication, rapid prototyping precision sheetmetal,

Category : Business : Small Business

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