GARDENA, Calif.—TCI Precision Metals, located in Gardena, California, provides a variety of pre-machining and contract machining services that increase production efficiency. For pre-machining, the company uses processes such as sawing, flattening, straightening, duplex milling, and double disc grinding to deliver tight-tolerance blanks that are ready for finish machining. Additional pre-machining capabilities—such as waterjet cutting and cosmetic improvement of surfaces—are also available. TCI Precision Metals' pre-machined blanks are produced to tight tolerances with regard to dimensions, flatness, squareness, and parallelism, according to John Belzer, the company's president.

As a provider of contract machining services, TCI can deliver finish machined parts in a wide range of materials, ranging from aluminum, brass, and stainless steel, to ductile iron, tungsten, titanium, plastics, and high-temperature and nickel alloys. Because the company is a warehouse distributor of Alcoa and Kaiser Aluminum materials, it has direct access to major mills and can make a wide variety of materials available to customers at "very competitive" costs, according to Belzer. More than 25 machining and turning centers are available to provide secondary machining and finish machined parts. The company uses 3- , 4- , and 5-axis CNC machining centers to machine small, medium-size, and large parts. Its vertical machining department reportedly can machine parts as large as 166 inches long and 77 inches wide, and its horizontal machining department can handle parts as large as 40 inches x 120 inches.

For the medical industry, TCI Precision Metals provides "complete precision machining" of capital equipment components using such processes as grinding and milling, CNC turning, CNC machining, and waterjet cutting. The company's work for this market involves production of parts with "close tolerances, critical flatness, and cosmetic finishes that are frequently better than specified," according to Belzer.

"TCI Precision offers the medical industry precision machining and processing of large and small parts from virtually any material," says Belzer. "We provide a single-PO (purchase order) service for in-house production design and manufacturing feasibility that considers time and cost savings and ease of manufacturability, as well as material, pre-machining, and machining services. With all manufacturing services provided in-house, TCI Precision is able to deliver superior quality and on-time delivery, coast-to-coast."

On one job for the medical industry, TCI machined a large part measuring 1.265-inch x 60 inches x 72 inches. The 6061-T651 aluminum part has more than 1,300 drilled and tapped holes with location tolerances of +/-0.003-inch, and flatness within 0.005-inch.

TCI Precision Metals is certified to ISO 9001:2000; AS 9100B:2004 pending.