How a Digital Approach to CNC Machining Enables Speed

No matter the project, application, or part you are working on, there is one common theme on all product designers' and developers' minds: Speed. How fast can I get a quote? How fast can I get my parts? What is the best way to streamline the process upfront so I can get to market before my competitors?

In this post, we break down how the digital manufacturing method for CNC machining ensures speed, highlighting some of the newest technologies that are helping enable it and offering tips on selecting the right supplier to help get you from design to product-in-hand fast.

The Digital Machine Shop

Technology-enabled digital manufacturers are dramatically different from traditional machine shops. While the traditional shops still rely on manual machine tools, making them more labor intensive, digital manufacturers embrace automation. At Protolabs, our proprietary technology turns CAD models into machined parts in as fast as a single day. The reduction in necessary labor also enables digital manufacturers to operate at a larger-scale capacity, which it turns allows more parts to be produced on a quicker turn, ensuring that parts are shipped rapidly, on-time, and on-budget.

Let’s take a step back. Before receiving your parts, you need to place an order. And, to do that, you must first request a quote. Technology enables an infinite capacity operating model, which allows manufacturers to guarantee consistent lead times, risk reduction capabilities, and reliable pricing. All of this combines to provide a fast and streamlined quoting process, compared to finite operations where you often get varied lead times and no quotes (or quotes that take a long time to get).

Additionally, digital manufacturing supports an automated quoting process, like our web-based system with design for manufacturability (DFM) feedback. The system identifies features that are challenging to machine, upfront, before any production begins, allowing for modifications early on in the design process and avoiding necessary reworks. All of this saves you time and money. In traditional manufacturing, an experienced machinist may be able to provide similar feedback simply looking at a part, but that process is not scalable, fast, or easily repeatable. With automated quoting, an interactive quote with DFM analysis and pricing can be returned to the product designer or engineer in hours.