Question: Is Precise capable of large hole boring?
Answer: Yes this year Precise Plate purchased new tooling for our large boring mill that allows us to bore large diameter holes. Our boring capabilities are upto 40" in diameter. With our Z travel of 48" and "W" travel of 48" we will have capabilities of boring deep holes also. Our New Boring Mill has a 5" spindle and a lockable collet to assure large holes that are straight and true. |
Question: I have a pc of Aluminum that has a shape and cutouts in it. Is there an inexpensive way to order this plate.
Answer: Yes Precise Plate does offer water-jet cutting aluminum plate. It does not add a lot of time to delivery and since it is being water-jet opposed to milled or drilled there is a cost saving there also. |
Question: Will Precise Plate do rush or emergency work on the weekends or after hours?
Answer: Yes. Precise Plate has for years done emergency work. We have men that are available 24 hours a day. We can cut plate, Blanchard grind, Surface grind, machine plates or even repair Mold Bases. This work can be scheduled for anytime or we can be gotten a hold of by cell phone for true emergency work. You can call Don Owen at 812-390-0770 to schedule work after hours. |
Question: How large of a plate can Precise Blanchard grind?
Answer: Precise Plate can Blanchard grind up to 85 inches across corners. We have access to a grinder up to 260" across corners. |
Question: Is Precise ISO certified?
Answer: Precise is not ISO certified. Last year Precise did build a quality manual. In building the quality manual we hired Harbour Results to facilitate this procedure. Our quality manual and our processes are based on ISO procedures. |
Question: Does Precise inspect their work before shipping?
Answer: Precise does inspect the work we do. All plates that are machined are inspected on a CMM. Our CMM is capable of inspecting upto a 8' area. All work that is done at precise is inspected and a inspection sheet if filled out before shipping. |
Question: Does Precise Plate manufacture their die sets in house?
Answer: Yes Precise Plate manufactures die sets in house. We are a MDL distributer. We can manufacture plain bearing and ball bearing die sets. With our new Johnford gantry mill our large die set capabilites has gotten larger. Let Precise be your die set manufacture. |
Question: What size die set can Precise machine in house?
Answer: Our capabilites have been enlarged with the addition of our new boring mill. Our new Johnford mill has the capabilites of machining a 70 x 122 inch plate. The mill has the capabilities to handle over 20,000 lbs. We are excited about the new capabilites this machine is going to offer you at Precise Plate. |
Question: Can Precise provide a completely machined die set?
Answer: Yes Precise can provide a die set machined complete. We have capabilites of providing the plates, Blanchard grind or mill the plates to thickness. Precise can machine for pin and bushings only or we can machine the die set machined complete to your prints. Let us know what all you would like us to machine. |
Question: Can Precise Plate grind our plates?
Answer: Yes at Precise Plate we can grind plates that you provide or we can provide the plates for you. We offer Blanchard Grinding up to 87" across corners or we can also surface grind for you. |
Question: Can Precise Plate do complicated 3D machining or contour machining?
Answer: Yes at Precise Plate we have the capabilites to do intricate 3D machining or contour machining. Precise Plate has years of experience of 3D machining. Precise also has the software/post/machine capabilites and machining experience to do most 3D machining. Let Precise Plate quote your next plate that has some complicated machining. With our highspeed mills we can make simple work out of the most complicated plate. |
Question: Can Precise Plate repair Dies or Die Sets?
Answer: Precise Plate is not a die shop. We can repair die sets but are not capable of repairing dies. Normally on a die set repair the pins and bushings are replaced and the punch holder and die bed are ground flat and parallel. Yes we can repair die sets but we are unable to repair dies without direction from you. We are 1-1/2 miles from MDL and can get replacemnet components (Pins, Bushings and cages) the same day they are ordered. Let Precise Plate repair your next die set. |
Question: We have been buying plates and blanchard ground plates from Precise. One of our customers mentioned that you also machine customer plates. Do you do other machining besides Blanchard grind plates?
Answer: Yes at Precise we do machine plates for our customers. We can supply steel plate, Blanchard ground plates or we can machine a plate complete per your prints. At Precise Plate we have a wide range of capabilities. Our CNC capabilites on a verticle CNC mill is 72 x 122. Our capabilites on our Boring mills is 96 x 104. We have machined larger plates, we have machined a 120 x 154 inch plate for a customer a couple of years ago. THis job was for the military and it required being slid four times because of the hole locations. The machining went well and we were proud of our work. We also have 3D machining capabilites. Let Precise machine your next plate complete. Just send us your prints and we can take care of the whole job.
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Question: I have some AR plate that needs ground. Can Precise Plate Blanchard grind abrasion resistant plate?
Answer: AR plate can be ground. We have found that grinding abrasive resistant plate is hard to do and keep it flat. We will grind abrasive resistant plate but will not be able to guarantee flatness on a thin piece of AR plate.
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Question: Is Precise Plate competitive on manufacturing die sets machined complete?
Answer: Yes Precise Plate is competitive at manufacturing die sets complete. Precise Plate is investing in new tooling and new equipment to be more efficient and competitive at manufacturing die sets. With our addition of the Johnford Gantry CNC mill we will be able to machine efficiently the larger die sets. We are excited about the progress we have made in our pricing of die sets. With the addition of being a MDL components distributor we feel our die set pricing is attractive.
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Question: Does Precise machine stainless steel?
Answer: Yes Precise Plate does machine stainless steel. We have invested in new tooling to help us in machining more efficient. Precise just received a large order of machined stainless plate and is excited about trying out some of this new tooling. Precise Plate also machines aluminum.
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Question: I tried to get Precise Plate to grind some 300 series stainless but Precise sounded hesitant to grind the 300 series stainless.
Answer: At Precise Plate we have ground Stainless in the past. We have also struggled with grinding 300 series stainless. I am not sure of the size of plates we were reluctant on grinding for you. 300 stainless is wear resistant and non magnetic. If the plate you were wanting us to grind was thin and didnt weigh very much I can understand our reluctance. We do off the following solutions.
* Outsource to a shop we work with that has a lot of experience grinding 300 series stainless
* Mill the surfaces instead of grinding. We feel the milled surface works well.
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Question: Can Precise Plate machine mold bases? Our shop can machine smaller details but we do not have large enough machines for machining a mold base.
Answer: Yes at Precise Plate we can machine Mold Bases. We can supply the plate and grinding or we can supply the plates completly machined to your prints. We currently supply bases to some of our customers now. With our large Blanchard grinder and large CNC milling machines we are capable of machining your mold bases at a economical price. |
Question: What type of steps does Precise Plate take to guarantee the machined plates are machine correctly?
Answer: At Precise Plate all our machining is inspected before shipping. We have a inspection sheet that we fill out on every job we manufacture. At Precise Plate we have a man in inspection and we use a CMM Farro arm. Our Blanchard ground plates are inspected by our Blanchard grinder operators and they fill out the inspection sheet and verify that the dimensions are correct. We do take pride in our work and strive to give our customers the best work possible. Our machinists have years of experience and take pride in our work. Our inspection process has evolved over the last 20 years that we have been in business and we make changes to our inspection process as we find problems in it. At Precise Plate we give a quality ground or machined plate. |
Question: We have a pocket in a plate we need machined but the corners are square. Does Precise Plate have capabilities of burning square corners in a pocket?
Answer: Yes Precise Plate has EDMS exactly for this purpose. We do have the capabilities of machining a plate that has square corners. We will Blanchard grind the plate, machine and then sink the corners with a EDM. Let Precise Plate quote your next machined plate. |
Question: We have a large plate that needs to be flat and parallel but too big for the sources that we know. Can you grind a 67" x 117" plate?
Answer: We can mill the surface of the plate but can not Blanchard ground this 67 x 117" plate in house. We have a large CNC Gantry mill and could mill the top and bottom of the plate to thickness, flat and parallel. We also have resources to have this plate Blanchard Ground. We can look at both options and dependent on price and the delivery that you need, I am sure we can come up with a solution to your need. Please call Tiffanny Laker in inside sales at 812-378-0247 or Don Owen in outside sales at 812-390-0770.
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Question: Can Precise Plate machine aluminum plate?
Answer: Yes at Precise we do machine aluminum plate. We have purchased new tooling to be more efficient at machining aluminum plate. We mostly machine steel plate so in our quoting process we probably figure a little high. As we get more hours under our belt machining aluminum plate with our new tooling our prices should come down. |
Question: Can Precise machine Die Sets complete with mounting plates and parallels?
Answer: Yes at Precise Plate we can machine your die set complete. We are not die makers and normally do not machine the details but we are capable. We can machine to your print but are not setup to engineer dies are draw your details. We currently machine die sets with just pin and bushing or we can machine your die set with all mounting holes and pockets per your print. At Precise we have machined parallels for other shops for years. Yes we can machine your die set, we can machine your mounting plates and we can machine your parallels complete. Call Precise for all your die sets needs. |
Question: Can Precise Plate Blanchard grind our die set flat and parallel? We wrecked our die over the weekend and it is out of flat.
Answer: Yes at Precise Plate we can Blanchard grind your die set flat and parallel. We can also repair your die with direction from you. We are not Die makers but we can machine or repair with our customers direction. |
Question: We have more machining work than our shop can handle in the time frame our customer wants. Can precise machine our plates.
Answer: Yes at Precise Plate a lot of our work is overflow work that our customers have that they can not get done in the time frame that is given. Our capabilites in machining are pretty large. We have a wide range of grinders and CNC mills. We can take your plates whether they are raw or have already been ground and finish the plate for you. We have small bridgeport mills to large CNC Horizontal and vertical mills and also have some high speed mills for hard machining and finishing work. Our milling capabilites are up to 120" long. We have machined plates up to 180" long in the past but this requires us a 2nd setup to finish the machine plate. Let Precise quote your next machined plate or your machining needs. |
Question: We have some jobs that need machined but with the dollars quoted we do not have enough money in the job to ship back and forth for inpsection. Can Precise Plate inspect their work and supply detailed inpsection sheet?
Answer: Yes at Precise we do inpsect our work. We inspect every job that we do. We also have a large portable CMM that can inspect upto 8 feet in diameter. We can inspect your part and tell you it is within spec or we can inspect your part and fill out a detailed inspection report or a detailed print. Let Precise Plate machine your next job. |
Question: We are experiencing long deliveries from our current Mold Base supplier. We are thinking of purchasing the ground plates and machining our bases in house. What are the capabilites of Precise Plate for helping us.
Answer: Yes Precise Plate can help you with your grinding needs. When we started Precise Plate the first piece of equipment was a Blanchard grinder. We have been supplying our customers with Blanchard ground plates since we started. Let Tiffanny in sales know what you need on delivery and maybe we could machine your plates in the time frame you need. We would be happy to quote you the plate as plate only, Plate and Blanchard grinding, we could also quote milling edges and ends or we could quote machined complete or machined to your specifications. We have grown and have purchased more machines to help with your machining needs. |
Question: We have some highly detailed parts we need machined. Does Precise Plate have experience machining contoured machined parts?
Answer: Precise Plate does have experience machining highly machined parts. Along with our Blanchard grinding capabilites we pocess the capabilities of machining 3D surfaces. We have almost 30 years experience in our shop building detailed molds. Areas that are to hard to get to such as square corned pockets we can use our sinker EDM's to get these machined. We have 5 EDM machines and one of them is a CNC sinker EDM. Let Precise Plate quote your next detailed part that needs machined. |
Question: I had asked Precise Plate to grind some stainless steel plates and received a NO Quote back from Precise. I thought Precise Plate would quote ground stainless steel. Why did I get a no quote on the quote for grinding stainless steel.
Answer: I am not sure what type of stainless you were wanting quoted but I would imagine you were wanting a 300 series quoted ground. 300 Series is non magnetic and we use magnetic chucks on our Blanchard grinder. We do discourage grinding 300 series stainless because of its wear resistant qualities and it being non magnetic. We have ground 300 series in the past but it is hard to hold flat. We also have a source we can use to grind your material if we choose not to grind in house. The other problem could of been the flatness tolerance on your quote. 300 Series being wear resistant builds up a lot of stress during Blanchard grinding. If the plate is real thin we would also be reluctant to Blanchard grind. I apologize for the no quote. |
Question: Will Precise Plate be closed for any of the Thanksgiving holiday?
Answer: Precise Plate will be closed from November 24th until monday the 28th. We are excited to take this time off to be with our family and friends. We will be open our regular hours starting on November the 28th. We will be ready to take all your plate/Blanchard grinding/Die Sets and any machining quotes or orders you would want to send us. |
Question: We need a quick plate and are wondering why the price is so much different on a expedited plate?
Answer: A expdeted plate we will have more cost in getting it done. A exepedited plate will have cost associated to it that is hard to figure. When Precise Plate gives you a delivery date we are serious about the date we give you. Our shop will make decisions to work over and on weekends without consulting management to make sure your order gets done. With a expedited plate, we will pull current orders off of machines. The expedited plate might not even go on the machine that fits this job the best. Our concern on the expedited plate is to hit your delivery at all cost. We will have extra setups on the job we pulled off the machine. We will have overtime pay to pay the machinist on the expedited job and also the job we pulled off the machine to get the expedited job done. The delivery date we give you on expedtied jobs or any other jobs we will meet. Our commitment to you is we will hit our date with a correctly machined part. |
Question: We have been sending work out to other shops for machining and are experiencing some poor quality of work and late deliveries. Does precise inspect their parts and what kind of guarantees can Precise give on hitting deliveries?
Answer: We have experienced some of the same problems in sending work to other shops. Precise is commited to giving quality work and being on time. Precise will stand behind the work we do. We have over 20 years experience machining quality parts. We have gone through and still going through the growing pains such as machining issues. At Precise we have built a quality manual based on how we run our business. In the quality procedures we have to identify errors that we make. We look at the errors in grinding and machining and figure out a way we can minimize these errors from happening again. Everyone of our ground plates are inspected and a inspection sheet is made for that order. Everyone of our machined plates is inspected for location and size on our portable CMM. We also visually inspect the plates before shipping. We have a good tract record as far as problems leaving our shop. We take delivery and quality serious and follow our quality procedures set out in the quality manual and make changes to our procedures as we see mistakes that slip by us. I think you will find Precise Plate a excellent source for your machining jobs. Let us know what you would like for us to do different so you will be happy with the service we give you.
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Question: Does Precise Plate offer waterjet work? We have some work that we could send you and in looking at the prints it looks like some of this work could be done with a water-jet.
Answer: Precise Plate can offer waterjet cut plates. We do not have a water-jet machine in our possesion. We do work with other companies that do water jet work. When we do quoting we do look to see what way would be the most efficient to machine a plate. There are times we believe waterjetting is the most efficient way to cut a plate. When we have a job that needs waterjetting we work with one of our vendors to get this work done for you. We do not believe at this time owning our own water jet machine would be efficient on our jobs and it makes sense for us to send this work out. Our belief for now is that we can service our customer needs for plate, blanchard grinding and machining needs would be best served with sending the work to a vendor. We get very good pricing on steel and excellent pricing on water-jetting and we can hold our prices down by not investing in a water-jet machine at this time. To answer your question: Yes we can quote work that needs water-jetting.
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Question: We seem to be in a need of quick turn around machined or ground plate. How quick can we have a plate cut, ground and machined?
Answer: At Precise we work at scheduling our grinding and machining work throught the shop. We walk a tight rope of giving honest delivery dates while pushing work to our shop floor to keep busy. On our quotes we will put a accurate delivery that we know we can do. If you need a better delivery it will in everyone's best interest to talk via phone to figure out what the best delivery we can do.
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Question: We run a large automation company and have been struggling to find a reputable shop that delivers correct orders on time. The work we do varies and the machining we send out can be complicated at times. Does Precise have machinist that can read prints and understand the importance of different areas on the machined plate.
Answer: Yes we understand. At Precise we do understand a commitment to you via a quote needs to be honored. At Precise Plate we will error on being too conservative on our quote. We do not want a reputation of being late on orders. We run a efficient shop and want to give honest deliveries. Our shop is full of tool makers that are used to reading prints on their own. We will give good directions to the shop at the beginning and the shop lead man will run with the job after getting the information. We are positive we can help you with the more complicated plates. We are proud of the machining that we do at Precise. We would be thrilled to do any of your plate grinding, blanchard grinding or machining your plates per your prints or instructions.
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Question: Will Precise Plate be taking anytime off for New Years?
Answer: Yes we will be closed on Monday January 2nd 2012. We will be back to work on Tuesday January 3rd and will be ready for any of your plate needs. We will be available for your Blanchard grinding and plate machining needs all this week and all of next week except for Monday. We want to wish everyone a Happy New Years!!!! |
Question: We have been experiencing longer delivery dates on the quotes from our vendors and also Precise Plate. Is there anything we can do to get shorter delivery dates on machined plates?
Answer: We at Precise Plate do understand the frustration of experiencing longer quoted delivery dates. We apologize for not always giving the dates that you need. We do not want to give you a delivery that we "THINK" we can hit. When we give you a delivery date it will be a delivery date that we know we can meet. At Precise Plate we are conservative on the delivery dates we put on our quotes for Blanchard Grinding, Plate machining, die sets and our mold bases. We do not want to be the company that you have to pad your dates to be sure you get the parts that you order from us. We also know we are competining against other shops that do not hit their deliveries but we hope in the years to come that our customers see that the dates we put on our quotes are dates that we know we will hit. If here is a time you need a better delivery, please call and we can discuss and see if we can do better. We want to be the shop you want to send your work and we believe we will become that shop by giving REAL delivery dates, hitting our delivery dates with accurate machining and grinding. |
Question: This is a question for our customers. We setup a Facebook page to help find customers that puchase items we seel such as: Steel plate, Blanchard grinding or machined plates. Does any of our current customers have a facebook page, has it helped in reaching out to your current customers? How did you advertise your page to find friends?
Answer: Hopefully we will get some feedback! |
Question: We are still getting long delivery times on the quotes we are sending to Precise Plate. What is Precise going to do about the long deliveries on their quotes?
Answer: At Precise we are still dealing with long lead times on our quotes. It is nice to be busy but it does not feel good to not be able to give our customers the deliveries that they want. It is also frustrating to lose a order based on a honest delivery and see that the shop we lose it to does not meet their deliveries. We will always give honest deliveries. What we will do in the immediate future is get with you on the delivery and see if we understand the work that needs done and then get with our shop to see what we can do internally to meet what is expected of our customers. We will work hard to figure out a way to meet a delivery that will work in your schedule. If we can not meet your delivery we will give the best honest delivery that we know we can meet. |
Question: On Blanchard grinding what is the typical flatness that is held when grinding?
Answer: Flatness is determined on the application of the plate that is being ground. The flatter a plate is held during grinding usually adds to the cost of a plate. If a customer is not sure what they need but know they want a plate flat we will hold flatness .0015/per foot. There are some industries that do not need a plate to be held flat and then there are others that flatness of the plate is critical. We also have a large surface grinder that is capable of holding plates flatter. |
Question: Can you grind non-magnetic material?
Answer: Yes we can grind non-magnetic material. Our chucks on our Blanchard grinders are magnetic chucks. To hold our parts down as we grind we use the magnetic force to hold the plates to the chuck as we grind the opposite side of the plate. On a part that is non-magnetic such as aluminum and some stainless pcs, we have a couple of options. The first would be if the part has holes in it or if we are allowed to place some holes in it, we will bolt to another plate and then grind the part. If the part is heavy enough we could use gravity and also block around the part before grinding. If a plate is thin and doesnt weigh very much we might use another source that has a vacuum table to do the grinding for us. |
Question: What size parts can you stress relieve
Answer: There really is not a size limit on our stress relieveing. As long as we can get it off of your truck we can stress relieve it. We have a crane with a 30,000 weight limit. So as long as your part is less than 30,000 lbs we could stress relieve. |
