A Bit about CrossWind

This week, as I was searching around for inspiration for our blog, I was feeling extremely uninspired.   I really do try and find a subject that relates to CrossWind’s field (swiss screw machining,  manufacturing , medical device components, etc), but also to blog about things that are interesting to people that aren’t in those fields themselves.   Nothing was calling out to me this week and I was feeling very frustrated.     Then I happened to hear a conversation between 2 employees about needing skilled workers and how hard it is to find one that has experience working with the tight tolerances that we do and I started thinking about where other companies find their skilled workers.   Do they take years to find what they’re looking for like CrossWind has?   Do they try staffing firms?   Do they start looking overseas for talent?   This isn’t something that is just limited to our field.   This is a problem that almost all industri...

In the medical device industry, before a product is realized, there are generally multiple prototypes made.  This can get very expensive.  With the technology of 3D printing becoming more and more available how do you know if that's what you want to use for your prototype?  Should you have it machined?  What about injection molding?  What’s the most cost effective?  What will get to you faster?  Today I will discuss the pros and cons of all 3 methods. First of all let’s look at 3D printing.  3D printing is explained as such: “ The creation of a   3D printed  object is achieved using additive processes. In an additive process an object is created by laying down successive layers of material until the entire object is created. Each of these layers can be seen as a thinly sliced horizontal cross-section of the eventual object. ”.  There are obvious pros to this.  Making only a couple of pieces is relatively cheap.  ...

A couple of months ago I started to hear of machine shops going out of business and even hearing from some of our vendors that their business was also slowing down.  CrossWind, however, had so much work that our machinists were all working  50+ hours a week and still scrambling to keep up with customer demand.  Our shop is (at the moment) 100% medical device components.  Not that we stay away from other industries, that’s just the niche we’ve found ourselves in.  Unfortunately, we’re not killing ourselves trying to complete all jobs on time like we were in recent history.  Now we’ve found ourselves just trying to get enough work in to avoid laying people off.  We’ve even had calls from one of our biggest material vendors asking if we needed to order anything.  We’re not a very big shop so I know we aren’t one of their largest customers.  For them to be calling us looking for orders, they’ve got to be in a similar boat as we are.  Also, ...

Why is it that, in this day and age, we still have “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs”?  Why do we fight for equality and then settle for less?  Manufacturing is a growing industry.  Jobs are left unfilled because there just isn’t a large enough pool of skilled workers.  However, there are a large number of jobs that women are in that require similar skills and have a similar environment as welding, machinists, machine operators, inspectors, etc.  These manufacturing industry jobs are often higher paying by about 50% than other jobs in comparative industries.  Industry Week magazine wrote “ female packaging and filling machine operators could boost their earnings by 50% by receiving the training needed to become welders, a job that requires similar arm-hand steadiness, manual dexterity and control precision. The median annual earning for welders is $38,762, compared to $25,851 for packaging and filling machine operators.” Did you know that CrossWind Machinin...

We’ve all seen the rise in food allergies.  We’re all affected one way or another by it.  Maybe you know someone, or your child does, or maybe it is actually you or your child.  Long gone are the days of a PB&J being a staple in school cafeterias.  What if, though, it didn’t have to be?  What if it can be cured?  What if you didn’t have to worry about a child becoming ill or even dying from the smallest trace of nuts?  This would affect my life in a huge way because my 9 year old daughter is deathly allergic to all nuts.  Not only is she extremely allergic, but I have been told by her allergist that she is in the top 1% of this country as far as seriousness of her allergy. One morning, when my daughter was about 9 months old, her brother had a peanut butter sandwich and then gave my daughter a kiss on the cheek as he was taking his empty plate to the kitchen.  The whole left side of her face and neck broke out in a horrible rash....

Have you ever heard of an atherectomy?  An atherectomy is used to treat   narrowing   in   arteries   caused by   peripheral artery disease .  What happens is you get fatty streaks built up in the artery and they clog up.  So, in an angioplasty (which my grandmother had about 20 years ago), a balloon is inflated and passed though the blocked artery and the plaque is pushed into the sides, widening the pathway for better blood flow.  With an atherectomy the plaque is actually removed rather than pushed aside.  There are different methods for this (shown below), but the end result is the same. This is some pretty amazing stuff but how does this relate to CrossWind Machining?  CrossWind machines components for the rotational version of the atherectomy which is where a special burr or drill on the tip of a catheter rotates to shave the plaque into tiny pieces.  Sometimes, sitting here at my desk, I forget how amazing th...

Today I wanted to talk about a special organization that Crosswind Machining supports.  The name of the organization is Haven of Hope.  It is in Aptos, CA (there are others elsewhere also), and helps out girls that are in the foster system ages 12-18.  What Haven of Hope does to help these girls is nothing short of fantastic.  For girls aged 12-17 they help with behavioral, social, and emotional issues that keep them from being successful in foster care and in their communities.  They also help girls ages 15-18 learn how to transition out of the foster system and into the “real world” whether it is living on their own or into transitional adult housing. I personally have known a few people while growing up that were in the foster system.  A couple of them had a pretty decent foster family, but others weren’t so lucky.  These poor kids can end up tossed around from home to home, never having a solid base to build their lives on.  They can miss...