A Bit about CrossWind

             Recently I have been looking into 3D printing for Crosswind Machining.  There is so much buzz all over the news and internet about it and I wondered if we could benefit from adding it to our shop floor. I think companies need to always be open to change.  Not only so that we make quality products with the machines that we already have, but also looking for ways to improve our capabilities to serve our customers with new ideas and new technology. As a matter of fact our Quality Policy states ”… to consistently surpass customers’ expectations in both quality and delivery scheduling.  We make every effort to continually maintain and improve our system.” That includes looking at newer technologies like 3d printing.  After doing quite a bit of research I have no doubt in my mind that this technology will play a large part of the manufacturing industry in the next 10 years.  Additive manufacturing is being utilized...

What exactly is the IoT ( Internet of Things )?  How does it work?  Will everything eventually be part of it?  How will it benefit me?  Will it make my life easier for hackers to take advantage of?  These are all questions that I was trying to get answered recently.  I read probably a half of a dozen articles without really getting a clear picture of what it was and how it would affect my life.  Don’t get me wrong, I got a fairly decent idea of what it was, but not fully.  I realized that it meant that physical objects, such as my washing machine, would have sensors on it that could communicate with a repair guy when it broke.  I thought that was nice, however, what if it wasn’t the repair guy I wanted?  Did I have to set that up beforehand?  Would the repair guy just call me out of the blue to schedule a time to come out and fix it before I even knew there was a problem? Or if I’m out of dish soap will Amazon send me some without ...

         It’s that time of the year again, graduation.  High school students are ending a huge part of their lives and making decisions that will shape their future.  Some teens know from a young age what they want to do with their lives, but most are still figuring it out as they go.  Should they go to college?  Should they go directly into full-time work?  Maybe join the military?  What should they major in if they do go to college?  At 17 or 18 these are life altering questions that many aren’t’ prepared to answer.  Or, if they do have an answer, they don’t know how to go about accomplishing their goals as college can be very expensive.  Most people can get college loans, but do you want to start of your adult life with huge debt already hanging over your head?  This is where a career in manufacturing comes in.               Long gone are the days where a career in ...

E ffects on the body Effects on your mood Effects on Behavior    ·    Heart disease    ·     Asthma    ·     Obesity    ·     Diabetes    ·     Headaches    ·     Gastrointestinal          Problems    ·     Alzheimer’s Disease    ·     Accelerated Aging    ·     Premature Death ·     Anxiety ·     Restlessness ·     Lack of motivation or focus ·     Feeling overwhelmed ·     Irritability or anger ·     Sadness or depression ·     Overeating or undereating ·     Angry outbursts ·     Drug or alcohol abuse ·     Tobacco use ·     Social withdrawal ·     Exercising less often ...

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, ...