Just a year since being fully acquired by Eagle Alloy, the Eagle CNC team is showing their resilience and ability to thrive in their new environment

It’s been a year since Eagle Alloy fully acquired Eagle CNC, and a lot has changed. The companies are growing closer together in terms of shared systems and shared goals, and both are benefitting immensely. From improved efficiency on the shop floor to more streamlined scheduling, the partnership has opened up a world of opportunities for shared growth as a holistic, concept-to-completion manufacturing team.

Bill Seyferth is the founder of Westech Corp., which now operates as Eagle CNC. In recent years, this state of the art machine shop has worked alongside Eagle Alloy and Eagle Precision as part of Muskegon’s Eagle Group, a manufacturing team providing casting-to-completion services for a variety of customers. As Bill retires from the company he founded, it is one of West Michigan’s largest machining facilities and carries out precision manufacturing work for Fortune 500 companies like John Deere and Caterpillar, along with a host of influential customers across a range of industries.

Eagle CNC Technologies (ECT) is thrilled to announce a new addition to our management team. Jason Clark has joined Eagle CNC as Vice President and General Manager of Operations, a position newly created to support the Eagle Group’s plans for growth. 

With more than 27 years of manufacturing experience, Jason has spent his career supporting West Michigan manufacturing. After spending four years in the U.S. Navy performing avionic maintenance for electronic counter measures and comm/nav/radar on EA6B aircraft, he returned to Michigan to work in manufacturing. In 2001, and with experience at two prestigious automotive companies under his belt, Jason joined Port City Group, a Muskegon manufacturer. Here he began in metalcasting as a Quality Systems Manager in Port City’s die casting division, and steadily rose in the ranks to become General Manager for Port City as well as VP of Operations for Michigan Wheel.

In this article, we’ll discuss how experienced machine shops like Eagle CNC think about the complex relationship between heat treatment and machinability. Determining where heat treatment fits into the CNC machining process is a vital consideration for machining parts to net shape quickly and cost-effectively.

Eagle CNC is the Eagle Group’s state-of-the-art machine shop, specializing in CNC machining of both ferrous and nonferrous castings, forgings, bar stock and burn outs. At Eagle CNC, we machine new parts directly from raw stock, or from parts that have been shell cast or investment cast by our sister companies, Eagle Alloy and Eagle Precision. While our workpieces start in a variety of states, nearly every product we machine undergoes heat treatment before delivery.

Grinding is a machining process using abrasive surfaces to remove material from metal workpieces. On the surface (pun intended) grinding may seem different than other machining processes, but it still works through chip formation and removal–just like sawing, milling, broaching and most other techniques. Grinding can produce surfaces conforming to rough or extremely close tolerances. Because of its versatility, grinding is used for simple gate removal in castings as well as advanced finishing processes like polishing and sharpening.

Broaching is a machining process using a cutting tool with teeth that increase in size from front to back. In many cases, an entire surface (or multiple surfaces) can be finished in a single pass with broaching. The technique is most often applied to finish holes, splines and flat surfaces.

Broaching is a relatively new machining process, developed in the 1850s with metal-specific applications. Originally, broaching was used to perform work on internal characteristics, like keyholes in pulleys and gears. During the 20th century, broaching was further developed for use in firearms, and subsequent developments have dramatically improved tolerances and made broaching more versatile for modern machine shops.

Sawing is one of the oldest cutting techniques in use today, and innovations have allowed the process to keep up with advances in material, tolerances and product complexity. By definition, sawing is cutting a narrow slit in a workpiece by moving a toothed or abrasive cutting tool against the surface. Sawing is often used to remove large sections of material without particular concern for tolerances, but modern CNC sawing machines can be used for finishing work as well.

Boring may not sound like a very exciting topic, but don't let names deceive you: boring is one of the most widely used techniques in machining, and one of the most reliable ways to finish holes.

Boring is the process of enlarging and finishing pre-existing holes. The holes might have been cast, drilled or otherwise formed to a rough state, but boring is often the best technique to provide the accuracy and repeatability expected of CNC machined parts.

Drilling is one of the most common techniques used in manufacturing to create holes. In contrast to other hole-making methods like boring, reaming and tapping, drilling is most often used to create holes in unbroken surfaces. In precision CNC machining, drilling can range in scope from simple, rough hole drilling to complex, multi-feature hole drilling.

Milling is one of the most common processes in CNC machining, most likely because it is so versatile. Using a single tool, machine shops can create nearly limitless shapes on the surface of a workpiece. Milling can completely transform a piece of metal stock into a finished part of nearly any complexity.

The milling process in CNC machining consists of removing material with a rotating cutting tool. Unlike turning, the workpiece does not need to rotate in milling operations. In some cases, the workpiece will move linearly against a cutting tool; in other cases, the workpiece will remain stationary while the cutting tool moves.