October 17, 2018 -  TCI Precision Metals, Gardena, California, has expanded its product offering of Machine-Ready Solutions to include Feature-Added Blanks, designed to deliver shops near-net Machine-Ready Blanks that include one or more features. The service eliminates the need for material prep and can include drilling, boring, turning, milling, roughing and hoging out features as specified.

“We have been supplying customers with close tolerance Machine-Ready Blanks for a long time and providing excellent gains in productivity.  With many customers asking for help with hog outs or other features requiring large amounts of material removal, Feature-Added Blanks was a natural progression for us; our equipment and processes were already optimized for efficient material removal,” said Ben Belzer, President, and COO of TCI Precision Metals.

TCI Precision Metals is a mill-direct Machine-Ready Metals Distributor, providing 6061, 2024 or 7075 aluminum plate and sheet, stainless steel plate, and several other alloys; stocking over 500,000 lbs. of material for quick turn-around on customer requirements.

The difference between TCI Precision Metals and other metals distributors is, TCI adds value to every order shipped, making the material Machine-Ready.  Specialized equipment is used to cut, grind, mill, flatten, and straighten material much more efficiently than most shops can do it on site. The result is close tolerance Machine-Ready Blanks or Machine-Ready Feature-Added Blanks that are ready to go directly from receiving into CNC machining centers.

Each blank arrives deburred, clean and to customer specifications – guaranteed as close as +/- .0005 in. dimensionally and as close as .0002 in. flatness, squareness, and parallelism. “Customers can use the time they previously spent on material prep, and hog outs or roughing operations for more productive use of CNC machining centers, increasing productivity and throughput,” said Belzer.