Packaging
Posted by: Ashley

From Packaging to Prototype at GLE-Precision

At GLE-Precision we manufacture a variety of volumes for our customers, ranging from one prototype piece to several thousand production runs.  The parts we manufacture at GLE Precision often require a special level of care. Just today a shop tour stopped in the gage room, where one of our machinists showed me the steps they took to not damage the surface finish on a part. He had a small flexible arm with a magnet on the end and wrapped the end with tape to protect the surface finish on the parts (see below). It seems like every week our machinists develop another technique to make and protect parts for our customers!

The ingenuity and special care we give to products don’t end during manufacturing; we are known to create unique shipping methods to protect parts during shipment. We create custom boxes made of wood and foam for long, thin-walled parts and recently had to think of a method to ship minuscule, delicate assemblies. These assemblies had a tube sticking out of them with a wall thickness of just .001″, meaning they would bend extremely easily. One of our sales engineers worked with a shop supervisor and developed a method to protect the parts that involved placing them inside the end cap to a tube, placing a smaller cap upside down inside the larger cap, and placing the caps into a tube filled with foam. The assemblies made it to our customer in perfect condition, thanks to the special care we give to many of our parts!

Check out the video here to learn more about the shipping at GLE.