The past week has been quite eventful here at CanTorque!

Over the weekend, we produced our first products on our new (to us) CNC Lathe.

The products were no small feat as they were M100 (roughly 4″) pullers for our ST11 tensioners to be used on a rental over the next month or so.

Editorial note: Yeah, we work weekends when needed.

The process was quite involved, starting with analyzing the customer’s drawings, listening to their requirements and expectations, and then preparing a proposal and starting production.

We started with these 100# billets.

This was no simple feat. The billet was roughly 12″ diameter and we had to cut threads quite deep into the bore.

The first process was facing the billet, which cleans up the face and brings the workpiece into tolerance.

No problem for our machine.

Next, we turned down the Outside Diameter (OD) of the piece

This pass is sped up about 20x. Turning the OD down took about 20 minutes

Finally, the most difficult part of the process: cutting the threads.

An awful lot of work went into organizing the supply of the material, programming the machine, and running a few test cuts before getting to the point of no return. Overall, the machine performed flawlessly, and the final product was awesome, especially for our first project.

If this wasn’t enough to get our creative juices flowing we were challenged by our friends at www.shearscrew.com to come up with a testing method to help determine the failure (proof) load of their Shear Screws which are used on drilling tubing.

Shear Screws are designed to fail at a particular load and each lot of Shear Screws must be tested to ensure that they work as expected.

We analyzed their process, developed a test protocol, determined the required test equipment, and physically performed the tests.

Candidly, this isn’t the most exciting test that we’ve ever performed but in this case, it is a good thing.

Happy to report that the screws worked exactly as expected and we have another happy customer.

What can CanTorque do for you? Put our expertise to use, contact us today!