Manufacturing Services – Capabilities
Our contract manufacturing services range from providing specific process or assembly tasks using customer-supplied parts to supplying production quantities of quality turnkey assemblies. Moreover, by serving as the prime contractor, we control the factors critical to manufacturing success.
- Metallurgical expertise for both R&D as well as production
- Highly efficient use of R&D as well as prototyping budgets
- Problem-solving for product design as well as production issues
- Turnkey production from drawings and specifications
- Turnkey product design, prototyping, and production
- One-off to volume production
- Specific process or assembly tasks
- Processes, parts, assemblies, as well as complete products
- Production-oriented for efficiency, low costs, as well as high quality
- High, medium, as well as low-volume production and fabrication
- Design and set up of production line with all tooling
- Production equipment development
- Material and subcontractor sourcing, qualifying, as well as supervision
- Well-qualified materials suppliers and subcontractors
- Advanced testing and analysis equipment
- AS9100, ISO 9001, plus customer-specific QA standards
Equipment & Facilities
VPE provides over 150,000 square feet of design, lab, manufacturing, as well as quality assurance space for your contract manufacturing program.
- Vacuum brazing furnaces
- Aluminum vacuum brazing furnaces
- Hydrogen furnaces
- Thin film coating systems
- Induction & infrared braze systems
- Diffusion bonding furnaces
- Hot pressing furnaces
- The world’s largest vacuum hot press
- Machine shop
- Quality assurance facility
- Coordinate measuring machines (CMMs)
- Laboratories – cleanroom as well as clean environment
- Welding cells
- Cleaning lines
- Assembly lines
- Materials testing & analysis lab
- & more!
In-House Manufacturing: From Start to Finish
Extensive manufacturing capabilities allow the VPE manufacturing process to be done nearly entirely in-house. To illustrate, in the example below, VPE completes nearly all the manufacturing steps without the need to outsource:
- Design – VPE’s engineers work closely with the customer through multiple revisions until they achieve the optimal design.
- Component machining – VPE’s machine shop precision machines the component parts such as tops, middles, and bottom plates.
- CMM Inspection – if necessary and after machining, the quality assurance department thoroughly inspects the components on CMM machines for conformance.
- Cleaning & assembly – technicians clean and assemble the components to prepare for vacuum brazing or diffusion bonding.
- Vacuum brazing or diffusion bonding – technicians load the assembly into a vacuum furnace or diffusion bonder and run the assembly at a specific temperature as well as force profile.
- Leak Testing – after brazing or bonding, technicians perform leak checking to verify a perfect join.
- Heat Treating – after leak checking, the assembly goes to heat treating in-house or sent outside if it requires certain specifications.
- Final Machining – after heat treating, the machine shop machines the assembly into its final shape.
- CMM Inspection – if necessary and after machining, the quality assurance department thoroughly inspects the assembly on CMM machines for conformance.
- Coating and/or Plating – coating and/or plating is done outside of VPE and the final part is sent to a reliable coating supplier to perform services such as chemical film coating or gold plating.
- Final Assembly – technicians install the final components such as heli-coils into the final part.
- Final Testing – technicians perform bubble and/or leak testing to verify the final part is leak proof.
- Last Inspection – the quality assurance department inspects as well as certifies the final part.
RECENT BUILDS
