AEROSPACE MACHINE SHOP, 5 AXIS MILLING
Hurricane Surveillance, Getting Ahead of the Storm
Kylan Hastreiter – October 5, 2017
Caught by the surprising ferocity and peculiarity of 2017’s hurricane season, a particular institute found it necessary to launch surveillance aircraft. With Hurricane Harvey hovering over Houston and Hurricane Irma looming, quickly outfitting the aircraft with means to mount surveillance equipment was needed. The institution turned to a current Hastreiter Industries customer to source the parts as fast as possible.
The customer called his contact, Keegan Hastreiter, at approximately 1:30pm on a Thursday. They explained the critical situation and stated that shipping the parts out by Tuesday was not much of a lead time, but asked if that would be possible. Looking at the print of parts that would go on our 5 axis mill and knowing they could use the parts even quicker, Keegan replied, “we could probably ship them tomorrow, though I’ll have to check with the shop floor”.
Hastreiter Industries’ machine shop operates with a certain amount of buffer. Production stays full, not lacking for work as we continue to grow, but with enough room to account for troubleshooting to maintain an impeccable standard of 99% on time delivery. Hastreiter Industries is also able to use this buffer to shuffle production for hot jobs that need to be done ASAP. Knowing this, Keegan was fairly confident in the extremely quick turn around without even having to talk to production.
Programming the CNC 5 axis mill was prioritized for Thursday afternoon, parts were milled the next day on Friday and delivery was Saturday morning, ahead of both the storm and expectations. In less than 48 hours, parts were machined in the heartland of Wisconsin and could already be in the air over the ocean, performing their critical mission.
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