Swiss Machining

We employ state of the art CNC Swiss machining equipment to manufacture your parts to your specifications. Providing you with the highest degree of quality in our CNC Swiss machining process, Nolte continues to invest in new equipment while maintaining existing equipment through complete preventative maintenance. We offer you the confidence of Swiss machining performed on equipment from the industry’s most trusted names including Hanwha and Citizen. See our Swiss Machining Equipment List.

Our CNC Swiss equipment allows us to manufacturing tight tolerance components with difficult geometric designs in one operation and length to diameter ratios.

Contact us for an appointment to begin the Nolte Precise Process and discover a total cost solution to your parts fulfillment needs.

About Swiss Machining

Swiss machining involves an automatic lathe that has a sliding headstock and a guide bushing. The sliding headstock secures the bar stock, rotates it, and moves it forward to create the required lengths, while the cutting tools move in and out of the material to create specified diameters. The headstock contains the collet, which clamps the material. The material is then fed through a guide bushing, which is usually made of carbide. The bushing is adjusted so that the material can slide through it, but tight enough to keep the material from flexing away from the cutting tool. The guide bushing allows Swiss-type screw machines to hold very tight tolerances (+/- .0001") over long lengths in relation to part diameter. For example, if you needed to turn a .100" diameter over a 3" length, a Swiss-type screw machine is the only way to do this. On a conventional lathe the material would bend away from the cutting tool.

Originally developed to produce small, complex parts for watches, Swiss machines employ a sliding headstock that feeds a rotating workpiece through a collet and bushing. Static and rotating side- and end-working tools cut the part as it is fed. The workpiece can be transferred between main and back spindles, enabling machining of both ends of a part.

As a result, the machines are able to produce small, intricate parts complete in one chucking. This addresses two hot issues in manufacturing: The need to produce parts for increasingly miniaturized devices, and the quest to reduce costs by eliminating secondary operations and minimizing part-handling time.