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CNC WEST April/May 2019 www.CNC-West.com 33 D irk Ellis founded Cascade Engineering Tech- nologies 30 years ago as a contract metrology shop. The Canby, Oregon based outfit began adding CNC machining services around the turn of the century, but their core competency remains steeped in their metrology expertise. With just under a hundred employees and 70,000sq. ft. of manufacturing space Cascade Engineering Tech- nologies (CET) is set for continued growth. This Pacif- ic Northwest manufacturer might have got their start checking other shop’s parts, but today they are a world- class aerospace manufacturer in their own right. “My dad founded the company back in the 80’s with a single Zeiss CMM,” tells Cascade’s director of engineering Devon El- lis. “As the business grew, we added light manufactur- ing to support our customers. Today, we have 20 CNC machining centers with a specialty in machining critical investment castings. Our sales pitch is that we are who you want when it comes to manufacturing large, complex, monolithic, thin walled structures because of our metrol- ogy focus.” Large and thin are relative for sure, but with a 60” work envelope on their larger mills and 78” on the lathe, large is actually pretty large. CET’s north cell is made up of Haas vertical machin- ing centers, including (3) new 5 axis machine. The south cell houses their 4 and 5 axis horizontals. They have twin Makino T-1s, a pair of Matsuura MAM72-100H and their latest acquisition, a Toshiba TUE 150 vertical lathe. A state-of-the-art metrology lab supports all the machining. The lab alone is 4000sq.ft. and houses seven Zeiss CMMs. Cascade is an ISO9001 / AS9100 Rev D registered ITAR facility and everything begins and ends in their quality lab. Investment castings are a nightmare for most shops not equipped with the tools and experience needed to do the job right. “An investment casting is where you want to make a component out of metal by first making a wax pattern,” describes Devon. “You build a shell, burn out the wax, pour metal in it, and inspect and repair the part until it meets the customer’s requirements. What’s left is a rough shape that requires finish machining. Each casting is a snowflake, the same, but with its own unique- ness. More often than not our customers are essentially consigning to us very high value material that we have to machine.” “The value comes from the time it took for the casting house to make the casting,” adds Troy Greenberg, CNC programming manager. It could be three months worth of time before the casting gets to us. They need someone to machine it right the first time. There are no do-overs. If you mess it up, you can’t just go grab another a piece of metal off the shelf.” There is a nuance with each casting that you don’t see in traditional machine work. That is where “best fitting” comes in. Casting is not a per- DE HNOLOGIES END IN MIND