Choosing the right material is integral to your manufacturing project’s success. If you’re planning on machining round bar material, choosing the right quality is just as important. At Boston Centerless, we supply only the highest quality materials that you can always count on for your precision turning and CNC Swiss machining needs.
Our Stock Bar Materials
Boston Centerless offers a wide selection of round bar materials, including the following material families:
- Aluminum
- Carbon & alloy steels
- Medical-grade alloys
- Plastics
- Red metals
- Special alloys
- Stainless steel
- Titanium
These materials can all be ground using our signature centerless grinding process to achieve the diameter and level of roundness that your application calls for. Each bar is also carefully adjusted for consistency across its entire length at our bar straightening station. Finally, each bar can be cut to length to meet your exact tolerances and minimize time spent preparing the material for further machining at your own facility.
Finding The Right Material
With so many materials to choose from, finding the right one for your project can quickly become an overwhelming endeavor. To ease this process, we host some helpful material selection tools on the Boston Centerless website for you to try.
Material Property Data Search
If you have a rough idea of the family of material you want to use and the properties that would be most beneficial for your project, our Material Property Data search tool can help. This tool allows users to search by material family and by material grade. It then returns a comprehensive guide to what that exact material is best suited for with information like common applications, machinability, formability, and much more.
Material Specification Search
If you know there is a certain specification that your final machined part must meet, the Material Specification search tool can yield the results you need. This search tool allows users to search by specification originator (like AISI and ASME) and by the desired specification to be met. The search tool will then return a list of every single material offered by Boston Centerless that adheres to the desired specification. This is a great way to explore material options and potential cost-savings or performance improvements for your final product.
We pride ourselves on not only hosting such a diverse material selection, but more so on consistently delivering products of verified, high quality. While we are confident in our ability to supply our own stock materials, we are equally as confident in grinding, testing, and managing your own custom materials as well.
Custom Material Options
While it’s not often that our library doesn’t house a material that meets your project’s needs, we understand that certain situations call for a highly specialized set of properties. In such a case, we encourage our customers to bring us their own custom materials for grinding, processing, and verification to ensure that your project’s needs are met with precision. If you need a certain material but have yet to secure a supplier, one of our material sourcing experts will be happy to discuss how we leverage our reliable supply chain network to procure nearly any metal or plastic stock.
Our stellar service is just one thing that sets us apart. Find out why our customers choose Boston Centerless as their supply chain partner for stock and custom materials.
The Value of Custom Materials
Why choose custom materials to begin with? In most cases, a custom material will be selected when it is the best choice for a unique or unusual application. While these materials may be more difficult to source or more expensive when compared to standard materials, they prove their value when the finished product is used as intended. At Boston Centerless, we enhance that value by helping manufacturers create their finished products more efficiently with minimal resources.
Skilled Material
Boston Centerless’ bar stock helps precision manufacturers shave hours off of their machining time- but our precision ground materials are designed to do more than just save time. By simplifying the machining process with our unrivaled material quality, we further assist precision manufacturers reduce the reliance on skilled labor which often poses a barrier to entry for processes like Swiss machining. In doing so, our material allows manufacturing facilities to maintain a high standard of quality even with green operators. We call this Skilled Material. While often applied to the metals and plastics that we normally stock, our experienced team can transform any custom materials you present them with into Skilled Material.
How BC Ensures Quality of Stock & Custom Materials
At Boston Centerless, delivering consistent and traceable material quality is at the absolute top of our priority list. To that end, our quality assurance laboratory is equipped to handle a multitude of material testing and verification methods. These allow us to handle both stock and custom materials alike to validate the quality and composition of any bar, regardless of its original source.
- Eddy current testing is our method of choice for detecting any defects on the material’s surface which may be invisible to the naked eye.
- Ultrasonic testing allows us to verify the quality of our custom materials beyond what can be detected on the surface. This helps us ensure that your material is free of unseen defects like voids and internal contaminants within 1mm of the outer surface.
- For material composition verification, we employ x-ray fluorescence (XRF) alloy testing. With the use of x-ray technology, our quality assurance experts can verify that your custom materials are consistent in their composition throughout.
Beyond these testing capabilities, Boston Centerless also holds an extensive record of quality certifications across different industries:
- ISO 9001 Certification for Quality Management
- AS9100 Certification for Aerospace Manufacturing
- ISO 13485 Certification for Medical Device Manufacturing
- Nadcap Accreditation for Non-Destructive Testing
- ASNT NDT Level III for Non-Destructive Testing
Rest assured that you’re getting the best of the best. Contact Boston Centerless for guaranteed quality stock and custom materials.