It’s been a busy, and crazy, last few of years for Northwind. We’ve worked our way through a pandemic, we’ve made lots of amazing composite pieces, picked up two new CNC’s, and changed our business structure to boot. With everything going on it seemed appropriate to put something here in our website news feed – which gets a little neglected in lieu of our social media updates.
In 2022 we got a brand new Haas VF-2SS with several of the goodies and trimmings. It’s proven itself to be a real work horse and has allowed us to expand our machining services significantly. It has also allowed us to really benefit our R&D and prototyping customers as we are able to handle much more work internally. This results in quicker design loops and manufacturing iterations. A win for everyone.
In 2023 we shifted our focus and are no longer doing production layups. We have repurposed our layup room into our router room and have shifted our production work to other shops. This lets us focus more heavily on R&D work, engineering support, machining, and tooling. This was a hard call to do as we’ve had a dedicated layup room for 10+ years. However, it was time for the change. We still have layup and infusion capabilities to support R&D work and one-offs but generally speaking, we’ve reduced our layup capabilies.
Additionally, in 2023 we got a new CNC router. It’s bigger, heavier, stronger, and just better. It’s taken a fair bit of work to rebuild and we still have quite a few plans for additional upgrades but it’s giving us greater capacity for our non-Haas work. It has a working envelope of 5ft x 12x 1.5ft with a rotary that can handle 17in x 10ft long. Down the road it will be come more robust with tool changing, additional probing, and rigid tapping.
Time will tell has 2024 plays out but we’re very excited to see where things go. Fun times ahead!