LOGIN TCI MACHINE-READY BLANKS What is a Machine-Ready Blank? Machine-Ready Blanks are pre-machined, square or round, cut-to-size pieces of raw metal. They are saw cut, then ground and milled so that they are square and flat at tight-tolerances. By TCI supplying steel or aluminum blanks that are pre-machined to your exact net shape, it allows your CNC machines to get right to final machining, without prep time. Our customers use Machine-Ready Blanks in both tooling and production. The accuracy of pre-machined blanks provides close tolerances and consistency from blank-to-blank. This eliminates material preparation, reduces set up time, streamlines fixturing, reduces scrap and reduces overall cycle time, chip-to-chip. Basically, we’ll supply the material, square it up and make ’em flat, so you don’t have to! Learn More Machine-Ready Blank Options Custom – You provide sizes and tolerance, and we’ll make to order. Standard – Hundreds of preconfigured sizes, ready for shipment. Dovetail – Saw-cut blanks with one side dovetailed, custom to your fixture. Manifold – Tight-tolerance, with or without porting and other features added. Feature-Added – Let us hog even more away, providing a near-net, precision shape. Having trouble with flatness? Most of our customers come to us with the issue of keeping parts flat during their machining process. TCI’s specialized flattening and straightening equipment ensures your parts will arrive flat, without twist, without bows, so you have the confidence the parts will not move when you cut your first chip. Every job is different. Ask our specialists how flat we can hold your parts, so you can use valuable time finishing the part. Learn More about our flattening and straightening services. Do you use a machine and operator to square material? Machine-Ready Blanks free up your high-precision CNC workcenter, to get to what it does best, complex machining. With a pre-prepped part, your operator will simply load, lock and go. Set the part against pins, clamp down, and hit the green button. Simple as that. What does this mean in the end… THROUGHPUT. Your machine is freed from prepping, and working on high dollar activity. Common Misconceptions About Machine-Ready Blanks “Machine-ready blanks cost more than oversized stock.” You’d be surprised. TCI is a master distributor with a wide partnership of material suppliers. We are adding value to low cost material, and passing those savings on to you. Couple that with your decreased cycle times, and the TCO simply can’t be beat. The time saved in your shop almost always exceeds any increase in “raw” material cost, especially on production runs. “Blanks aren’t useful on my horizontal mill, or when I vise.” Any time saved is increased productivity and gained throughput. Calculate how much time you spend squaring up your parts (facing, squaring, parting-off) and multiply that by your quantity. Even if it’s just seconds per part, it can come out to hours or days by the end of the job. That time saved can be spent working on your next job. “It takes too long to get blanks that are squared up. It’s much faster to get oversized stock.” With TCI stocking material on our floor, we are able to get parts on your dock in the same time-frame as your current supplier, even with our squaring and flattening processes. Better yet, place a blanket order, and we’ll keep stock on the shelf for JIT (Just in Time) releases, when you need them. View Our Machine-Ready Blanks Custom Machine-Ready Blanks ™ Precision Blanks from stainless steel or other alloys that are custom cut, ground and milled to close tolerances LEARN MORE Standard Machine-Ready Blanks ™ Standard size Blanks from stainless steel or other alloys that are produced and ready to ship within 24-hours LEARN MORE Dovetail Machine-Ready Blanks ™ Custom produced Blanks with dovetail feature designed to work with all 4-and 5-axis dovetail workholding fixtures LEARN MORE Manifold Machine-Ready Blanks ™ Custom Manifold Blanks match the outside dimensions of the finish part with a superior surface finish of 16 – 25 RMS LEARN MORE Feature-added Machine-Ready Blanks ™ Custom Blanks from stainless steel or other alloys that include one or more added features – from basic to finish parts LEARN MORE Precision Vise Jaws Both hardened and soft vise jaws in a variety of materials, including aluminum, steel, other alloys, polyurethane and more. LEARN MORE What Our Customers Have to Say More Customer Testimonials —> I received my blanks today. These look beautiful. Quality product, excellent customer service, on-time delivery, and exceptional packaging… unheard of these days!! I’m anxious to start using them. Thank you for all your help on this. I’ll definitely order again. Ready to try blanks in your shop? REQUEST A QUOTE USEFUL LINKS Request a Quote Online Store Quality Policy Contact Us Terms and Conditions LATEST POSTS MATERIALS SHORTAGES Oct 20, 2021 CYCLE TIME VS. THE BOTTOM LINE – YOU BE THE JUDGE Aug 26, 2021 CONNECT SUBSCRIBE This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Since 1956, TCI Precision Metals has been the nation’s leading provider of precision Machine-Ready Blanks. Copyright © 2021 Tool Components, Inc.