Many of our customers know of our abilities to produce complex mechanical assemblies from metal and plastic components. Somewhat less well known is Peridot’s capabilities in the field of Electro-Mechanical assembly. Northern California is obviously flush with plenty of box build EM players but few if any can offer the range of in house manufacturing disciplines that Peridot offers. Our competitors in this field typically have to deal with numerous sub-contractors for services such as Sheet Metal, CNC Machining, Laser processing and wireforming in their bid to supply a completed EM assembly. The competitor claims that they have mastered the art of “supply chain management” but this is basically like herding cats. Each of their sub-contractors has their own customers and priorities may not be aligned with said contract assembly house. The Peridot business model addresses this glaring problem with simple vertical integration. We used to vie for time and capacity from those same subs and rapidly found that this was no way to service the end client, relinquishing control over a project to too many subs. So we have quietly built one of THE most diverse array of in captive capabilities in the industry. Try and find a company who can offer as many processes under one roof as Peridot can, good luck. What does Peridot’s vertical integration mean to the end client? Better cost control, quicker time to market and superior quality. How many times do we see our competitors stumble on a project when pins from Sub A will not fit into holes on the part from Sub B due to tolerance stackup? All parts may be in tolerance but it will not go together. Back to the drawing board and hello costly delays.
Let’s take a look at a few characteristic examples.
The first is a syringe dispenser for an automated dispensary.
Having 50 odd items on the BOM, all sheet metal parts, machined parts and springs were made in house at Peridot. The off the shelf items such as fasteners, solenoids, wire and crimps were readily avaialble form local stocking distributors.
This project originally came to Peridot as a spring problem. The torsion spring that returned the flapper arm on the solenoid was exhibiting plastic deformation after a number of cycles. The customer engineer told me that there were field reports of the nurses having to use chopsticks to poke the hung up syringes out so they could treat the patient. The engineer was under the gun to eliminate the chopstick protocol. Stress analysis revealed that in fact the spring was overstrtessed for the given deflection and a simple re-design fixed the problem completely. During meetings with the client Peridot pitched and was granted an opportunity to quote the entire assembly.
Here is another item for the same client that functions as a liquid dispenser.
There are 22 items on this BOM including sheet metal fab and plastic CNC machining. All fab performed in house including a custom wiring harness and modification to the stock motor.
The next assembly we will discuss is for a very sophisticated Gas Chromatograph.
This tiny asembly used Peridot’s CNC machining department for aluminum and ULTEM components. It has a customer harness, some very small solder joints, an LED, connectors and teflon heat shrink.
Lots of tiny bits to chase around.
The final assembly and sealed-pouch packaging is performed in Peridot’s Class 10K cleanroom and ships to Malaysia. Something very staisfying about shipping assemblies such as these to the Far East!
The next example is and assembly for a Mass Spectrometer manufacturer.
In house fab processes on this assembly include CNC milling of the ULTEM block, metal stamping of the bracket and CNC turning of the shaft.
The next item I would like to share with you showcases some PEEK machining that utilizes our most advanced multi-axis mill turn center. Spectacularly smooth surface finishes and very tight tolerances are the hallmarks of this process.
The volumes ( a few hundred per year) are not high enough on the above pictured assembly to justify injection molding tooling so our customer is very pleased we are able to meet the tolerance and surface finish criteria they expect with machined parts. This assembly is also packaged in antistatic packaging in our clean room.
The final example today ironically has no in house parts fabricated.
The relevance of this example is to show that Peridot has to be extremely agile and efficient to compete with the entrenched Box Build suppliers in the basics of EM assembly such as wire stripping, crimping and soldering.
In conclusion please consider Peridot on your next project requiring Electro-Mechanical assembly services ESPECIALLY if the assembly in question has a high mix of custom fabricated components.