What Is Swiss CNC Machining?
Swiss CNC machining (also known as Swiss screw machining or sliding headstock turning) feeds bar stock through a stationary guide bushing directly adjacent to the cutting tool. Because the material is supported right where the cut happens, deflection and vibration are eliminated — allowing ultra-tight tolerances, micro features, and length-to-diameter aspect ratios over 20:1 that conventional CNC lathes cannot achieve.
Bar Stock Feeds Through Guide Bushing
The raw bar feeds through a carbide-lined guide bushing, providing zero-clearance support right next to the cutting insert.
Sliding Headstock Moves Along Z-Axis
Instead of moving the cutting tool along the part, the headstock advances the bar past fixed gang tooling, maintaining maximum rigidity.
Live Tooling & Sub-Spindle Dual Machining
Cross-milling, axial drilling, threads, and back-side features are completed in a single setup before parting off the finished part.
From First Article to Bar Fed Production on the Burlingame Bayfront
The economics of a turned part change three times on its way to market, and Burlingame companies live at every point on that curve. A device startup like Neptune Medical, which builds dynamically rigidizing endoscopy systems on the bayfront, needs a handful of turned components fast during design iterations. Six months later the same drawing might call for ten thousand pieces with lot traceability. Swiss turning is the rare process where both orders run on the same machine from the same program, so the prototype price you validated is connected to a production price that actually scales.
Geography helps too. Meta's Burlingame Point campus put a major AR and VR hardware engineering group on Airport Boulevard, the Old Bayshore Highway corridor houses labs and light industrial tenants, and SFO sits directly across the city line. All of it is roughly an hour by ground from our Union City shop, which means a bar fed run of connector pins or ferrules quoted on Monday can be machined, inspected and on a Burlingame receiving dock without ever touching a freight network.
The volume math matters most on small parts. Below about 1.5 inches in diameter, a Swiss lathe with live tooling and a sub spindle finishes a part complete in one cycle, milled flats, cross holes, back work and all. At 500 pieces that saves setups. At 50,000 pieces it changes the unit price by multiples, because the machine runs bar stock unattended while the guide bushing holds concentricity to 0.0002 inches TIR piece after piece.
Engineered for Micro-Precision & High Volume
From single medical prototypes to automated 100,000+ piece production runs — built for zero defect manufacturing.
±0.0001" Micro Tolerance
Holding ultra-precise concentricity, diameter, and thread pitch tolerances on slender pins, shafts, and medical implants where standard lathes fail.
Single-Setup Completion
Multi-axis live tooling and sub-spindles handle turning, off-center milling, cross-drilling, hex broaching, and thread whirling with zero secondary setups.
Superior Ra 16 Surface Finish
Rigid guide bushing support eliminates chatter and micro-vibration, consistently producing mirror-smooth Ra 16 µin (0.4 µm) turned surfaces as-machined.
Lights-Out Production Savings
Automatic bar feeders and continuous chip management allow 24/7 un-attended operation, dramatically lowering unit costs for mid-to-high volume orders.
Swiss Machining Services Suite
Sliding headstock capabilities engineered for challenging small-diameter components.
Micro-Miniature Turning
Machining small-diameter components down to 0.020" (0.5 mm) with tight features, internal bores, and miniature threads for medical instruments and micro-valves.
Down to 0.5 mm barHigh L/D Ratio Slender Shafts
Turning long, slender shafts and pins with length-to-diameter ratios up to 20:1 without chatter, taper, or deflection.
L/D up to 20:1Multi-Axis Live Tooling
Up to 12 axes with motorized driven tools for off-center milling, keyways, cross-drilled passages, hex flats, and helical thread whirling.
Up to 12-axis liveDual-Spindle Sub-Machining
Synchronized pick-off sub-spindle finishes the back end of the part—chamfering, counterboring, and tapping—delivering 100% complete parts off the line.
100% finished partsMedical & Implant Machining
Precision turning of Titanium Ti-6Al-4V ELI bone screws, dental implant posts, orthopedic pins, and endoscope tips with ISO 13485 quality control.
Titanium & 316L medicalHigh-Volume Bar Fed Runs
Automated 12ft bar loaders, high-pressure coolant (2,000 PSI), and automated part catchers support fast production runs from 500 to 100,000+ pieces.
500 to 100,000+ pcs
Titanium Grade 5 Dental Implant Post & Bone Screw
Swiss turned for a medical device manufacturer requiring intricate thread geometry, micro-cannulation through-holes, and tight hex drive features. Machined in a single operation with zero hand deburring required.
tolerance held
surface finish
turnaround
2,500-piece run
- Optical comparator & CMM dimensional inspection report
- Mill test certs (EN 10204 3.1) with heat lot traceability
- Passivation certs per ASTM A967 / ASTM F86
- Certificate of Conformance per medical purchase order
Swiss Turning vs. Standard Lathe vs. CNC Milling
Choose the right manufacturing method based on geometry, tolerances, and batch size.
Stocked Materials for Swiss Turning
Precision ground round bar stock in metals, medical alloys, and engineering plastics.
Titanium Alloys
Ti-6Al-4V (Grade 5), Ti-6Al-4V ELI (Grade 23), Commercially Pure Titanium (Grade 2). Ideal for biocompatible implants, dental screws, and aerospace pins.
Stainless Steels
303, 304/304L, 316/316L, 17-4 PH, 440C, Custom 455. Excellent corrosion resistance, high tensile strength, and medical compliance.
Copper & Brass Alloys
C36000 Free-Cutting Brass, C17200 Beryllium Copper, Tellurium Copper C14500. Perfect for gold-plated electrical contacts and probe tips.
Specialty & Superalloys
Inconel 718, Kovar, Nitronic 60, Hastelloy C-276, Nitinol. High-temperature and controlled-expansion applications for aerospace and energy.
Medical Plastics
PEEK (Unfilled & 30% Glass Filled), Delrin (POM-H), PTFE (Teflon), Ultem 1000, Torlon 4203. Biocompatible, autoclavable, and dimensionally stable.
Alloy & Tool Steels
4140, 4340, A2, D2, M2 tool steel. High wear resistance and toughness after vacuum heat treating for mechanical shafts and dowels.
DFM Tips for Swiss Turned Parts
Optimize your 3D CAD models and drawings for maximum Swiss machining efficiency.
1. Precision Ground Bar Stock
Because the bar slides through a guide bushing, use h8 diameter tolerance precision ground bar stock to prevent binding or loose play.
2. Thread Relief Grooves
Provide a thread relief necking groove at thread shoulders (minimum 1.5x thread pitch) to allow clean single-point thread tool retraction.
3. Corner Radii & Chamfers
Specify internal corner radii of at least R 0.010" (0.25 mm) and external 45° lead-in chamfers to ease automated tool engagement and deburring.
Swiss Machining Demand Across Burlingame
How demand for small turned parts breaks down across Burlingame.
Medical Devices & Life Sciences
Burlingame sits on the Peninsula medtech corridor between Stanford and the South San Francisco biotech cluster, and companies like Neptune Medical anchor a local base of catheter, endoscopy and instrument development. That work consumes exactly what Swiss lathes make: luer fittings, cannulated components, slender stainless shafts with length to diameter ratios past 20 to 1 and PEEK insulator bodies. RivCut turns them from 316L, 17-4 PH, titanium and medical grade polymers with material certs and first article reports for design history files.
AR/VR & Consumer Hardware
Meta's Reality Labs presence at Burlingame Point concentrated headset and wearable engineering on the bayfront, and hardware teams across the Peninsula prototype optics fixtures, hinge pins and interconnects in the same neighborhoods. Swiss turning covers the micro end of that bill of materials: gold plated contact pins, camera barrel components, precision standoffs and ferrules under 0.25 inches in diameter. We run engineering quantities with no minimum, then carry the same part into 100,000 piece production when a program locks.
Aviation & Airport Industry
SFO borders Burlingame directly, and the airport technology corridor shapes the local industrial mix: MRO vendors, ground support equipment builders and aviation suppliers cluster along US 101 within a few miles of the field. Their recurring buys are Swiss lathe staples, fuel fittings, valve spools, sensor housings and locking hardware in 303 stainless, 2024 aluminum and 4140. Guittard Chocolate Company, a Burlingame institution since the 1950s, adds a food processing angle, where dosing nozzles and wear bushings need the same repeatability in sanitary alloys.
Questions Burlingame Teams Ask First
Quoting, tolerances and logistics for Burlingame projects.
Swiss Turning Services Near Burlingame
Put Our Swiss Lathes to Work for Burlingame
One upload gets Burlingame teams pricing, lead times and a guide bushing feasibility check.