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.
A City Built by Engineers, Served Across the Bridge
Foster City never had a smokestack era. T. Jack Foster dredged and filled the marshland in the early 1960s and master planned every lagoon, levee and lot, so the city skipped straight from open water to corporate campus. Its manufacturing identity lives in R&D headquarters rather than factory floors: Gilead Sciences runs its global headquarters here, Zoox develops its autonomous robotaxi a few blocks away and Visa spent decades anchoring the same office corridor. What these teams prototype in Foster City gets machined somewhere else, and that somewhere is often a shop like ours.
The parts that leave those campuses as drawings tend to be small, round and unforgiving. Drug delivery and lab automation programs need luer fittings, dosing cannulas and fluidic valve components in 316L and PEEK. Autonomous vehicle sensor stacks need connector pins, lidar spindle shafts and machined housings that hold concentricity to 0.0002 inch TIR. Swiss turning covers exactly this envelope, because the guide bushing supports the bar at the point of cut, so a slender 0.125 inch diameter shaft comes off straight at length to diameter ratios past 20 to 1.
Geography helps too. Our shop sits in Union City, roughly 20 miles from Foster City via the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge. Prototypes can be in an engineer's hand the day after they come off the machine, and production lots ship ground across California in 1 to 2 business days without an air freight bill.
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.
What Foster City Teams Send to Our Swiss Lathes
What Foster City buyers actually order, sector by sector.
Biotech & Drug Delivery
Gilead Sciences headquarters its global operation in Foster City, and the surrounding Peninsula corridor is dense with drug delivery, diagnostics and lab automation teams that spin devices out of pharma programs. Their fluid paths run on Swiss turned hardware: luer fittings to ISO 80369 gauging, dosing cannulas, septum pierce needles, check valve seats and manifold pins in 316L stainless and PEEK. RivCut turns these with Ra 16 microinch finishes as machined and full lot traceability, from a single validation article to bar fed runs in the tens of thousands.
Autonomous Vehicles & Robotics
Zoox develops its purpose built robotaxi from Foster City, and AV and robotics hardware across the mid Peninsula consumes micro turned components at every sensor and actuator: gold plated contact pins, precision dowels, lidar and encoder shafts, camera lens barrels and EMI shielded sensor housings. These parts fail quietly when runout creeps in, so we hold concentricity to 0.0002 inch TIR and diameters to ±0.0001 inch, with live tooling and sub spindle work finishing flats, cross holes and threads in one setup.
Medical Devices & Implants
Foster City sits inside the Peninsula medtech belt, with device companies clustered from San Mateo down through San Carlos and Redwood City. Surgical and implant programs in that corridor buy the classic Swiss part list: bone screws, dental implant bodies, cannulated pins, trocar tips and instrument shafts in titanium and 17-4 PH. We machine them under documented process control with material certs on every lot, and no minimum order quantity means a first in human build of five pieces quotes as readily as a launch run of fifty thousand.
Common Questions from Foster City Teams
How Swiss turning, quoting and shipping work for Foster City teams.
Swiss Machining in the Foster City Region
Get Micro Precision Parts to Foster City Fast
Instant pricing, DFM review on every quote and reliable delivery to Foster City, from one part to 100,000.