Learn the what, why and how of our precision machining methods and machining parts on micro-machines and cnc machines while we make American Machined Products.

As two best friends of 40 plus years we want to bring readers and viewers along on our journey of sharing our precision machining skills and techniques that we have learned and are continually learning from the past 25 years forward.

Hi this is Lance Conway and Patrick Lara, 

     

We have been precision machining single piece to production runs for the watchmaker, horology and timing device industries utilizing manual and CNC micro machines for more then 25 years.

Yes we have serviced, repaired and refinished a lot of wristwatches as well.

The time has come (no pun intended) to transition from making parts for other to making precision machined products for consumers and precision tools for machinists.

(Precision Machining photo)
Inside Active Atom, LLC.

Here are 10 Precision Machining Topics we are going to share.

1. Converting a House Into a Workspace
   How we converted our home into a full machine shop from 3 phase power, controlled work environments, shop layout to assist the flow or processes of making parts from start to finish.
   
   
2. Growing your Home Base Machine Shop
   We are going to share how we are growing our home based business from a micro-machined parts only shop to a larger precision machined shop. This means we are going to be adding larger cnc machines to our current machine shop.
   
   
3. Precision Machined Parts
   We are going to share the products we make, the types of parts we make, the materials we work with and the details that go into each component of our final assemblies.
   
   Get ready to see us machining with great precision in metals like composites, delrin, bronze, beryllium, aluminum, titanium, steel, stainless steel, inconel, meteorite and many others. There will be something to see for every machinist.
   
   
4. Designing American Made Products
   See how we design and program our American Machined products utilizing our decades of hand drawings, converting these drawings into CAD software and producing true work of precision machined art.
   
   
5. Machine Set-Ups
   Learn how we set up our manual lathes, mills and micro-machines, even how we program for our cnc lathe and cnc mill for 3, 4 and 5 axis machined parts.
   
   
6. Tool Making
   We will share our tool making and what we do to produce the same parts repeatedly to very high tolerance precision through good tool making.
   
   
7. Inspection Methods
   We will share our inspection methods for prototype making to production insuring the best tolerances are maintained while making our precision machined parts in quantity.
   
   
8. Machined Parts Finishing
   We will dive into micro finishing, deburr, media blasting, tumbling, heating, coatings, coloring, plating and assembly of the final products we make.
   
   
9. Vintage Machines and Tools
   Learn how we accumulated the vintage tools and machines over the past 2 plus decades that we use in making our precision machined parts. We also rebuild vintage machines and tools and generally have 3 or more in works at anytime.
   
   
10. Precision Machine Shop Tour
    We will stick to the machine shop tradition on YouTube, What is in your shop?

We will share our precision machining operation via a shop tour, drawer by drawer, cabinet by cabinet and offer an AMA (ask me anything) of course in our case it should be AUA (ask us anything) special to explain the tools and machines we share in our videos.

Patrick likes cherries and rice

Lance likes potatoes and peanuts
We both love ice cream, so you see there are differences in each of us, but we have much stronger common interests in most everything else.

5 Things to Know about Living and Working with your Best Friend in a Desert

A What life is like for two best friends living and working everyday 24/7-365 together for 25 years, what are the challenges and the rewards?

B How to make or repair your own everything, this means services you might go to or have a service come and do for you for personal, home and business needs.
You name it and we might be trained in and applying it now.

C See how to survive living in a small desert town, the harsh environment is something that must be attended to regularly. Dust and winds can destroy a precision machine shop if you are not prepared to deal with these issues. The people that live in our small town make this the greatest place on earth for the two of us.

D The value of having a true friend to bounce great and not so great ideas off of, as many people might not wish to offend your hair brained ideas, so they don’t tell the truth.

E We will show how we each learn new skills and then teach each other mostly Patrick teaches Lance his new found skills.

What we are hoping to gain from you
We are machinists, we love what we do, our we would never have made it this far on our journey, that being said we are now in a time of our lives that we fill the need to share our skills and craftsmanship with others.

Please follow two best friends on their journey.
We are both really proud of the work we perform.
The links to follow us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter are located on the main page of the Active Atom website.

The two of us are hoping you will not just follow us, but that you will interact with us via comments, opinions, or private messaging.

We value the thoughts of our viewers and readers and hope to here from you often.

This whole journey comes down to this, as a third generation machinist and second generation horologist who is also a first generation programmer we know some really great skills and we want to make these skills and knowledge available for the up and coming generations to see and apply for themselves. We are asking you to become a part of this journey.