The History of Advanced Metal Fabrication and Machine, inc.
Advanced Metal Fabrication and Machine, inc. is a customer service driven, family-run company with thirty-six years of experience providing top quality fabrication and machining. Although we’ve grown a lot over the years, we still focus on doing things right, and treating people well.
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Small Beginnings
Advanced Metal Fabrication and Machine, inc founder Dale Aurich begins his metal working career at Arizona Precision Short Run. Within nine months he is promoted to shop foreman.
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Moving up
Dale found a new job which was even a greater challenge. The higher skill level required to make much more complex parts for the aerospace industry. Here is where he gained much of the experience he would need to one day start his own shop
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Advanced Metal Fabrication and Machine, Inc. Founded
Like Harley-Davidson, Nike, Hewlett-Packard and countless other companies, Advanced Metal Fabrication and Machine, Inc. was founded in a garage. While working full time during the day for a precision sheet metal company, Dale Aurich purchased some equipment and set up his own fab shop in his garage to run small jobs at night. Within a few months the orders were pouring in and Dale left his day job to run Advanced Metal Fabrication and Machine, Inc. full time.
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The First Shop
In 1986, still operating from an over stuffed garage filled with equipment and projects we leased our first 2400 sf shop in Tempe Arizona purchased a larger CNC punch press and hired 2 employees. That first shop which seemed huge at the time is less than 10% the size of our current building, and now wouldn't even hold our laser cutting facilities.
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Moved to a bigger shop
Just four years after moving into our first shop we outgrew it and rented our second shop, with double the space to 5,500 sf. And hired more skilled workers.
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Doubling Again
It seems like as soon as we moved into the shop we had in 1990 it was too small, in 1993 we doubled our shop space again to 11,500 sf.
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Machining Capabilities
In 1993 we bought out a joint venture and substantial expanded our in-house machining capacity allowing us to offer volume production machining to our customers.
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SolidWorks
Advanced Metal Fabrication and Machine, Inc. has always prided itself on being a cutting edge company, and in 1994 we got on board with the then still new, and now de facto standard SolidWorks. Even after all these years we still look forward every new release.
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Our First Laser
Before our laser, sheet metal blanks were typically done with a CNC punch press, which had it's benefits, but it wasn't as quick for setups and certainly didn't leave as nice of edges as a laser could. In 1995 we installed our first 2000 watt flat bed laser, a pretty cutting edge unit for the time it allowed us to greatly improve setup times, accuracy and variety of jobs that could be processed. By this time Dale's 2 oldest sons had come to work with their dad and start to learn the ropes. Jesse focused on general shop equipment and Jared focused on the Laser and Solidworks.
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CNC Machining
With our existing machine shop running maxed out we decided it was time to upgrade to more CNC Machining equipment to allowing for higher production throughput, quicker turnarounds on smaller jobs, and of course a nice bump in quality. A new CNC Mill and Lathe were added.
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The Big Move
In 2001 Advanced Metal Fabrication and Machine, Inc. made a really big move, we moved 90 miles from Tempe to Prescott Arizona into our current 34,000 square foot facility with 3 more acres to expand.
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A Series of Tubes
Previously tubing had to be tediously bent by hand, a process that was fraught with error and waste. Always seeking better precision and speed we installed our first CNC tube bender.
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Laser Upgrade
In 2011 we bought a new Trumpf TruLaser 1030 2.5kw laser cutting system. With a 60" X 120" sheet capacity. Dual automatic shuttle table.
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30th Anniversary
Today we celebrate our 30th anniversary of the day AMFM started in a garage with only Dale and occasionally 1 or 2 of his oldest sons helping out. Those same 2 sons are currently helping run the business and overseeing much of the processing of our customers projects.