5 Things to Know Before Sending Parts to a Grinding Shop

A practical checklist for engineers and procurement teams.

Before you ship your parts, get these five things straight. It’s the difference between a smooth job and a back-and-forth that eats your schedule.

1. Know Your Material

Not all materials grind the same way. Be ready to share the material type, hardness if heat-treated, and any prior operations (milling, EDM, plasma cut).

Nelson Grinding handles mild steel, heat-treated steel, aluminum, titanium, and select plastics and rubber. Not sure if your material is on that list? Call before you ship.

2. Know Which Process You Need

Blanchard and surface grinding are not interchangeable. Pick the wrong one and you’ll pay for it in time or tolerance.

3. Have Your Tolerance Callout Ready

Tolerance drives everything: process, setup, inspection, and price. At minimum, know your:

• Flatness tolerance — how flat, in thousandths
• Parallelism — if both faces are controlled
• Surface finish (Ra) — if called out on the print
• Final thickness and allowable deviation

Nelson Grinding holds below 0.0005″ on surface grinding work. Bring the actual print, not a verbal description.

4. Know Your Part Size

Our capacity: Blanchard up to 84″ diameter, surface grinding up to 30″x72″. If your part is close to those limits, tell us upfront. Parts near capacity sometimes need adjusted setups, and that conversation is better had before the job starts.

5. Tell Us If You’re on a Tight Timeline

Expedited jobs need scheduling changes and setup prioritization. A shop that doesn’t know you’re in a rush can’t plan for it. Nelson Grinding offers expedited service. We’ve been handling tight aerospace and defense deadlines for decades. Just say so at the quote stage.

Bottom line: Get these five things ready before you call, and the rest is straightforward — spec in, quote back, parts ground flat.

Ready to get a quote? Visit nelsongrinding.com or call 714-738-5588. Keep On Grinding!