CNC Machining Supplier for Italian Buyers

The same steel arrives under three names

An Italian drawing is usually more explicit than most about material. Nine times out of ten the title block carries the EN 10088 short designation — X5CrNi18-10, X8CrNiS18-9, X39Cr13 — and somewhere in the notes there is the old AISI equivalent. Two systems on one sheet, and the shop on this side has to reconcile them before ordering bar.

Mostly the reconciliation is routine. X5CrNi18-10 is 1.4301 is 304. X8CrNiS18-9 is 1.4305 is 303, the free-machining version, and if your drawing says that you probably need the sulphur for a reason. X39Cr13 is 1.4031 and sits at the softer end of the 420 family.

Where it stops being routine is the hard stainless family. Italian drawings for cutlery and valve trim ask for 1.4034 or 1.4125 and the two are not interchangeable even though both look like "440" in a cross-reference table. 1.4034 will not reach 58 HRC from a normal hardening cycle; 1.4125 will. Get it wrong and the parts measure right and fail the hardness check. We confirm the grade in writing before the bar stock order goes out, and there is a longer table on our European buyers page.

The other line worth reading twice is the general tolerance. Modern drawings cite UNI EN ISO 2768-m. Older ones, and plenty of small workshops in Lombardy still use them, cite UNI EN 22768-m, which is the same document under its previous number. Fine. What is not fine is when a drawing cites 2768-f and the shop defaults to m out of habit — that is a two-grade slip on every untoleranced dimension.

Three kinds of part, over and over

After enough Italian enquiries the pattern is hard to miss. Packaging machinery accounts for the largest share: cam plates, linkages, gripper jaws, star wheels, the small hardened bits that sit inside a filling or labelling line and wear out on a predictable cycle. These are usually hardened 420 or a case-hardened steel, tolerances tight on the cam profile, and the buyer cares about repeatability across runs more than about the price of the first batch.

Valve bodies and trim come next, mostly from the Brescia area. Stainless or brass, often with a seat angle that has to be cut in one pass to hold concentricity, and a pressure test we cannot do in-house — we machine to the drawing and the customer tests, which is a conversation worth having early rather than at the end.

Third is automation and fixture work: brackets, mounting plates, end effector adaptors, one-off or ten-off, drawn the week before someone needs them. This is the category where the honest answer about our speed matters. A plate with eight holes and two pockets is a two-day job including anodising. A five-axis contoured bracket with a positional tolerance of 0.02 across three faces is not, and saying so on day one saves everyone a week.

Changeover cost is the number that decides these orders

A packaging line builder does not order five thousand of anything. They order forty of a cam, then eighty of a revised cam eight months later, then a hundred of the next model. The quoted piece price is almost irrelevant; what decides whether the order comes back is whether the second run pays the setup cost again.

So fixtures and soft jaws cut for your part number are labelled with it and kept. A repeat run starts from a known setup, which is why the second order is usually cheaper than the first even at the same quantity. If you would rather hold the fixtures yourself we crate them and ship them with the parts; if the programme ends we can scrap them and send photographs.

The equipment behind this is 220 machines: 100 CNC machining centres, 30 of them five-axis, 50 CNC lathes, and 70 Tsugami sliding-headstock lathes. A cam plate and a Ø4 mm turned pin come off different machines but the same plant, which matters when a machine builder needs both in the same week.

Getting parts to Milan, Bologna or Vicenza

Air freight goes to Malpensa or to Bergamo, which is the cargo airport most of northern Italy actually uses, and takes 4 to 6 days door to door. Sea freight into Genoa or La Spezia runs 32 to 38 days; for anything above a few hundred kilos that is usually the right call and we will say so rather than quoting both and letting you choose blind.

DDP is available. On a DDP term Italian import VAT at 22% appears as a separate line on our invoice, which your accountant needs in order to recover it — a single all-in figure is convenient to read and useless at the VAT return. FOB and CIF are quoted as well, and then the customs entry is yours.

Payment is 30% by bank transfer with the order and 70% before dispatch. For a first order from a company we have not dealt with, that split is not negotiable, and we would rather say it now than spring it at the proforma stage. A prototype by express courier costs roughly EUR 25–40 under a kilo, billed at cost with the waybill attached, and the sample charge is credited against the production order.

What the quality office will ask for

A dimensional report with every drawing dimension numbered and measured, EN 10204 3.1 certificates traceable to the heat number, and a RoHS (2011/65/EU) and REACH (EC 1907/2006) declaration with an SVHC statement covering the substances we handle. CMM reports per batch where the drawing justifies one, and a first-article report on the first shipment of a new part number.

We hold ISO 9001:2015 (NOA198428, valid to 2028-06-30) and ISO 14001:2015 (NOA2100184, valid to 2027-01-04), both issued by NOA, an IAF Multilateral Recognition Arrangement member. We do not hold IATF 16949 or ISO 13485. If your supplier scoring treats either as mandatory, we will fail the score and it is cheaper for both of us to find that out from this page than from an audit.

Surface treatment is quoted to the standard, not to a colour: zinc plating to DIN EN ISO 2081, anodising to DIN EN ISO 7599, passivation to ASTM A967 or the EN equivalent you name. In-house we run anodising, zinc and nickel plating, passivation, black oxide, powder coating and laser marking.

Questions that come up before the first order

Can we talk in Italian?

Partly, and I would rather be precise than flattering. Quotes go out in English with an Italian summary covering price, lead time, incoterm and open technical points. Technical discussion runs in English because the vocabulary for a deburring spec is faster for both of us. There is no Italian version of this site — German and Japanese exist, Italian does not.

How fast is a quote?

Within 12 working hours for a drawing with tolerances on it. A STEP file with no drawing takes longer because we have to ask what actually matters.

What is the minimum order?

One piece. The price per piece falls steeply between 1 and 500 and flattens after that.

Do you do the assembly, or only the parts?

Parts, and simple sub-assembly where there are two or three components pressed or screwed together. We are not a contract manufacturer that takes over a whole sub-system, and enquiries that need that are better served elsewhere.

Can you hold a delivery date?

We quote dates we can hold. We have lost orders by quoting the honest number when someone else quoted three weeks, and it is still the right way round.

Send a drawing, get a DDP price and a DFM note

PDF, STEP or DXF. Quotes back within 12 working hours, in English with an Italian summary.

Request a quotation

Shenzhen Changhexin Precision Hardware Co., Ltd. (CHX Metal) · Shajing Street, Bao'an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China · ISO 9001:2015 (NOA198428) · ISO 14001:2015 (NOA2100184) · NDA and IP protection · Contact