Anyone who visits the San Diego area is welcome to stop by and visit our factory. For those of you who can’t get to Southern California, this page will give you a brief tour of the production plant and offices. Our new 66,000 square foot facility is now complete, so production, assembly and our administrative offices are once again under one roof. We invite you to stop by and tour the facility, but if you can’t, please enjoy the following photo tour. (For safety reasons, actual factory tours are limited to those 14 and older. The showroom is open to all ages with appropriate adult supervision, but display heights were not designed for viewing by children.)
If you are in Southern California, please come by and visit us. Vista is about 35 minutes North of San Diego on Interstate 5 and about an hour and a half to two hours South of Los Angeles. We are always glad to show people our facility. No appointment is necessary.
Assembly and Factory Tour Hours: Tuesday-Friday 7:30-3:00, Excluding Holidays
Showroom Hours: Tuesday-Friday 7:30-3:00
A Photo Tour of the Sherline Factory
Click on any image and use the “forward” and “previous” arrows to take a tour of the Sherline factory.
To end the tour just click in the gray area.
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- The main entrance to Sherline’s building is on the “back” side, away from the street. We chose to place the offices on this side because the building sits on top of a hill and this side faces a scenic valley with mountains in the East and the Pacific Ocean to the West.
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- This photo shot from down in the valley shows the hilltop location and gives a better idea of the overall size of the building.
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- The view west from the second floor offices. The Pacific Ocean can be seen on the horizon.
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- A display area at the top of the stairs offers visitors a chance to view some specially built Sherline machines used for special projects.
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- To your right, as you enter the building the showroom can be seen through a glass wall. Displayed are both the standard tool line and the new line of industrial slides and spindles.
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- To your left, as you walk in is the assembly area. The test benches are where computers and stepper motors for Sherline’s CNC systems are assembled and tested.
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- Material is unloaded at the north end of the building using an overhead crane when needed. Racks of new bar stock and packing crates containing extrusion can be seen at the right.
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- A cutoff saw is used to bring material down to production length.
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- A Mazak H400N machining center removes metal fast yet makes parts of very high accuracy. The revolution in computer-controlled equipment is one of the reasons Sherline tools are now made not only faster but better than they have ever been made in the past.
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- Looking from above, some of the machining centers can be seen.
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- From a similar position but looking toward the west end of the building, the Mazak FH-4800 can be seen in the lower right. To the left is the CNC lathe department.
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- Near the west end of the building are the CNC lathes.
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- A CNC lathe operator monitors progress of a job.
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- Two operators consulting on a job being run on one of the Bridgeport CNC mills.
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- Laser marking is done in this department. Taylor loads a chuck to receive its laser engraved markings.
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- Sherline’s Mazak robotic loader can pick up raw parts, place them in the chuck and return the finished part to the table. Once an operator sets up the machine and the raw materials are placed on the special table, the machine will finish all the parts by itself.
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- The grinding department handles jobs like grinding the tops of steel lathe beds, mill columns and rotary tables. This part of the operation is enclosed in a separate room to keep the abrasive grinding dust out of the rest of the shop. The big grinder to the left can now do up to 50 rotary tables at a time.
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- Back inside the building and next to the grinding room, the chuck department assembles and tests each 3-jaw and 4-jaw chuck. In this photo, lubrication is being applied to a batch of 4-jaw chucks. Over 25 years of making our own chucks has allowed us to continually improve their accuracy while keeping costs down.
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- An overview of the chuck department. You will notice many Sherline machines being used here as part of the production process. Our technicians grind jaws to fit the slots in the chucks so each new chuck is a tight fit and as accurate as possible. A grinder trues up all jaw surfaces after the chuck is assembled.
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- The assembly department receives parts from the machine shop and puts them together into sub-assemblies to await final packaging for shipment. Seeing the many bins and shelves of parts needed gives you an appreciation of how many parts it takes to make versions of every machine and an extensive line of accessories.
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- CNC machines being assembled and tested.
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- Linear controller components ready to be assembled
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- The assembly department takes the finished pieces from the machine shop and builds complete machines and accessories.
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- Here leadscrews are being assembled to stepper motor mounts.
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- The accessories are assembled and packaged in another area. Dee is surrounded by parts bins and many sizes of plastic bags and cardboard boxes. She also prints the instructions that go with each accessory, so she has a lot to keep track of in this department.
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- On the left of the picture are shelves of finished, boxed product ready to be pulled by the shipping department as needed.
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- The shipping department does the final packaging for all orders—from small individual parts to large orders for dealers. UPS & FedEx computer systems help streamline the workload and track the packages in route. From here, Sherline tools come straight to YOU.
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- Despite all the emphasis on machines in this tour, keep in mind that the ultimate quality of the products we make are a result of the people who work here. Remember that Sherline tools are made in America by people who care.
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- Enjoying a gorgeous sunset as the day ends.
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- COME BY FOR A VISIT! …There’s also a map on the back of your Sherline catalog.