About Port Stephens Machining

We are a CNC machining and engineering workshop at 12 George Road, Salamander Bay, in Port Stephens. We have been here since 2016.

There is no front counter, no sales team and no one between you and the machinist. When you ring, you get the person who will actually set the job up and cut it.

Who you are dealing with

Todd Bonniface owns and runs Port Stephens Machining. He does the quoting, the CAD and CAM work, the programming and a fair share of the machining. Todd works around another job, so he is not always standing at a machine — but he is always across every job in the shop, and he answers the phone.

Todd’s other strength is design. He works in Fusion 360 daily — modelling, CAM, sheet metal, reverse engineering a part from measurements. If you turn up with an idea and no drawing, that is a normal Tuesday here.

Todd is a fitter machinist by trade, apprenticed in 1997 and in machine shops ever since — nearly thirty years. Before opening this shop in 2016 he ran floors for other people: leading hand and workshop supervisor in Sydney jobbing and reclamation shops, on-site machining on mine and power station shutdowns, three years setting up CNC lathes and mills for Sandvik's mining tooling plant at Heatherbrae, and workshop supervisor of a 22-person maintenance shop at OneSteel in Newcastle. That is where the habits come from: set-ups that repeat, jobs proved before they run, and a straight answer about what will work.

One full-time machinist runs the floor, 7am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Long days on purpose — it means a job that lands in the morning can be set up, proved out and running by knock-off.

We are closed Saturdays and Sundays. If you need something urgently over a weekend, ring during the week and we will work out what can be done before Friday.

How the shop actually runs

The advantage of a small shop is that nothing sits in a queue waiting for a meeting. The advantage of our particular small shop is that the machines do not stop when we go home.

We set jobs up during the day and let them run unattended overnight. Lights-out running is how a two-person shop puts out the volume of a bigger one, and it is why we can price repeat batch work keenly and still put a firm date on it.

That has shaped what we are good at:

• Repeat batch work. Precision crimping dies — hex and round — for electrical manufacturers and wholesalers are our bread and butter. Ongoing batches, made to the same size every time, delivered when we said.
• One-offs and repairs. Machinery breakdowns, sample parts with no drawings, shafts, bushes, bearing housings, re-sleeving, custom brackets. Small jobs are not a nuisance to us — they are half the business.
• Design work. Concept to CAD to machined part, all under one roof.

What we machine

4140 heat-treated. Tool steels. 316 stainless. Aluminium. Brass, bronze and copper. Cast iron. Engineering plastics — acetal, nylon, UHMWPE, PTFE. If it can be held in a chuck or on a table, we will machine it.

On tolerance: we routinely hold ±0.01mm on turned and milled features where the drawing asks for it, and we will tell you when it does not need to.

How we work

We give straight answers. If your part is not worth machining, we will tell you. If the job is better suited to someone else, we will say so, and usually tell you who to ring.

We quote properly. A price and a date, not a vague range that moves later.

We keep you informed. If something is going to be late — a material delay, a tooling problem — you hear it from us early, not on the due date.

Small means accountable. There is nowhere to hide in a two-person shop. Your job is either right or it is our name on it.

What we are not

We are not a big fabrication house with twenty welders. We do not hold ISO certification. We are not going to tell you we are the biggest anything.

What we are is two people who will machine your part properly and have it there on the day we promised.