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From the Editor
LYNN STANLEY, SENIOR EDITOR
Spotlight
arch kicked off Women’s History Month. The month is set aside every year by presidential proclamation. It serves to recognize and celebrate women with notable achievements. Most of us recognize names like Rosie the Riveter, Helen Keller or Katherine Johnson, who provided the calculations that helped sync Project Apollo’s Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module. Early this month, Mahalia Jackson Story premiered on cable television, showcasing the life and times of the American gospel singer. But there are millions of women whose stories remain untold. They come from all walks of life and ethnicities. Though unrecorded, their quiet contributions have left an equally indelible mark on the fabric of this country.
A worker measures the “parallelism” of a shim or thrust washer and ensures the part is as flat as possible.
ustomers are voting with their dollars for manufacturers that make a positive impact on the environment while producing high-quality products, which proves sustainability and quality strengthen each other. In fact, Accenture found that sales increased anywhere from 4 percent to 10 percent when batch and discrete manufacturers achieved greater sustainability in their operations.
in Metal
ike most professions, welders have their own lingo. Take the word fizzle. It is the vernacular for arc sparks but sounds like an oxymoron when used to describe the incandescent droplets expelled by metal being fused together. Sparks of a similar sort flew when welders Inez Escamilla and Nic Joslyn met. The Austin, Texas, residents married in 2018. The bridal party donned safety eyewear while the bride and groom put on welding helmets to join two halves of a stainless steel heart.
“I had to add the wedding venue to our commercial insurance policy before we could TIG weld the heart,” says Escamilla, who also crafted her bouquet of roses from brass and copper.
in Metal
ike most professions, welders have their own lingo. Take the word fizzle. It is the vernacular for arc sparks but sounds like an oxymoron when used to describe the incandescent droplets expelled by metal being fused together. Sparks of a similar sort flew when welders Inez Escamilla and Nic Joslyn met. The Austin, Texas, residents married in 2018. The bridal party donned safety eyewear while the bride and groom put on welding helmets to join two halves of a stainless steel heart.
“I had to add the wedding venue to our commercial insurance policy before we could TIG weld the heart,” says Escamilla, who also crafted her bouquet of roses from brass and copper.
steps
iewrail has built its business on eliminating installation steps for customers. That’s because the contemporary staircase and railing systems supplier predrills stair treads and prefabricates posts so no drilling, welding or assembly is required.
“Customers know exactly where each part goes at the job site with our turnkey solutions and detailed layout drawings,” says Viewrail Manufacturing Engineer Manager Tyler Garber.”
Len Morris started the Goshen, Indiana, business in 2001 with a few pieces of equipment, a code of integrity-based values and a vision. The company took off when Morris created and introduced Flight, his proprietary Floating Staircase system. Stair treads appear to float in midair without any structural support. Unlike traditional stairs, Flight staircases use a steel mono stringer that can be attached to a wall or hidden beneath the stair treads. Simple to assemble and install, the company can tailor the stringer, treads and railing to complement a customer’s surroundings.
“We’ve grown tremendously,” says Garber, noting that he was the 80th employee hired in 2018. “Today we have 300 personnel.” Morris has since differentiated the company’s product lines by creating two businesses. Viewrail features modern, elegant staircase solutions supported by advanced metalworking. Stair Supplies focuses on products that are handcrafted from wood.
steps
iewrail has built its business on eliminating installation steps for customers. That’s because the contemporary staircase and railing systems supplier predrills stair treads and prefabricates posts so no drilling, welding or assembly is required.
“Customers know exactly where each part goes at the job site with our turnkey solutions and detailed layout drawings,” says Viewrail Manufacturing Engineer Manager Tyler Garber.”
Len Morris started the Goshen, Indiana, business in 2001 with a few pieces of equipment, a code of integrity-based values and a vision. The company took off when Morris created and introduced Flight, his proprietary Floating Staircase system. Stair treads appear to float in midair without any structural support. Unlike traditional stairs, Flight staircases use a steel mono stringer that can be attached to a wall or hidden beneath the stair treads. Simple to assemble and install, the company can tailor the stringer, treads and railing to complement a customer’s surroundings.
“We’ve grown tremendously,” says Garber, noting that he was the 80th employee hired in 2018. “Today we have 300 personnel.” Morris has since differentiated the company’s product lines by creating two businesses. Viewrail features modern, elegant staircase solutions supported by advanced metalworking. Stair Supplies focuses on products that are handcrafted from wood.
to take on the competition
hen newcomer Muhammad Ali [Cassius Clay] took on world heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in 1964, he told fans he would “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” He danced, shuffled and jabbed his way to a seventh-round knockout to claim the title. The iconic phrase was Ali’s self-described fighting style in the ring, but it is also an apt description of Boschert USA’s plate roll bending machines produced by French equipment builder AMB Picot.
seasoned welder, artist and welding educator, Sean Flottmann volunteered at the American Welding Academy to reach out to students about a possible career in welding. “I volunteered at open houses and held demonstrations at different schools and other locations,” Flottmann says. After months of volunteering, Flottmann officially joined the American Welding Academy full-time.
merican manufacturing is in our blood,” says Stephen Serling. The Quality Metal Stamping vice-president is fourth generation in a family-owned business that is grounded in a family-oriented work culture. For nearly a century, the ability to embrace change and think outside the box has helped the company reinvent itself and take its business from shoes to that of a custom metal solutions provider.
“My great-grandfather Lou Serling started Serling Last Corporation in 1932,” says Stephen Serling. “He made wooden shoe lasts for shoemakers in Long Island, New York. When my grandfather David Serling took over, he expanded the company globally. He designed and introduced the first plastic shoe last, which had a metal heel plate that was stamped on a small press.”
he balance between aesthetics and functionality is weighed carefully by A Plus Powder Coaters. Fabricators turn to the coating company for long-term results. “The last thing a customer wants is their materials rusting months after the job,” says Terry Watson, sales manager at the Columbiana, Ohio-based custom coating company.
stronger,
faster
Stainless steel fl ights wrapped on the TAB Wrapper Tornado are ready for delivery without boxes, banding or strapping.
t is challenging to fabricate thousands of custom metal augers each year while adhering to exact specifications. Each auger must be able to withstand heavy wear-and-tear in the mining, concrete and construction industries. But the bigger problem stems from wrapping and transporting oddly shaped augers and screws for packaging and delivery.
The Marathon M42 bi-metal bandsaw blade is an all-purpose blade used for cutting medium and large cross-sections.
saw blade is useless if it never arrives. After its saw blade vendor left one too many calls unanswered, K&B Industries decided to look for a new one. “We needed to get the blades on time and have someone return our calls,” recalls Randy Duarte, process and finish supervisor at the Houston-based provider of OCTG tubular threading, machining, manufacturing and assembly services.
View Index
Not Whole Fence, designed by Ball-Nogues Studio, pays homage to the simpler days of baseball, riffing on the mythic image of kids trying to catch a glimpse of the ballgame through a knothole in a wooden fence. Located on a major intersection in El Paso, Texas, the work links the ballgame, a playground and the street. It provides the security of a partition, while facilitating coincidental encounters with the game from the sidewalk. The shape suggests one colossal wood picket turned on its side and wrapped around the stadium, with “knotholes” that are big enough for groups of people to view the game from the sidewalk. It was fabricated from custom aluminum extrusions. Individual extrusions were CNC milled with a wood grain pattern and anodized a warm copper hue. The grain pattern allows light to pass through the fence while the ribs diffuse the light.
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