Headquartered near Miami, Florida, HSC serves customers throughout and beyond its 30 location footprint, mainly in the Southeast U.S. HSC also conducts international sales through its office in Monterrey, Mexico. (motionindustries.com)
Acquires Fabco-Air
Festo recently announced the acquisition of Fabco-Air, Gainesville, Fla., a manufacturer of pneumatic automation components. The acquisition is the latest in a series of investments to support sales growth in North America.
Fabco-Air’s NPT pneumatic cylinders are applied by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) on new machinery and systems as well as replacement components in the Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) market. Like Festo, Fabco-Air provides custom solutions that bring machines and systems to market faster with less engineering required by equipment manufacturers. Fabco-Air, which recently celebrated its 60th anniversary, will continue to operate independently and will remain in Gainesville. Festo and Fabco-Air implementation teams are working together on sales channel and product catalog integration strategies.
“This new association with Festo provides Fabco-Air with the resources to grow larger and faster than otherwise possible,” said Scot LaMar, Fabco-Air general manager. “Importantly for our employees and customers, Festo has a similar culture that comes from being a family owned business. It was a key consideration in the decision to join the Festo team.”
“Festo customers and sales channel partners are excited to have the expanded product range available for their applications,” said Michael Zakrzewski, vice president of marketing management — North America. “The acquisition of Fabco-Air quickly broadens our product line, creating opportunities to fulfill more customer requirements with a strong focus on customer satisfaction.” (www.festo.us)
Adds 3D Printing Service
Stock Drive Products/Sterling Instrument (SDP/SI), recently acquired the 3D Systems ProJet MJP 2500 Plus 3D printer. A high-quality printer, the 3D Systems ProJet MJP 2500 Plus uses a liquid polymer that has a variety of material properties and can create parts in three different colors, black, white, and translucent.
The new ProJet printer is utilized for orders of individual components, such as a gear or pulley, to more complex drive assemblies. Primarily used for prototypes and low volume production, this machine has the ability to produce high-accuracy components similar to those made with injection molding.
“Using the material jetting process, the polymer is dispensed in 32μ/layers (less than a human hair) with an accuracy of +/-.001per inch or better and then UV cured,” said Mike Yandolino, senior sales engineer. This enables the creation of highly accurate drive components, allowing the engineer to assess the design for form, fit, and function before moving into high-volume production.
Yandolino continued: “Although a new process for us, we have completed a number of projects with outstanding results. Being able to deliver a component or assembly into the engineers hand for design review quickly and at a cost savings is a tremendous benefit, resulting in better designs and manufacturability.”
In addition to 3D printing prototypes, SDP/SI manufactures high-quality machined parts, molded components, and precision gearing for a wide variety of product applications in medical, aerospace, defense, robotics, and commercial industries. (www.sdp-si.com)
Acquires Precision Gears
United Stars, Inc. has announced it has acquired Precision Gears, Inc., a nearly 100-year old producer of custom gears for agriculture, food equipment, power transmission and industrial applications, based in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. The transaction represents another in a long series of similar acquisitions for United Stars over the past three decades, with each of its subsidiaries serving a range of end markets and their blue-chip OEM and Tier ١ customers with precision engineered metal products at the highest quality levels.
“Precision Gears is an excellent addition to the United Stars family in a number of ways,” comments Richard Van Lanen, president/COO of United Stars, Inc. “Not only does it extend our gear manufacturing capabilities and applications footprint, it also offers great synergies with our other businesses for certain key customers and end markets. Above all else, Precision Gears is known for their outstanding quality and overall customer centric approach, which makes them a perfect fit with the rest of our portfolio. We are very excited about their future potential and look forward to leveraging United Stars extensive corporate resources to help fuel their growth.”
Precision Gears becomes United Stars 3rd gear manufacturer, joining United Gear & Assembly (Hudson, WI) acquired in 1996 and Gear Tec (Willoughby, OH) acquired in 2007. Similar to UGA and Gear Tec, United Stars plans to further extend and enhance Precision Gears capabilities through select gear manufacturing equipment investments which complement its skilled workforce.
United Stars will continue to seek out and acquire other leading small to mid-size manufacturers like Precision Gears and develop its portfolio of value-based, engineered product solutions for its fast expanding global customer base. (www.ustars.com)
