The Finish Line

We talk with Elite Metal Finishing's Steve Allen about his challenge of getting the Oceanside, California, shop to attain Nadcap accreditation in chemical processing. In the finishing industry, this effort is not for the faint of heart, especially for someone relatively new. “ I knew this was going to be a huge challenge,” says Allen, who started at Elite in 2022 after working four years at T...

We talked with Joe Zabielski from Ronatec about the new Paladin high-phos electroless nickel chemistry, which the company says offers outstanding corrosion protection and hardness. Zabielski says Paladin has passed salt spray tests up to 7500 hours and has plated hardness equivalent to mid-phos baths. “Paladin is a novel high-phosphorus, electroless nickel process developed to address two key issu...

We chatted with Dan Zinman from Miles Chemical on various topics about surface finishing. One topic is product availability that seems to be a big concern for many finishers, as well as just-in-time delivery, removing material from their floor, or an emergency when a tank is down.  We also discussed how shops are asking for more local presence with their suppliers, such as customer service issues,...

We had the chance to have an extended talk with Matt Lindstedt, President of Advanced Plating Technology in Milwaukee, about how the 2009 decision to reconfigure how the Milwaukee-based plating company worked with its customers and end OEMs has changed their company. “Those were hard years because you didn't know if what we were doing was working,” says Lindstedt, who succeeded his father, Jo...

Not every offspring of a surface finishing company owner is destined to follow in their parent’s footsteps, work their way onto the shop floor, and eventually sit in an executive’s chair. For Ross Henry of ChromeTech in Franklin, Wisconsin, following in those footsteps would have meant unlacing his ice skates and chucking his Bauer stick, but a potential hockey career staved that off for some time...

We chat with Kandarp Patel, who purchased Somerville Plating in Melrose Park, Illinois in mid-2024  Somerville Plating is a Nadcap-certified operation with over 44 years in the finishing industry. “We were looking for something in manufacturing, and we realized that a lot of it has been moving around because of the competitive risks of moving it to Mexico and China,” Patel says. “However, plating...

Judy Runge’s metallurgical engineer and surface finishing expert career spans almost 40 years in industrial, government, and academic professional settings. She worked at Northrop’s Defense Systems Division, Taussig Associates, Inc., Saporito Plating, Argonne National Laboratory, and recently retired as a Principal Engineer for Surface Finishing at Apple. Dr. Runge still maintains her consulting c...

Mike Petrey is Plant Manager at powder coater Prism Technologies in Redford, Michigan, which was founded in 1997 as a small family company with two employees and 2,500 square feet.  The founder, Eric Felton Sr., had a history with powder manufacturing and quality control with Glidden paints. He branched into consulting and assisted in powder line set-ups and troubleshooting all over the country, P...

Alan Henry is the owner of ChromeTech of Wisconsin, an ISO-certified industrial plating operation that he founded in 1984. The company specializes in hard chrome, sulfamate nickel, electroless nickel, and nickel-chrome plating. The ChromeTech company is indeed a family affair; in addition to Alan, his wife, Vickie, and son, Zach, work there, and sister Adrianna also helped with marketing, writing,...

Jesse Heines of Digger Specialties is the Corporate Powder Coating and Project Manager for the railing, fencing, and column manufacturer with various locations around the U.S.  Loren “Digger” Graber founded his outdoor living and maintenance-free products in 1984, starting as a manufacturer of vinyl fencing and various other related maintenance-free products. Under his leadership, DSI has become o...

Ross Peterson is the Chief Business Development Officer of ProPlate, an Anoka, Minnesota, company that finishes specialty items for the medical and surgical industry.  In this podcast, Ross explains how ProPlate works closely with the medical community to come up with new finishes and coatings for critical medical parts. For example, ProPlate spent over a year developing a process to finish neodym...

Navin Mangrue is Sales Manager for Professional Powder Coating located in Etobicoke, Ontario, a family-run shop in Toronto that is ready to coat anything that might need to survive in treacherous climate. “About 99% of what we powder coat is going to be sitting outside all day and all night and for years to come,” says Navin Mangrue, Sales Manager for Professional Powder Coating located in Etobico...

New England Electropolishing owners Amy Prigmore and Luke Almeida discussed how their company in Fall River, Massachusetts, has evolved since their parents founded it in 1985. Alvin and Jeannine Almeida founded NEE and slowly grew the business over the next several decades. Al Almeida kept his day job distributing chemicals, and NEE had just two employees who performed the work Al brought to them....

We talk with Francisco Capacho, President and General Manager of Dixon Hard Chrome in Sun Valley, California, about his path to success in the United States electroplating industry. Capacho began his career working at his father’s plating operation near Bogota, Columbia, where he was on the shop floor at age 5 following his father around the complex. In 2023, he moved to south to Southern Californ...

Bales Metal Surface Solutions’ owners, Stacey Bales and Sara Mortensen, chose a practical gift for themselves as they prepare for their anniversary in a few years. In March, the Downers Grove, Illinois, company christened a pair of new nickel lines at its 29,000-square-foot facility, doubling its capacity to reduce customer lead time by half and grow the business even more. “We’re hoping our 50th...

When Chuck Zinke built his second finishing and coating operation over 100 miles away from the first, he quickly added a new word to his vocabulary. “Delegation,” says Zinke, who started Perfection Industrial Finishing in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995 and added a second plant in 2020 in Chandler, about a 75-minute drive north near Phoenix. The expansion was necessary for Perfection, which offers powder...

We talk with Matt Fodge, the Vice President at Gleco Plating, and his dad, Jeff Fodge, President, which has two locations in Texas in Rowlett and McAllen. Gleco provides zinc, anodize, chromate, bright nickel, tin, silver, gold, and copper finishes to the automotive, defense, sheet metal, metal machining, and telecommunications industries. Jeff says about three years ago, Gleco decided to put a ne...

The markets that Melissa Ver Meer’s companies service could not be more varied, from screen printing to commercial food equipment to ovens and dryers for industrial manufacturing. However, one consistent feature of the various markets that HIX Corporation sells to is that Ver Meer knows she must have an extremely durable coating applied to all the machines, parts, and components. It’s a lesson tha...

Anne Deacon Juhl, Ph. D., is the owner of AluConsult, where she consults with OEMs and manufacturers on aluminum and anodizing. Dr. Juhl recently celebrated her 25th as a consultant in the anodizing industry. She holds a Ph. D. in pulse anodizing of extruded and cast aluminum alloys from the Technical University of Denmark, Material and Surface Technology Department, and is an M.Sc. chemical engin...

Gary Hamby is the President and Chief Executive Officer at H&M Plating in Houston, Texas, and who saw his company grow in volume when many oil and gas operators had trouble getting parts for their equipment and facilities. Those supply chain problems forced many manufacturers to recondition their parts to keep operations going. Hamby and the four companies he runs — grinding, honing, and finis...

Robert Hunsucker purchased Future Finishes in Hamilton, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati in 2020, and has revitalized the company. After buying the struggling finishing company and moving from Michigan with his family, Hunsucker wasn’t turning a profit and was finding all kinds of issues with the equipment and systems he had mortgaged his life on. And with just two other employees to help him weathe...

We talk with Sandee Andrews, Co-Owner, Chief Financial Officer, and Strategic Director of Operations at Andrews Powder Coating in Los Angeles. Andrews Powder Coating holds numerous approvals and certifications, all of whoich Andrews and her team has worked diliogently to obtain: AS9100 | ISO 9001, recertified annually. Entering their sixth year doing Tier 1 space projects with prime contractors, a...

We talk with Tony Bouie, President of ChemResearch Corp. in Phoenix, Arizona, who takes a unique approach to how CRC views its staff and the unique approach to managing them. “I call it ‘People, Not Parts,’” says Bouie, whose company is a metal finishing service provider for the aerospace, defense, medical, semiconductor/electronics, space, and heavy equipment industries. “We are laser-focused on...

We speak with George LaCapra Jr., President of UniMetal Surface Finishing, and Patrick Hayden, Senior Vice President, about the  company that has two facilities in Connecticut: one in Thomaston, that serves as headquarters and another in Naugatuck. Their key to success is running high-volume barrel, reel-to-reel, and short-run rack plating; in addition, they offer cleaning, deburring, precision cl...

We talk with owner Rob Thomas of Anchor Bay Powder Coat in New Baltimore, Michigan, a 15-year-old shop that applies powder and liquid coating along with sandblasting and oven burn-off. Its roots go back to Thomas’ parent’s autobody finishing operation and a need to offer better coatings and improved quality to customers located about 35 miles northeast of Detroit. The company has two locations abo...