The Finish Line

Tony Sclafani is Vice President and General Manager of the family-run Las Vegas AR Iron facility, including an in-house powder coating operation, AR Powder Coating. “We’re always looking to differentiate ourselves because every shop does the same thing, whether it’s an ornamental or powder coating,” Sclafani says. “Anybody can pick up a welder, and anybody can pick up a powder coat gun. But it’s h...

Jason Pugh was in the powder coating industry for only a few months before his company — Key-Link Fencing and Railing — presented him with a huge challenge.   Key-Link managers wanted Pugh — who had worked in the food service industry prior to being hired as powder coating manager in April 2022 — to put his coating team and its systems to the test by obtaining certification from the Powder Coating...

Jim Jones spent more than 50 years in the finishing industry, you can now find him soaring high above the clouds these days as a pilot of his own planes after retiring from DIFCO in Georgia. After high school, Jones attended college and then enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, where he served in the Minuteman Missile Program at Vandenberg AFB in California and attended Alan Hancock College. “I also ha...

Ken Hoffmann was enjoying his life in luxurious Palm Springs, California when the call came that made him take a more serious tone about his life goals. He had worked in the construction business, in the restaurant industry, and even was a sommelier for a time in the glitzy Coachella Valley of California. Life was easy and fun more than 30 years ago for the married father of two. “I was moving alo...

Loreto “Larry” Capoccia came to the U.S. from Italy with his wife in 1966 and soon found a career in the metal finishing industry. He began working at Alexandria Metal Finishers and eventually became part owner of the company, specializing in precious metal plating (gold, silver, and rhodium), hard anodizing, and multi-plating on unusual alloys and special set-ups. AMF is now a Nadcap-certified fa...

Dan Brockman was a college student in the late 1960s when he took a part-time job at a manufacturer who also happened to be looking for a hard chrome plater. One of the tasks Brockman was given was to find a suitable plating operation for his employer to use, and he discovered there were not many platers to choose from. “I went back to my college class and wrote a 70-page business plan with a few...

TJ Grandcolas is owner of Reid Metal Finishing in Santa Ana, California, a shop that was started by his father, Jerry. Grandcolas tells how he worked in the shop after college, and then become principal owner after his father's passing in 2018 when TJ was just 33. “At 33 years old. I was not prepared for all that happened,” he says. “I didn’t really feel like he had a lot of time to teach me...

We talk with Chris Trimino, Vice President of Operations at Sav-On Plating in Phoenix, Arizona, about how, if a part is made in the U.S. and headed to Mexico to be assembled, then Sav-On Plating seeks to be a stop on the way. “We want a piece of it,” Chris says. “We offer a plating service, final quality, final packaging, and direct delivery to their customer for assembly in Mexico.” It has been t...

When John Lindstedt entered the Navy several decades ago, he was selected for the Nuclear Propulsion Program to support the submarine program. That meant classes 8 hours a day straight for six months, with multiple exams in between to weed out those who weren’t cut out for the stringent engineering requirements. “I’m told it’s the equivalent of a master’s degree in seven months,” says Lindstedt, w...

Silver has long been the metal of choice in finishing electronic components, and the surge of electric vehicles has put silver at the forefront of the automotive industry. But Rich DePoto, Business Development Manager with Uyemura International, says in this TechTalk with www. FinishingAndCoating.com that with the emergence of EV units, “all of the rules for automobiles have changed, and for silve...

We talk with Ralph Capalbo Jr. from New Method Plating in Worcester, Massachusetts, where Capalbo worked for almost 60 years in a company started by his father. “I’ve tried to run a successful business for the last 57 years, so now I am glad that the boys are in there now,” says Capalbo, who turned the business over to his sons, Nick and Chris. New Method offers many plating processes, including c...

We talk with Eric Svenson Sr., president of Plating Resources, about the development of a new and safe way to add sulfate to hexavalent chrome plating baths, Buffered Sulfate Adjuster. The product can be used for both hard and decorative plating, either when making up a new solution or when raising the sulfate level in an existing bath. Traditionally the sulfate has been increased using hazardous...

We spoke with Dan Rose, owner of Elite Metal Finishing in Oceanside CA, about the job coaching he has received from Jim Castigilia from Business Street Fighter Consulting. You can read the article here: https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/1332-executive-coaching-helps-finishing-owners-handle-day-to-day  “I’m a real passionate guy, and when talking to my staff, sometimes it comes out...

We catch up with Kevin Wedge, General Manager of Pro Powder in South Haven, Michigan, who saw a significant need to automate the facility’s coating line three years ago in order to get better quality and repeatability. “It was a significant change in culture, attitude, and throughput,” he says. “There were challenges at every stop along the way, and we still see some from time to time today.” But...

Going from a 7,000-square-foot powder coating operation to a 70,000-square-foot facility isn’t something done overnight, and managing it doesn’t get any easier. Just ask Kevin Maas and his brother, Kraig, owners of Maas Brothers Powder Coating in Livermore, California, just outside of San Francisco. “It’s been a slow progression,” Kevin says. “We started in 1998, and 10 years later, we moved into...

When Stephen Rudy CEF was getting close to retirement several years ago, he began wondering what he would do to keep himself busy. “I asked myself about nine months before I retired, ‘What are you going to do with your time?’” says Rudy, who started his own company, Chem Analytic, which offers wet analysis of metal finishing solutions, hull cell plating test and evaluation, and training services f...

For more than 40 years, Terry Giles has crisscrossed the U.S. and the world not only working to install better coating systems for major OEMs for Henkel, but also educating others in the industry through talks and presentations. Now retired, Giles has held various positions while at Henkel, including research chemist, technical service manager, sales and marketing. His last position before retirin...

We chat with Andrew Kossowski, who three years ago  left the corporate world behind to buy a metal finishing operation. This year, he is building himself a new one. In 2020, Kossowski and his wife, Sydney, retired from their careers and decided to purchase DHS Enterprises in Clearwater, Florida. The 5,000-square foot facility — which they have renamed Veterans Metal — was an all-manually-operated...

John Heyer will be the first to admit that he took a job in the coatings industry simply because he needed a job back in the early 1970s. But what he did with that opportunity led him to a remarkable career that included finally owning the company he went to work for, as well as decades of activism in industry trade associations that culminated in being inducted into the Powder Coating Institute&a...

Paul Springer was fresh out of college in the early 1970s and enjoying a career at Diamond Shamrock, where he helped create Dacromet, one of the first products that used a zinc and chromium coating application. “I had a pretty good job there,” he says. “I enjoyed what I was doing.” But his tennis party in those days, George Kappas Sr. from Erieview Metal Treating in Cleveland, kept telling Springe...

Frank Altmayer always wanted to be an architect, but a change of direction became a benefit for the finishing industry. “I graduated from high school in Chicago and was hoping to be an architect, but things didn’t work out too well,” Altmayer says. “My mom told me to get a job, so I signed up with an employment agency, and they found me a job at Scientific Control Laboratories.” Years later, Altma...

Decades into a career as a metal finisher, chemical, and equipment salesperson, Marko Duffy can now add a new title to his resume: matchmaker. After 25 years working in shops, five years working for a supplier, and 10 years running his own sales business, Duffy now finds himself running an electroplating shop in Danvers, Massachusetts, near his hometown. TDF Metal Finishing named Duffy its managin...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be sending a PFAS questionnaire to electroplaters to collect data for the agency’s planned revision of the metal finishing and electroplating guidelines. Attorney Ethan Ware is one of the foremost experts on environmental law and has sound advice for any of the 1,815 shops in the U.S. that the EPA will send the survey to determine their effluent discha...

To say the last three years have been a rollercoaster for Jessica Famiglietti Young would be quite an understatement. Before 2019, she was a successful real estate agent in Las Vegas and owned a local armory that manufactured and sold firearms. Today, she owns an anodizing facility in North Las Vegas that offers Type II and Type III finishes for a wide variety of customers but also serves as the i...

Starting on the supplier side of the finishing industry, Adam Anderson has always wanted to try his hand at running an electroplating shop of his own. Having worked with dozens of plating shops during his time at Columbia Chemical and Atotech, Anderson had seen some fantastic ways that plating shops could be run efficiently and thought he could incorporate some of those when his time came if it ev...