The Finish Line

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 neodymium iron boron magnets, which can be up to 10 times stronger than the best ceramic magnets. ...

01-03

24:59

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 Etobicoke, Ontario. “So we are catering to rust, we're catering to blasting, and we're catering to galva...

12-20

22:52

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. Read the full article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index.php/plating/2049-with-one-focus-...

12-06

32:07

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 California to run Dixon Hard Chrome, which has over 10,000 square feet in the building complex and an ad...

11-23

29:56

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 year in business is going to be a bang-out one,” says Stacey, whose late father started the compa...

11-08

27:54

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 coating, ceramic coating, liquid coating, and chemical conversion processes at both locations. ...

10-18

31:21

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 new management operating system in place that “caused all of us to think outside the box” as the ...

10-07

33:23

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 that Ver Meer—who has a Doctorate in Materials Science from Iowa State—learned when she started her ...

09-23

28:29

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 engineer focusing on the corrosion resistance of light metals. She is also a member of the Internationa...

09-08

24:15

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 finishing — saw a huge benefit. “With the supply chain issues, you had to fix parts because there wasn...

08-15

26:29

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 weather the storm of getting Future Finishes back up and running, his physical and mental well-being we...

08-02

27:25

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, and to their knowledge, are the only powder coating operation in the nation certified for space f...

07-21

35:01

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 our customers, which for us includes employees,” he says. “If we take care of our employees, our ...

07-04

15:04

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 cleaning, and vibratory finishes. Read the article at https://finishingandcoating.com/index...

06-21

27:17

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 about 1.5 miles from each other: a 20,000-square-foot location that houses the original operation a...