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© 2025 The Finish Line
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The Finish Line brings you news and interviews with some of the top companies and individuals in the finishing and coating industry, hosted by Tim Pennington, Editor-in-Chief of www.FinishingAndCoating.com
63 Episodes
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Since 2017, Doug Orantes and his wife, Loida, have been trying to get Aero Plating in Lancaster, California, off the ground. Still, a miscommunication with local city officials derailed those plans until he was finally able to realize his dream of opening the doors in 2023. “It’s been a long wait,” Orantes says. “But it has been very much worth it.” Today, Aero Plating operates in an 8,500-square-foot facility that is certified to 9001:2015/AS9100D and Nadcap standards for chem-film and pass...
Jim Leidig is the General Manager of Matrix Finishing in Harrington, Delaware. For the last year, Leidig has had the dream job of designing and building — and now running —a hi-tech powder coating operation that would be the envy of any finishing applicator in the land. When it came time to buy the equipment needed to run the 65,000-square-foot facility, it was Leidig’s bosses who insisted that he go high-end on the equipment and supplies he needed.
Ashley and Jason Hunsaker are owners of HTS Coatings in Madison, Illinois, which offers thermal spray coating for corrosion protection. HTS Coatings is expanding and growing not only as a coating shop but also as a machining and grinding facility. They market themselves as a full-service thermal spray, grinding, machining, and welding facility that specializes in preventing corrosion- and erosion-related wear and in repairing components damaged during operation. Their trademark thermal spray ...
Guillermo Aguilera and Brenda Tapia are owners of Metal Chem in Chatsworth, California, a shop that offers chem film, passivation, anodizing, electroless nickel, zinc, and phosphate conversion on the plating side, as well as Mil-Specs, urethanes, epoxy, and polyester hybrids on the powder coating side, in addition to liquid coatings. Metal Chem also provides conformal coatings for printed circuit board assemblies, potting or encapsulation finishes in filling an electronic assembly, and dry fi...
Jeffrey Rubin is President of Testrite, a manufacturer of visual display products located in Hackensack, New Jersey. After decades of wishful thinking about bringing powder coating in-house, in 2025, Jeffrey and his father, Larry, the CEO of Testrite, are finally up and running with their own powder coating line, following years of outsourcing the work to an external shop. Testrite integrates graphics into visual merchandising, communication, and presentation environments, utilizing tho...
Park Kersman is President of Lorin Industries, which he purchased from his family in 2006. His grandfather founded the Muskegon, Michigan coil and batch anodizer in 1943, which has over 400,000 square feet of space. Lorin Industries has collaborated with some of the most prestigious names in architecture, design, and construction, and the Michigan company has quickly established a reputation in the architectural market. However, while Lorin Industries has worked diligently on a global scale t...
Gary Burton has spent over 50 years in the metal finishing industry, working on all sides of the spectrum, including as an applicator and with suppliers. Burton returned to his roots in running plating operations when he joined G.W. Lisk in 2010 as a plater and chemist, a role he still holds today. Burton graduated from Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1962 with a degree in industrial chemistry technology and worked at Utility Platers in Kingston, New York, as a Plant ...
Carl Troiano is owner of Trojan Powder Coating, which has facilities in Florida and New York. He was recently honored by the Fenestration and Glazing Industry Alliance (FGIA) for over 20 years of service, including many as a committee member of the FGIA Architectural Aluminum Handling, Cleaning, and Maintenance Task Group and now as a member of the Board of Directors. Troiano is also president of the Southeast FGIA in Florida. He concentrates on the hurricane window specifications the m...
We chat with James Lindsay, Ph. D., a retired research engineer from General Motors who has volunteered for numerous surface finishing industry groups over the past several decades. Dr. Lindsay received the National Association for Surface Finishing Presidential Award at the organization’s 2018 Sur/Fin conference for his years of contribution to the finishing industry and to the various organizations that support the industry. Dr. Lindsay was honored for his many years of service to the NASF ...
We had a chance to talk with Bob Bertelsen, owner of A Plus Powder Coaters in Northeast Ohio. When Bertelsen began A Plus Powder Coaters, he envisioned a simple production shop with possibly a conveyor line and a batch system. The company's growth has even impressed him. “I thought maybe eventually do media blasting, a handful of people, and I envisioned it getting to maybe 40,000 square feet with 20 to 25 employees; just a nice size for a shop,” Bertelsen says. Today, that 95,000-square-foot...
Keshav Kumar is owner of Plateronics Processing in Chatsworth, California, which offers anodizing, chem film passivation, electroless nickel, and various other plating substrates, including gold, silver, tin, and zinc. Kumar purchased the company five years ago because of its diversity in application processes. ”We have tried to stick into the more technologically advanced areas where we can add more value to our customer rather than going after bigger volume,” he says. For example, a t...
Alex Budd was offered a job in metal finishing while completing his MBA six years ago, and he realized it might be his calling. “I had always been interested in industries that are under the radar that you just don't think about,” says Budd, now the owner of the shop he went to work for, Greensboro Industrial Platers, having bought it six years ago from the woman who hired him. “This was perfect. You don't realize how every metal you see is coated in or treated. And it just fascinated me.” Bu...
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 Tech Plate in Orange, California, a company owned by one of his best friend’s father. The decision was ...
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 issues when using EN as a coating,” he says. “First and foremost, it is highly corrosion resistant. W...
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, account management, technical support, and customer service lab help.
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, John, as president of the company. His brother, James, works alongside him as the Vice President of Engi...
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. “I’ve been away from home playing on youth teams in other states since I was a teenager,” says ...
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 is a very local business, and it seemed that this business is always needed for the local in...
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 company, CompCote International, where she works with OEMs and finishing operations on various pro...
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, Petrey says. Today, his son, Eric Jr., owns the facility with six spray booths, one conveyor ...
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