A tale of two shops

Stock Drive Products/Sterling Instrument integrates two shops’ design, engineering and manufacturing functions.

Separate yet combined is an apt description of Stock Drive Products/Sterling Instrument. Located on New York’s Long Island, in New Hyde Park, both sides of the company were founded, and are still managed, by engineers. They machine and manufacture an array of mechanical components—offering more than 130,000 line items.

Although typically referred to as one entity, ISO 9001-registered SDP focuses on producing standard synchronous-drive products, while AS9100-registered SI primarily provides custom components to solve complex challenges for its customers, with standard tolerances as tight as ±0.0001 “. For SDP, which has machining and plastic molding capabilities, products include gears, couplings, bearings, timing pulleys and timing belts. Custom products, however, are not out of the question at SDP. For example, SDP can cut timing belt widths to exact specifications from its vast inventory of sleeves.

Courtesy of All images: A. Richter

John Lowe, foreman for Sterling Instrument, is one of the company’s many long-time employees.

Bob Gaulrapp, shop foreman for Stock Drive Products, displays a part produced on a Mori Seiki NL2000 horizontal lathe.

SI specializes in precision gears, gearboxes, differentials, sprockets and aerospace parts made from a host of materials, including titanium, stainless steel, aluminum and nylon. Major customers include Boeing Satellite Systems, Hamilton Sundstrand, Raytheon Systems, Flir and Israel Aerospace.

“We do it all,” said John Lowe, SI foreman, “including anything that is driven or has to be connected to an encoder, motor or transmission.”

Linda Shuett, marketing manager for New Hyde Park-based Designatronics Inc., which owns both divisions, noted SI began operations about 50 years ago and SDP came into existence a few years later. Especially for the SDP side, she added that the plan was to be the go-to source for synchronous-drive products, from prototype to production quantities, and began including items in the catalog just as a benefit for customers. “[The idea was to] add other components, so if somebody is buying a gear, why not sell them something else they also might need?”

Early on, Lowe explained, the company noticed that customers needed certain gears SI wasn’t producing as well as belt-driven products. To produce the additional products required to meet this demand, the company developed the SDP side, which eventually became the larger of the two. “The Sterling side still maintains what it does best and that’s design,” he said. “We’re not just a manufacturer of standard components. Our biggest strength is our engineering staff. We’ll take your widget or gadget and develop that product until you’re happy, and that’s how a lot of relationships start.”

Other times, a customization project begins when an end user sees a product, such as a gear or transmission device, in one of SDP/SI’s catalogs but determines it isn’t exactly what’s needed. From there, Lowe said, the company will modify the product and develop prototypes to test before going into production. “Anybody can call and say, ‘We have a problem. How can you help us?’ “

Cutting Metal

Regardless of which side of the building you are in—you have to pass through a doorway to go from one shop to the other—you will see a lot of machining equipment on a visit to SDP/SI. The list includes 48 CNC and 22 manual lathes, 15 CNC milling machines and machining centers, 20 grinders, 34 pieces of drilling equipment, four deburring machines and more than 120 gear hobbing, shaping and generating machines. To verify parts are in tolerance and otherwise meet specification requirements, the company has more than 140 pieces of inspection and test equipment, as well as miscellaneous inspection tools, micrometers, calipers and gages. It also has an ISO 7/class 10,000 clean room.

Many of those machine tools are from one builder. “We’re one of the largest purchasers of Mori Seiki equipment in the Northeast,” Lowe said.

CNC machinist Jonathan Corda monitors a Mori Seiki machine tool that is integrated with an LNS bar feeder to provide long-run production.

About 5 years ago, SI purchased its first mill/turn machine, one from Mori Seiki’s original NL series. Since then, multitask machining has proven to be a beneficial addition, according to Lowe. “We were like ‘wow,’ ” he said about the company’s first mill/turn machine, “and bought a second one and said ‘wow’ again. This looks like the way our future is going.”

Lowe explained that prior to acquiring multitask technology, lathes were in one area and milling machines were across the aisle. Parts were transferred from machine to machine as needed. Now those machining tasks can be done in one setup unless the material requires heat treatment. He said: “Going forward, every possible opportunity goes through the mill/turn machine, even if it goes out for heat treating to bring up the Rockwell. We have successfully machined materials up to 64 HRC. The Mori Seiki machines are so consistent that we can hold 0.0001 ” or 0.0002 ” tolerances all day long when hard turning.”