Strategic Acquisition of Ceramic Ball Producer Assets

 

 

At Hoover Precision Products East Granby our scope including expanding the sales of silicon nitride balls for Hoover and our Japanese parent company.

We identified a competitor in Europe who manufactured complete ceramic balls from powder though forming, sintering and then ball lapping.   The company was the smallest of the global producers of this product and they had very limited ball- lapping and measurement capabilities.   They had impressive sales coverage in Europe and sold small quantities to all of the bearing producers in Europe.

They asked us to produce balls using their blanks for them in the United States to help them get more production at a lower costs.

Our counter offer was as follows:

  1. We would purchase their ball manufacturing equipment and move it to the US.
  2. We would purchase their ball inventory.
  3. We would purchase their customer list.
  4. We would hire their sales person as an employee.
  5. They would exit the blank production process.

This was agreed.

A cash transaction occurred and we hired their salesperson to help us expand the sales effort in Europe.

This project was very successful.   There was a nice influx of new work that was so significant that it was largely produced and managed by our Japanese parent company.

 

TiC Reactor and Process Acquistion

Tic Coating and Process Strategic Acquisition:

 

 Tic Ball coating is a proprietary ball coating process developed in the 1980’s by MIT Draper Lab and CSEM in Switzerland. The Tic Coated Ball is a 80 um thick layer of Titanium Carbide Ceramic coated on a high performance stainless steel ball. The coating was done by CSEM in Switzerland. 

The Tic Coated ball is used in high performance bearings.  The ball will work in bearing environments when normal lubricants begin to fail.  This includes high speed and high temperature differential environments. The Tic ball is used in bearings specified for numerous strategic and tactical military weapons and guidance systems.

In 2006 CSEM announced that they wanted to sell the reactor and process, and transfer the technology from Switzerland.  Several million dollars was required.

This change would affect numerous contracts for bearings for various US military and commercial aerospace projects.

 I was responsible for the coater as my supplier, and for my customers the bearing producers.    I took on the project of moving this process to the United States.

The problems were as follows:

            1. Find a new coating source in the United States.

            2. Find the money to make the acquisition.

            3. Create an approval process to insure that the technical transfer was  effective.

            4. Plan production to insure that time was available to shut down and  re-qualify the process.

            5. Involve the bearing producers and their customers in the process and insure everyone knew the expectations.

Meeting were held with the bearing industry and possible coaters were identified and vetted.    Within a short time we settled on BryCoat of Oldsmar, Florida as the best candidate.

The money required for the acquisition was considerably in excess of the value of the assets.   Most of the money was to cover years of development work incurred.    We reached out to the US Government through the Missile Defense Agency and found a willingness to support this acquisition since this technology is important to many military applications.    A process was put in place  to supplement the acquisition funds  for BryCoat by using an SBIR.  This allowed them to negotiate the purchase and to pay for engineering required to certify the process to the original standards.

Working with the bearing industry and retired employees from Draper Lab an approval process was created that matched the original approval process from the 1980's.  This was agreed to by all and funding was arranged with assistance from the US Government.

There was an 18 month grace period that allowed the industry to plan for production during a shutdown period that was expected to be 9 months.   This was largely successful.

1st quarter of 2007 the process was in production and testing was started.

The final test results were presented to the bearing industry at the ASTM Committee F34 at the International Symposium on Rolling Element Bearings in May 2007.

Shipment began at this point.

In 2011 BryCoat received the Tibbets Award for the outstanding execution of an SBIR. 

References:

Increased performance of bearings using TiC-coated balls.

Savan, Boving, Fluehmann, Hintermann

Journal de Physique IV, 1993

Evaluation of U.S TiC-Coated Balls

Robert Price, The Bearing Consultants, Randolph, Mass.

ASTM Committee 34 International Symposium on Rolling Element Bearings

Projects using bearings with TiC balls in 2007.

        1. Trident Missile -- DoD

        2. THAAD Missile --- DoD

        3. Standard Missile 3 ---DoD

       4. PAC-3 Missile   --- DoD 

       5. Space Tracking and Surveillance System 

       6. Avionics Navigation  -- Commercial 

       7.  Various NASA, DoD and commercial projects.

        

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