Marine hardware fails at the details: a radius that was value-engineered away, a weld that was a fillet where it should have been full penetration, a thread that was cut instead of rolled. Keeping the whole process in one building is how we keep those details from drifting.
1. Material
Bar and billet arrive with mill certificates and are booked in against heat number. Nothing enters production without that paperwork, and the heat number follows the part all the way to the batch code stamped on the finished fitting.
2. Closed-die hot forging
Shackle bodies, pad eyes and high-load fittings are forged rather than cast or machined from bar. Forging aligns the grain flow with the curve of the part, so the load path runs along the grain instead of cutting across it. On a bow shackle that difference is worth roughly a third of the breaking load.
3. Machining
Five-axis machining centres cut sheave grooves, bearing races, thread forms and bolt patterns. Bearing surfaces are held to plus or minus 0.02 mm. First-article inspection runs on every new tool and at the start of every batch, and the results stay on file.
4. Welding
Fabricated parts such as stanchion bases are TIG welded with full penetration at the highest stressed joint, then dressed back. Welders are qualified annually against a procedure specification, and heat tint is removed rather than polished over – tinted stainless is the most reliable way to start a corrosion site.
5. Finishing
Passivation removes free iron dragged across the surface by tooling. Electropolishing then takes off a thin worked layer and rounds the microscopic peaks left by grinding. Both matter far more for pitting resistance than the visual shine that comes with them.
6. Assembly and marking
Bearings are fitted in a clean area, torque values are recorded, and every rated fitting is stamped with its batch code before packing. That code is what lets us answer a question about a fitting somebody pulls off a boat in eight years.
Custom and OEM work
We develop drawing-to-part from 250 pieces per line, including custom finishes, alternative materials and your own part marking. Typical tooling lead time is six to ten weeks depending on whether the part needs a forging die. Send a drawing, a sample or just the loads and the envelope, and we will tell you honestly whether it is a modified catalogue part or a genuinely new tool.