Sturbridge Metallurgical gives customers a second set of eyes
Brendan Fullam, general manager, Sturbridge Metallurgical Services.
Courtney Grimes started Sturbridge Metallurgical Services, Inc. in his garage in 1990, and today, the company has 10 employees. The materials testing company provides quality assurance services to manufacturing companies for aerospace, medical and industrial applications.
General Manager Brendan Fullam spoke about operations, working with manufacturers and partnering with companies of all sizes.
What do you do?
We are a materials testing company. Companies send us parts or samples to be evaluated to a specific industry standard and customer requirement. We also sell equipment and supplies to companies who do that type of work in their own facilities.
Which industries do you work with?
Aerospace, medical and industrial would be the top ones. Another part of our business is called failure analysis, where we do consumer litigation cases; that’s the only area where we get involved with consumer stuff.
Usually when people are looking for companies like ours, they ask for certifications. We are ISO:17025 accredited. We’re also NADCAP accredited for our materials test. We have approvals from GES400, and then we’re also Sikorsky approved.
Where are your customers located?
Mostly in the United States, we don’t do too much outside of the U.S. Northeast. We do have a good amount of customers outside of the U.S.
We work with companies such as GE, and Sikorsky, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, all those types of companies, and any of their subcontractors.
We have a lot of very small companies, too. We have some companies just starting up and making products, especially the medical device side. In the aerospace world. We have companies up and coming on 3D printing, material deposition services.
Do you take the place of in-house quality assurance, or are you an extra level?
It would be in addition to the company's own work. They’re going to have basic in-house quality assurance or quality control group. A lot of what we do is microstructure analysis, where we take the product, cut it, mount it, then polish and etch it, and through that mount be able to see the actual grain structure of that metal
We do a lot of weld evaluations -- we’ll do a cross section and say if the welding is meeting the requirements of the print provided.
In failure analysis, we give someone an understanding of what part failed, why it failed, and what they can put in place to correct if from failing again.
This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by WBJ staff.
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