At the cutting edge of precision.

Stainless Steel Technology relocates to expand customer base

Tony Yaroshak closely scrutinizes two palm-sized sculptures of steel, pointing out the tiniest of imperfections between the prototype and the finished product. The pair of stainless steel treble clefs, polished and mounted on a base, were cut just minutes before on his shop floor with his precision laser.

"Attention to detail," says the founder and president of Stainless Steel Technology, is what's kept the company he bankrolled with his pension constantly expanding from a small metal fabricating shop operating out of a garage in 1984 to a company now employing 25.

"Our customers expect quality worksmanship," Yaroshak says.

The company just moved into its new location in early January, a new $2.1-mullion, 35,000-square-foot facility in the Walden Industrial Park and workers were going flat out to catch up on orders after their laser cutter was dismantled for three weeks during the move.

After being shoe-horned into an ever-shrinking 17,000-square-foot space on Lorne Street, Yaroshak says relocating was necessary to pursue the kind of large fabricating projects they're after.

Their new facility boosts their lift capacity with four overhead cranes (including a 20 and 10 tonner) and provides larger project bays. Yaroshak says it should enable them to handle multiple jobs for their industrial and commercial clients, as well as allow them to expand their custom laser cutting for a wider range of customers, and hopefully boost their payroll to 50 employees.

Besides working on a diverse range of industrial projects such as aluminium bridges, pressure vessels, duct work, water treatment-plant intake systems and huge 65-ton stainless steel hoods for an Algoma Steel mill, the company also displays an artistic flare.

Their handiwork is evident throughout Sudbury in steel custom sign work, monuments and sculptures including the 50-foot (15-metre) sun dial at Science North and the steel items in the main foyer of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. Even delicate and intricate work on surgical instruments, bushings, fittings and simple business card holders is not out of bounds.

"We're not a burn-off and bolt-it shop," Yaroshak emphasizes. "We are a fabrication shop."

What sets them apart from other Northern Ontario companies is their Cincinnati CL-707 laser, a $1.2-million precision cutting system that allows cutting of intricate patterns in steel, aluminium, acrylic, graphite composites, kevlar, plastics and wood with an accurancy measured to within one one-thousandth of an inch.

Despite being on the doorstep of the major nickel giants, the company relies less and less on their capital projects.

"We're not making, auto parts like the southern Ontario shops are so we're forced to go further afield," says Yaroshak, who also acts as their one-man sales force. And although he's reluctant to discuss his client list, he acknowledges about 60 per cent of their work heads south of the border to the U.S. and Mexico and has even been shipped as far away as South America, Africa, Turkey and Indonesia.

The shop also includes an engineering and design component with the latest technology in CAD and parametric modelling for pressure vessel design and engineering.