Chamber Tours: Axsys Technologies, Inc.

An employee laps a high-tech component in the
Axsys Technologies' machine shop.

    Cullman County is rapidly making a name for itself as home to some of the best automotive component manufacturers in the international marketplace, with companies like Rehau, Pressac, and Topre leading the way.
    Centrally located in Alabama and in the southeast, Cullman County is a choice spot for tier-one manufacturers who supply Mercedes, Nissan, Toyota and Honda and has received much press over its place in the "New Automotive South."
    Just 40 miles south of Huntsville, home to aeronautic giants Boeing and McDonnell Douglas as well as NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Cullman County is also an excellent location for aerospace manufacturers and other industries dealing with high tech design..
    Axsys Technologies is a prime example.
    Formerly known as Speedring prior to its acquisition by the Axsys Group in the mid 1990's, the company was founded in Michigan in 1947. A modest enterprise with a payroll of five employees, the company was originally devoted to working on Holly carburetors in a basement workshop. The name Speedring was adopted from the nickname of the fighter squadron with which one of its founders had flown in World War II.
    The company often took on other work, however, and came into its own with a precision-machined gas bearing that soon made the company an industry player.

After moving to Cullman County in 1974, the company continued to expand and enlarge its operation, moving several times in the process until finally settling at its present location on Highway 157 in Cullman. Currently, Axsys employs some 217 people and is the largest beryllium machine shop in the United States and quite possibly the world, according to company representatives.

     Known throughout the aerospace industry and beyond for its quality workmanship and precision, Axsys specializes in the manufacture of components for the aerospace industry and for military applications, many of which are crafted from beryllium, a metal that is stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum and extremely stable in varying temperatures.
    "Our claim to fame is machining exotic materials such as beryllium, titanium, and magnesium," said Jeff Calvert, advanced manufacturing engineer, to a recent Chamber of Commerce Existing Business and Industry Committee tour group. "We also machine conventional materials such as steel and aluminum, but it's our ability to work with non-conventional materials that has put us on the map."
    "Everything other people cannot or will not do ... that's our specialty."

Mike Pierce, Director of Special Products for Axsys, gives Chamber tour group
members a look at the line saws and other equipment used on the plant floor.

One of the biggest and most expensive components ever manufactured at Axsys was a 46-inch ultra-light hexagonal mirror machined from solid beryllium. The incredibly intricate honeycomb-like support webbing on the mirror's back called for many weeks of precision machining and resulted in a selling price of several million dollars.

Mike Pierce shows the Chamber tour group components for a ring laser rescope that have been machined out of pure quartz. When finished, the parts will have a wall thickness of less than .08 of an inch with tolerances in the millionths of an inch range. It is the company's ability to work with such exotic materials that has helped made Axsys an industry leader.

    In addition, the company manufactures parts for Raytheon's Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) missile defense system, part of the "Star Wars" initiative begun during the Reagan era. Axsys is also currently working with Bell Aerospace on the James Webb Space Telescope.
    Such singular and newsworthy projects aside, however, Axsys produces many smaller and more widely used components, such as rotor guides for satellites, optics for military helicopters, gas bearings, and parts for the space shuttles, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the M-1 Abrams tank, and fighter aircraft such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the F/A-18 Hornet and the A-10 Warthog among many others.
     "It's amazing," Calvert said. "It's mind-boggling what our people can do day in and day out. Every single person here takes pride in everything he or she does."
    Despite the precision nature of the work that Axsys does, Calvert said that Axsys stays competitive in the marketplace. The company is also competitive in other ways, spending some $2 million per year on new equipment to stay on top of the current technology.

In spite of that, however, Axsys prizes its work force above all else, according to Mike Pierce, Director of Special Products.
"You're looking at what makes this place tick: people," Pierce said as he lead the Chamber Tour group onto the plant floor. "All this equipment is nice, but without the talent and knowledge of our people, we're nothing."

The plant itself is a marvel of technology. Specifically designed for the machining of beryllium, the Axsys facility contains a complex vacuum system made to keep the amount of beryllium particles in the air from reaching dangerous levels. Although beryllium is safe to the touch, the dust created from drilling, cutting and machining the metal is harmful and can lead to respiratory ailments such as chronic beryllium disease in some people. To protect employees, Axsys performs 600 to 800 air quality tests per year in addition to constant monitoring of each area of the plant. Despite the dangers inherent to working with the material, however, Axsys remains far below the level of airborne particles deemed safe by both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and by the U.S. Department of Energy. As many of the exotic materials used by Axsys in the creation of their products can react adversely to even the slightest variance in heat, the plant is also climate controlled to remain within two degrees of a target temperature.	An Axsys employee works on an aluminum component.
"We are known as the most precise, accurate machine shop in the world," said Calvert. ""We take a lot of pride in what we do." To find out more about Axsys, visit their website at www.axsys.com or contact the Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce at 256-734-0454.
Additional Photos from the Tour (Click on thumbnails to enlarge)