The Finish Line

Judy Runge’s metallurgical engineer and surface finishing expert career spans almost 40 years in industrial, government, and academic professional settings. She worked at Northrop’s Defense Systems Division, Taussig Associates, Inc., Saporito Plating, Argonne National Laboratory, and recently retired as a Principal Engineer for Surface Finishing at Apple. Dr. Runge still mainta

Mike Petrey is Plant Manager at powder coater Prism Technologies in Redford, Michigan, which was founded in 1997 as a small family company with two employees and 2,500 square feet. The founder, Eric Felton Sr., had a history with powder manufacturing and quality control with Glidden paints. He branched into consulting and assisted in powder line set-ups and troubleshooting all over

Alan Henry is the owner of ChromeTech of Wisconsin, an ISO-certified industrial plating operation that he founded in 1984. The company specializes in hard chrome, sulfamate nickel, electroless nickel, and nickel-chrome plating. The ChromeTech company is indeed a family affair; in addition to Alan, his wife, Vickie, and son, Zach, work there, and sister Adrianna also helped with mar

Jesse Heines of Digger Specialties is the Corporate Powder Coating and Project Manager for the railing, fencing, and column manufacturer with various locations around the U.S. Loren “Digger” Graber founded his outdoor living and maintenance-free products in 1984, starting as a manufacturer of vinyl fencing and various other related maintenance-free products. Under his leadershi

Ross Peterson is the Chief Business Development Officer of ProPlate, an Anoka, Minnesota, company that finishes specialty items for the medical and surgical industry. In this podcast, Ross explains how ProPlate works closely with the medical community to come up with new finishes and coatings for critical medical parts. For example, ProPlate spent over a year developing a process t

Navin Mangrue is Sales Manager for Professional Powder Coating located in Etobicoke, Ontario, a family-run shop in Toronto that is ready to coat anything that might need to survive in treacherous climate. “About 99% of what we powder coat is going to be sitting outside all day and all night and for years to come,” says Navin Mangrue, Sales Manager for Professional Powder Coatin

New England Electropolishing owners Amy Prigmore and Luke Almeida discussed how their company in Fall River, Massachusetts, has evolved since their parents founded it in 1985. Alvin and Jeannine Almeida founded NEE and slowly grew the business over the next several decades. Al Almeida kept his day job distributing chemicals, and NEE had just two employees who performed the work Al

We talk with Francisco Capacho, President and General Manager of Dixon Hard Chrome in Sun Valley, California, about his path to success in the United States electroplating industry. Capacho began his career working at his father’s plating operation near Bogota, Columbia, where he was on the shop floor at age 5 following his father around the complex. In 2023, he moved to south to

Bales Metal Surface Solutions’ owners, Stacey Bales and Sara Mortensen, chose a practical gift for themselves as they prepare for their anniversary in a few years. In March, the Downers Grove, Illinois, company christened a pair of new nickel lines at its 29,000-square-foot facility, doubling its capacity to reduce customer lead time by half and grow the business even more. “We

When Chuck Zinke built his second finishing and coating operation over 100 miles away from the first, he quickly added a new word to his vocabulary. “Delegation,” says Zinke, who started Perfection Industrial Finishing in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995 and added a second plant in 2020 in Chandler, about a 75-minute drive north near Phoenix. The expansion was necessary for Perfection,