Jim Orr’s family-owned, Zelienople company has made a small contribution to some big engineering feats: the launch pad for the Space Shuttle; the retractable field at the home of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, and the huge video screen where the Dallas Cowboys play their NFL games.
His company, Penna Flame Industries, hardens steel by heating the surface of it to 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit, then quenching it with water or a polymer-based solution. The process freezes carbon on the surface of the steel, making it harder so that it lasts longer.
NASA’s launch pad relies on a Penna Flame-hardened bearing ring. The company also hardened the 500 wheels that move the playing field into and out of University of Phoenix Field in Glendale, Ariz., as well as the pulleys guiding cables that raise and lower the video board at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The company also hardened the wheels used to open and close the stadium’s retractable roof.
Today’s business is a far cry from Penna Flame’s customer base in 1968, when Mr. Orr’s father, Garrett, founded the company. Back then, Penna Flame relied on machine shops that supplied the steel industry with new or replacement parts.
Jim Orr, 55, said many of those shops disappeared as the region’s manufacturing base shrunk. So have the skilled craftsmen who worked for them.
“The machinist, he’s just not here any more,” Mr. Orr lamented.
That’s why Penna Flame is relying on robots that precisely — and consistently — heat steel to the same temperature every time.
Mr. Orr said he got the idea at a Robert Morris University job fair when an engineering professor asked whether he ever considered using robots. He was skeptical about the idea, but took a second look. Penna Flame installed the first one in 2007 with the help of a grant from the Southwestern Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center, he said.
“When I brought the robot in, the whole company thought I was nuts,” Mr. Orr recalled.
Now the company has three of them and will add a fourth as part of a $1 million expansion he hopes to complete by the end of the year.
“It’s the only way we’ll survive the future,” Mr. Orr said. “Robots have not eliminated jobs. They’ve enabled us to take jobs we couldn’t do before.”
Penna Flame employs about 25, including one 72-year-old who still manually applies a flame to parts to harden them, judging when the job is done by the color of the metal. Those skills, learned slowly over a long career, are being replaced. The company recently hired a Slippery Rock University graduate with a math degree who was working at a Cranberry health club.
“Because of the math degree, he can make that robot dance and he loves it,” Mr. Orr said.
His sons, Michael, 33, and Andrew, 30, mark the third generation of the family in the business. Michael formerly installed robots in hospitals, his father said. After a brief hiatus in San Diego, he returned home as manager of Penna Flame’s robotics division.
“He said he wanted to come back and make a difference. He has,” Jim Orr said.
Andrew, who is in sales and customer service, followed the route of his father, sweeping floors and cleaning bathrooms as a teenager.
“He always wanted to be here. He worked with me as I worked with my father,” Jim Orr said.
Len Boselovic: lboselovic@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1941.
First Published: October 20, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
