Competitor – Rebuilds & Retrofits

No matter the brand, BTI will rebuild or refurbish your existing equipment to like-new condition

A machine built by another manufacturer can still be a good machine. If the base is sound, the spindle is true and the mechanical design suits the part, the fact that someone else built it is not a reason to scrap it — even when that someone else no longer supports it, no longer exists, or no longer wants the job.

Balance Technology rebuilds and retrofits balancing machines, gages and test stands built by other manufacturers. It is a different kind of project than rebuilding one of our own, and we are straightforward about the difference: we start without the original drawings, without the source code and without the build record. What we bring instead is fifty-plus years of designing this class of machine from scratch, which means we can work out what a machine was doing and why.

Why Customers Bring Us Other Manufacturers’ Machines

The original builder is gone. Acquired, closed, or exited the product line. Nobody answers the phone, and the spares are whatever is left on your shelf.

Support exists but is impractical. The OEM is overseas, response takes weeks, or the service model no longer fits a plant that needs the machine running this month.

The controls are obsolete. An unsupported operating system, a PLC out of production, a drive nobody stocks, a proprietary measurement card with no replacement. Meanwhile the iron is fine.

The software is a dead end. Source code was never delivered, the people who wrote it have moved on, and no one can change a part program, a tolerance or a data export format.

The machine never quite worked. This is more common than the industry admits. A machine that was commissioned marginally and has been fought with ever since, where the underlying problem is fixturing, datum scheme or measurement approach rather than components.

You want it to do more. Add a measurement, add a station, add automation, add data.

How We Approach a Machine We Did Not Build

Assessment first, always. We do not quote a competitor rebuild from photographs. We need to understand the mechanical condition, the measurement chain, the control architecture and what the machine is actually doing now versus what it is supposed to do. On a machine of unknown provenance, the assessment is the most important part of the project, and we treat it as its own piece of work.

Keep the iron, replace the intelligence. The usual outcome. Bases, weldments, spindles and ways from a reputable builder are frequently excellent and expensive to reproduce. Controls, software, sensors, drives and tooling are where obsolescence lives and where we can bring the machine fully current with our own systems.

Our control system, our software. When we retrofit, the machine gets a BTI control system and BTI software. That is the point: afterward, the machine is supportable by us, with part programs you can change, data you can export, and a phone number that is answered. A retrofit that leaves the proprietary black box in place solves nothing.

Re-establish the measurement chain. We work out how the machine locates the part, what it measures against, and whether that datum scheme matches your print. On machines that never performed well, this is usually where the problem has been hiding.

Prove it on your parts. Acceptance is run against criteria written into the scope, on your parts, before the machine goes back to work.

Common Upgrades

• New industrial computer and current operating system
• PLC replacement and reprogramming
• Motor, servo and drive replacement
• Measurement electronics and transducer replacement
• Repair and replacement of wear items
• Replacement guarding to current standards
• New proximity sensors, cabling, plumbing and pneumatics
• Added automation, including robots and dedicated transfers
• Process and feature additions — new measurements, new stations, new correction methods
• Plant location compliance and certification
• Cleaning and paint
• Refurbished or replaced tooling

Adding Capability

A retrofit is often the cheapest way to get a capability you do not currently have. If a competitor’s balancer already spins your part on a precise axis, adding eddy current crack detection, dimensional gaging, surface measurement or resonant frequency testing to that spindle turns it into a combination machine for a fraction of what a new combination machine costs.

Whether the existing structure will carry the addition — the envelope, the rigidity, the access, the cycle time — is a question the assessment answers. Sometimes the answer is no, and we say so before anyone spends money.

What We Cannot Do

We will not tell you we can do something we have not established we can do.

We do not reverse engineer proprietary software to keep it running. If the existing software is the problem, the answer is to replace it with ours, not to patch something we did not write and cannot support.

We do not warrant the parts of the machine we did not touch. A scope that replaces the controls does not make us responsible for a spindle bearing we never opened, and we will be explicit in the scope about where that line falls.

Where the mechanical design is fundamentally unsuited to what you now need — wrong capacity, wrong speed range, wrong correction method, structure worn past economical repair — we will recommend a new machine, even though a retrofit would have been easier to sell.

What to Send Us to Start

• Manufacturer, model and serial number, and any documentation you still have
• Photographs of the machine, the control cabinet and the HMI
• What it does now, what it is supposed to do, and where the gap is
• Part drawings, with the datums and tolerances that matter
• Required throughput
• Any capability you want added
• Whatever the plant knows about its history — repairs, relocations, modifications

Do not worry about gaps in that list. Missing documentation is the normal condition of these projects, not a disqualifier.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will you work on a machine from any manufacturer?
We work on balancing machines, gages and test stands from a wide range of builders, domestic and imported. The assessment determines whether a specific machine is a sensible rebuild candidate. We have not found the brand to be the deciding factor — condition and fit to the part are.

We have no drawings and no software. Is that fatal?
No. It is the usual starting point. We establish what the machine does by examining it, and we replace the control and measurement layers with our own, which we do have the drawings and source for.

Can you support it afterward?
Yes, for what we installed. After a control and software retrofit, the parts of the machine that fail and change over time are ours, which is most of the reason customers do this.

Is a retrofit cheaper than a new machine?
Usually, substantially. But not always — a machine needing major mechanical work plus full controls can approach the cost of new, without the warranty or the service life. The assessment is what tells you which situation you are in, and we would rather you know before committing.

Can you relocate and recertify a machine at the same time?
Yes, and a plant move is a good moment to do it. The machine is coming apart anyway.

What if it turns out you built it?
Then it is a much easier project. See BTI rebuilds and retrofits — if the serial number is ours, we have the original record.