Other Equipment

BTI engineers and manufactures custom specialty equipment for most part types, sizes, production rates, and levels of automation

The more challenging the application, the more we can help. Most of the machines on this site fit a recognizable category — a balancer, a gage, a crack detector. A meaningful share of what we build does not. Those are the projects where a customer has a measurement or manufacturing problem that no catalog machine solves, and needs someone to design a machine around the problem rather than fit the problem to a machine.

Balance Technology is an engineering company with mechanical, electrical, controls and software engineers under one roof, and a machine shop and assembly floor behind them. That combination is what lets us take on a specialty machine that no one else wants to quote.

What “Other Equipment” Usually Means

A measurement nobody sells a machine for. A characteristic specific to your product, measured to a specification you wrote, on a part geometry that exists nowhere else. We start from the physics, establish that the measurement is possible and repeatable, and then build the machine around it.

A combination nobody offers. Several operations that have to happen in one cycle, on one fixture, in an order and at a rate that no standard product supports. Often this is really a combination machine with an unusual station list.

A part that breaks the normal rules. Very large, very small, very heavy, very delicate, flexible, unbalanced by design, or unable to be touched on any of the surfaces you would normally locate it on.

A test that has to be invented. Durability, endurance, life cycle, environmental, destructive — rigs that exercise a product the way service will, instrument what happens, and run unattended for as long as the test takes.

A process someone has to automate. An operation currently done by hand that has to become repeatable, documented and fast, where the difficulty is in the handling rather than the measurement.

An R&D machine. Equipment for a product that does not exist yet, where the specification will change during the build because the engineering is still moving. Electric vehicle components have produced a lot of these in recent years.

How We Approach a Machine That Has No Precedent

We establish feasibility before we design. On a genuinely novel measurement, the first question is whether it can be made repeatably at all, on your part, in your environment. Where that is in doubt, we will propose proving it before anyone commits to a full machine. It is a slower start and it has saved our customers from some expensive mistakes.

We work from your parts. Drawings tell us what the part is supposed to be. Parts tell us what it is. For anything unusual, we want real parts early — good ones and bad ones.

The datum scheme comes first. Every measurement is relative to something. On a novel machine, deciding what the part is held on and what everything is measured from is the decision the rest of the design follows from. Where your print uses geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, the fixture is built to simulate the datums it calls out.

We reuse what we have proven. A one-off machine does not mean one-off everything. Spindles, drives, control architecture, measurement electronics and software are drawn from designs we have run for years. The novelty is concentrated where it has to be, which is what makes an unusual machine reliable rather than experimental.

We agree acceptance criteria in writing, in advance. On a machine with no precedent there is no industry standard to point at, so what “working” means has to be defined before the build, by both of us, on your parts. This is the single most important part of a specialty project.

The Technologies We Draw From

A custom machine is usually assembled from capabilities we already have, arranged in a way we have not used before:

Balancing · dimensional gaging · eddy current crack detection · surface measurement · resonant frequency testing · NVH and specialized testing · shaft straightening · purpose-built machine tools · automated assembly · mass centering · torque-to-turn, backlash and end play testing · high-speed spin testing · motor testing · leak testing · destructive testing

If what you need is not on that list, it is still worth the conversation. Several of the items on it started as somebody’s unusual request.

What Makes a Specialty Project Succeed

We have built enough of these to know what separates the ones that go well from the ones that grind.

Access to your engineers. Not just purchasing. A novel machine requires questions answered during the design, and the people who can answer them are the ones who designed the part.

Real parts, early, including bad ones. A machine tuned only on good parts will not reliably reject bad ones. Known-bad parts, or the ability to seed defects, are worth more than another month of design.

An honest specification. A tolerance copied from a similar part, or a throughput number set by optimism, distorts the entire design. Tell us what you actually need and what the real constraint is.

Agreement on what is fixed and what may move. On R&D machines especially, some things will change during the build. Deciding up front which parts of the design must stay flexible is far cheaper than discovering it at runoff.

What to Send Us

• A description of the problem — what you need to know about the part, and why
• Part drawings, and parts if you have them
• The specification, if one exists, and who wrote it
• Required throughput, and whether this is production, laboratory or development equipment
• Part size, weight and the range across the family
• How parts arrive, leave, and what happens to rejects
• Floor space, utilities, environment and plant standards
• Data and integration requirements
• What you have already tried, and why it did not work — this is often the most useful thing in the package

Frequently Asked Questions

We are not sure our application is even possible. Is it worth calling?
Yes. A significant share of the machines we have built started that way. If it is not possible we will tell you, and that answer usually costs you nothing but a conversation.

Will you build a one-off machine?
Yes. Many of our specialty machines are single units. Volume is not the qualifier; whether the problem is solvable and the requirement is clear enough to build to is.

Can you build laboratory or development equipment rather than production equipment?
Yes. R&D and test lab machines are a regular part of what we do, and they have different priorities than production machines — flexibility and instrumentation over cycle time. We design to whichever you actually need.

We do not have a specification. Can you write one?
We can help. On genuinely novel measurements, the specification often has to be developed alongside the machine, working from your parts and your functional requirement. That is normal, and it is better than proceeding on a specification that was guessed at.

Do you protect our intellectual property?
Yes. We routinely work under nondisclosure agreements, frequently on products that have not been announced. Discretion about what our customers are developing is a condition of doing this work at all.

Who supports a one-off machine years from now?
We do. Because a specialty machine is built from our standard control, measurement and software platforms, it is supportable the same way every other machine we build is — and the drawings, software and build record stay with us. That is also why an unusual machine from us can still get a PC upgrade or a rebuild fifteen years later.