AMSCO® has quite the history and that long line of success continues today, just in a smaller fashion.
We caught up with Armond Groves, Vice President of Engineering and Sales, to discuss his career at AMSCO®, what products and industries they are serving and how AMSCO® is ready to do more in the future.
Armond Groves career at AMSCO®
“I started with AMSCO® in January of 2012,” said Groves. He started as engineering support and to help do product design for the shredder market. But Groves quickly had to shift over to the mining sector, after a competitor shut down unannounced. “I spent my first two years reverse engineering drag line castings and then stayed pretty focused on that,” said Groves.
After that, Groves had to shift back to the shredding side for quite a bit. These days, he splits most of his time between shredding and mining, but that’s not all. “Basically, my role is partially sales, partially engineering support for other salespeople and kind of playing a role in management of the company,” said Groves.
At AMSCO® , Armond is familiar with having multi-role jobs. He says that makes it more exciting, as you get to see the product, what we do, from beginning to end.
The markets AMSCO® supplies
“AMSCO® has two niche markets we supply to,” said Groves. “The steel recycling industry, specifically parts for car shredders and steel shredders. That also overlaps into aluminum recycling and some waste energy applications.” The company provides a lot of the parts for the internal section of the shredder. That includes the hammers, grates and liners.
“We also supply the industry with alloy hammers, what we call differentially heat-treated hammers,” said Groves. AMSCO® partnered with German hammer-maker SWB. “They’re kind of the benchmark for that product. A little less than a year ago, we got the exclusive distributorship for that product in North America, which is a big deal,” said Groves.
The other part of AMSCO®’s business is the mining industry, with a focus on surface mining. The company supplies chains, pins, teeth, shrouds, blocks and parts that protect the bucket for the coal and phosphate mining industries.
Proprietary alloys at AMSCO®
“We have our own proprietary alloys,” said Groves. AMSCO® started as a big company years and years ago, it had its own research foundry and several manufacturing foundries in the U.S. Groves said from that came a lot of research and development, part of that included the CSB alloy families. These alloys were designed to have high-abrasion resistance and high-impact resistance, especially at colder temperatures.
Recently, AMSCO® acquired all the intellectual property of Columbia Steel when it comes to drag line parts. “That was a big move for us,” said Groves. “One, for the drawings, it gave us a big, big library of parts we didn’t have before. But two, Columbia Steel was a very good foundry, they had a very top-notch product and were well-regarded in the industry.” AMSCO® is taking that intellectual property, including the chemistries and heat treat procedures, and starting to apply it to their parts.
3D scanning technology helping to serve more customers
AMSCO® uses its 3D scanner primarily for reverse engineering.
“We have a customer that just bought a brand new shredder from one of the larger OEMs. It’s a shredder we don’t have any drawings on or parts for,” said Groves. He continued “They invited us to come up when the parts come in and scan all the parts, which will give us a virtual, 3D part. We’ll take those scans, align them with a logical coordinate system and then model them in our CAD software.” From there, AMSCO® can take that 3D model, bring it back into the scanner software and do a quality check comparison between the two.
Goals at AMSCO®
“Our goal as a company is really to improve the product, to make it better for the customer, to understand where their problems are and to help address those,” said Groves. “Necessity is the mother of invention, so we seek out problems with our customers so we can try and fix them. That’s a big part of the service we provide. Always looking to understand where their issues are and see if we can design around that.”
Future areas of growth for AMSCO® could be in the aggregates industry. Things like crushing, pulverizing and shredding. The cement industry and utilities who pulverize coal, aggregates, etc could also be possible areas of expansion. “It would be a big move to step into those areas,” said Groves. “They all have good suppliers right now. We kind of have our hands full. Service is a big part of what we do, so I think we want to make sure that we are adequately staffed and geared up to handle what we have and then maybe look at expanding.”
Groves said the mining side of the business is a big growth area right now and he sees that continuing to grow. “We’re one little bity area of the mining industry, which is on the digging side,” said Groves. “We don’t do anything in the chemical plants on the chemical side, so that is a potential area for growth.”
When it comes to shredding, AMSCO® has a lot of the market in North America, but there are still more opportunities out there. “All these parts are held in by bolts, nuts, washers, we do some of that, but we haven’t pulled the lever and say hey, we want to be a nut, bolt and washer supplier,” said Groves.
Who AMSCO® is looking for to join the team
“We need good people. People are the most important resource we have, no doubt about it,” said Groves. He went on to say they are looking for the right person that fits the culture of the company and fits the jobs needed. “Good people that are willing to work hard, willing to learn on their own. There isn’t a textbook on how to do these things, you really have to go out there and observe, listen to the customers and find out what’s wrong,” said Groves. “Listen to the foundries, understand what challenges they have and see if we can design the product to make the manufacturing process easier. All these things come into play. People are the biggest, most important thing.”
What can AMSCO® do for you?
AMSCO® is located in Wilmington, Delaware and also has a supply warehouse in Sparks, Nevada. Groves says AMSCO® services most of the U.S. and continues to grow in parts of Canada and Mexico. “We have a few international accounts, mostly on the mining side,” said Groves. “ We sell to Columbia, South America, Morocco, India and we’ve done some in Central Africa too.”
If you’re in need of high-quality castings with innovative and cost-saving designs, reach out to Armond Groves and AMSCO® today to get a quote.
If you’re looking to join the AMSCO team, check out the latest job openings here.