American-made at FABTECH

Note: The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author.

The last two weeks have been a bit of a blur. After driving to Vegas for SEMA (via California), showing my art there, and then driving home, I flew to Atlanta for FABTECH®. I had not been to FABTECH in more than a decade, and being a tool geek, I was stoked to check it out.

I also was interested to see what kind of presence American equipment and tool manufacturers had. I’m happy to report that it was strong. And more important, the domestic goods on display were of the highest quality.

I figured I’d give a quick rundown of just a few of the booths that caught my eye.

Aside from my (American-made) Millers welding machines, the tools that get used and abused the most in my shop are die grinders, both straight and 90-degree grinders. And my favorite brand of these is New York-based Dynabrade (Figures 1 and 2). They’re high-end tools, by far the smoothest grinders I’ve ever used, and it’s not even close.

It was cool meeting my Instagram friend @dynabradepaulk in person and getting the scoop on the company’s latest and greatest, including a gearless grinder that takes smooth to another level. With the arm surgeries piling up on me, a grinder with less vibration is worth its weight in gold.

Another name I’ve been close with since I started at Chrysler as an apprentice is DoALL (Figure 3). In fact, just today I was cutting some steel with one of their band saws in the prototype shop at General Dynamics. I stopped and talked to Debi at their massive display for a bit, and they still proudly build their cutting machines in Minnesota.

Formerly Cobra, the newly renamed Michigan company Detroit Torch and Mfg. Co. (Figure 4) was in attendance, exhibiting its classic aluminum gas welding torches.

Missouri’s Burr King (Figure 5) was showing off a variety of belt and disc grinders (as well as some rad bumper stickers). Weiler Corp. (Figure 6) from Pennsylvania brought in an assortment of brushes and abrasives.

I had a nice chat with Kevin from LA-CO (aka Markal® and Tempil®) about the company’s pencils and markers. While LA-CO (Figure 7) is a global brand, all of its marker paint is mixed in Illinois. Kevin gave me some interesting tips about drawing on steel.

Figure 1: Josh Welton visiting the Dynabrade booth at FABTECH 2014.

What I loved most about these companies (and many more that were there) is that they were passionate about their products. Not just “sales guy” excited, but genuinely proud of what they make and how they make it.

This is just a small taste of the U.S.-based companies that exhibited at FABTECH 2014.

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