How one shop solves complex material handling challenges

A technician at American Precision Engineering (APE) puts the final touches on a universal lifting system destined for an eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft plant. Images: APE

When Daniel Hester arrived in Austin, Texas, four years ago to launch American Precision Engineering (APE), he had no grandiose dreams of scaling up and leading a team of hundreds or thousands. He’d like APE to grow significantly from its current staff of 13, but he doesn’t see it becoming a metal fabrication goliath. That’s because the engineering and custom fabrication company focuses on a niche that demands communication that’s difficult to scale: helping customers with complex manufacturing problems.

APE works with manufacturers on material handling, positioning, and fixturing to ease product flow at OEMs and construction sites. Engineering is in the company name to illustrate that niche, but it’s not a traditional “engineering” firm that throws designs over the metaphorical wall to a manufacturer tasked with building what someone drew on a computer.

At APE, you’ll find engineers observing or even running the laser or press brake, learning the intricacies of tooling, how metal forms, how interference occurs (previously formed flanges colliding with tools), why flanges can be only so short, how welds distort, the importance of good weld fit-up—the list goes on. “We’re focused on the advanced manufacturing markets, be it in automotive and aerospace,” Hester said. “We’re an engineering company that gets the work we do because we also fabricate.”

You could call it an engineering continuum, from the initial design through fabrication—no communication barriers, with everyone on the same page and taking a hands-on approach. Sure, the hands-on model can be difficult to scale, but success doesn’t always hinge on having increased revenue and headcounts. Profits and sales per employee matter too.

Hester has moved away from bidding on jobs that dozens of other shops could tackle—an area that can easily be commodified, especially if a fabricator doesn’t add any value beyond a low price. Instead, APE’s work focuses on ideas, like how a customized material handling platform can save an OEM millions over the course of months. For APE and its customers, a few smart moves can unleash tremendous value.

Onward to Texas

Hester began his career in California as a civil engineer, designing material lifting, handling, and access solutions for some large-scale bridge projects, including the iconic San Francisco Bay Bridge.

On nights and weekends, he worked on side projects out of his garage, making parts for friends. His side hustle eventually became more lucrative than his day job, so he quit the construction business to focus on the fab shop, Hester Fabrication.

Over seven years, he grew the shop by designing and building material handling components, first for heavy-duty construction, focusing on specialty products that streamlined bridge construction. This led to other projects for the big names in Big Tech, including Google, Apple, and Tesla.

“We solved the in-between problems,” Hester said, adding that the product mix entailed some start-from-scratch designs as well as a growing amount of piece-part work and subassembly. Most of it involved a healthy dose of design for manufacturability (DFM) and quick response, which added some value beyond just offering a competitive price.

Still, that piece-part work presented some challenges. The Bay Area was (and is) expensive. If the shop’s work moved even slightly toward commodification, challenges could arise. They weren’t insurmountable—some notable fabricators still operate in the Bay Area to this day— but it wasn’t the kind of business Hester wanted to run. So, he made plans to leave. In 2020, he sold the California shop and moved to Austin, planning for a fresh start—just as the world was shutting down.

Daniel Hester reviews 3D models for an assembly.

“When I sold my prior company, I sold my entire customer base with it,” Hester said. “So, when I got to Austin, I had nothing except for the naiveté that I could do it again.

“And the pandemic made it really hard. I couldn’t introduce myself in person, and if you were from California, no one wanted to talk with you. So many of us were coming here. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in business, but it also helped accelerate our growth.”

The experience stands in stark contrast to a traditional fab shop launch, where entrepreneurs use their existing contacts in the area to build a customer base, setting off a chain of events that often leads to a shop growing on the back of just a few large accounts.

“I just had to do everything you could think of to get customers,” Hester recalled. “The seeds we planted back then took time to mature to actual customers, and that has led to the breadth of customers we have today.”

Hester advertised on Google and LinkedIn, called the local chamber of commerce, and worked the phone as best he could. One sales lead slowly led to another. APE started with simpler jobs, and when the world started opening up, Hester began attending local networking events and going on site visits at OEM plants.

“We did whatever it took to get a job started,” he said. “Now, we have more of a reputation in the engineering community, and they often make the introduction for us.”

A Business of Ideas

APE has achieved ISO 9001 and AS 9100, so it has the quality systems in place that customers demand. That just builds the foundation, though. After all, plenty of fab shops have good systems in place and can stamp a quality certification on their logo. What really could set APE apart?

“This really is where we wanted to focus on our branding,” Hester said. “We wanted to focus on the engineering challenges for manufacturing.”

A lot of engineering goes into product and part design, and this includes manufacturability concerns. Still, most focus just on what happens inside a particular machine or cell, when the tool contacts the work. As Hester has found, not as much thought goes into how the assembly moves among manufacturing steps. How is work presented? How is it manipulated? How do you hold it in the exact position it needs to be? How can workers access everything safely, efficiently, and repeatably? Engineers at APE answer these questions and more. Simple material handling (think pallet jacks or toggle clamps) isn’t in APE’s wheelhouse; instead, complex problem-solving is the common thread.

Hester related one early success involving a major OEM that was automating portions of its production line. Oversimplified, the application required robots to flip a massive engine at just the right time and in just the right way. The OEM had a robot integrator, but it didn’t have a mechanical partner that could design and build all the mechanical systems the cell required.

A TIG welder at APE finishes a weldment on a frame.

Subsequent successes have involved well-known companies building components for rockets, airplanes, and electric vehicles. The engineering teams remain hyperfocused on the parts they’re making, less focused on how to move, manipulate, and position them on the factory floor. That has remained APE’s wheelhouse.

Hester described a modular system APE designed and fabricated recently for the emerging eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) market. “When fully configured, the system we designed has seven axes of motion. It can remove the battery from the assembly station and then position itself under the wing of the aircraft. It has an electrically actuated lift column that lifts the battery several feet. We also have controls that can manipulate the pitch, roll, and yaw.

“The battery needs to be moved in a specific way, and we need precision positioning, because it’s a composite aircraft.” The battery installation has to be just right because the composite material has no give for out-of-tolerance positioning. And because the design is modular, the aircraft OEM can use the positioner for other areas on the assembly line. This job started as a sketch, was modeled in 3D, then was prototyped on the shop floor, with rapid iterations to perfect the design.

Rapid flow—from conversation to sketch to 3D model to fabrication—has shaped APE’s business model. “We just completed our five-year plan,” Hester said, “and we found that we really don’t want to be any bigger than two dozen people. We have to be reactive to the needs of our customers. And we need a breadth of equipment, but not a depth of anything. We need to be able to do just about anything, but not very much of any one thing.”

The shop has one laser cutting machine and one press brake—but what if a job requires more? Hester’s family has a history in the construction business, and he uses a general contractor analogy when customers ask if he would be able to have the bandwidth for larger projects. “We’ve really focused on having a strong vendor network to step up when we have these bigger orders. Before that, though, we focus on being efficient. We have four engineers, so we have a lot of overhead, but it also gives us a very high level of efficiency.”

He cited one highly complex project involving motors; positioners; and a host of cut, bent, and welded parts. The initial discussion and napkin sketches to the final system being installed and tested at the OEM took about five weeks.

Tear Down the Walls

Holistic thinking starts with considering the big constraints, from concept to delivery. This also includes supply chain reliability. Is the right servomotor (or any other component that needs to be outsourced) quickly available? And are there sourcing backups? Nothing can delay a project more than a late delivery from a supplier. And quite often, that can happen when those metaphorical walls (not to mention conflicting incentives) hinder communication among engineering, purchasing, and manufacturing.

Some customers do perform a fair amount of design work on their end. In these cases, if APE engineers identify efficiencies, they continually communicate with them—through text and numerous pictures—about making, say, this flange longer, converting that machined part to a laser-cut and formed part, or anything else. As Hester explained, “After a while, many customers ask us, ‘Hey, would you be able to take this project on from the beginning?’ That’s become a standard way for us to get involved earlier in the process.”

Accelerate the Whole

APE still uses a CO₂ laser, though it will be upgrading to a fiber laser soon. Of course, cutting speed really isn’t critical. The shop might cut a dozen different materials in a day, including various thicknesses of carbon, stainless, and aluminum. “In truth, all we do is changeover,” Hester said. “We don’t care about cutting speed. We care about speed of changeover.”

To this end, the company has frequent all-hands meetings to develop at least one improvement, even if it saves a few minutes or (if the task is performed frequently enough) just a few seconds. “If this change will pay off within one year, we’ll implement it today,” Hester said. “This usually involves some tooling changeover between very different jobs.”

APE’s laser cutting operator reviews the job’s work instructions.

For instance, the company recently designed a modular flexible fixturing table that can accept a variety of work, from gauge material to thick plate. Quick changeover also is the reason the shop has common shut height punches and dies. Quite often, the brake operator will have a complex staged setup across the bed designed to handle a multitude of different bends, parts, and jobs for the day.

The most significant improvements stem from communication between engineering and the shop, all documented with detailed work instructions. Yes, APE is a low-volume fabricator, but it isn’t a traditional prototype operation where workers are given drawings and the manufacturing specifics are left to them. Instead, work instructions entail every detail when it comes to tooling, fixturing, fit-up, and assembly.

“When they grab the job off the job board,” Hester said, “every part is kitted, and they go straight to work. They don’t need to spend time solving problems in the shop.”

The real creativity happens during stand-up meetings, where everyone points out potential improvements—and there’s no room for big egos and thin skin. “I always tell people when I hire them, ‘Your mistakes are going to be known by everyone,’” Hester said. “If you make a bad fixture, they’ll let you know at the meeting, in front of everybody. Also, our shop travelers have space for any improvement ideas people have. Here, we call it ‘feedback up, down, and sideways.’”

Consider one recent example of a laser-cut plate that needed to then go into a machining center for some counterbored holes. The team scrutinized the plate edge and analyzed the laser cutting tech table. Were the cutting conditions off? Or was it a material quality issue?

After talking, the team realized that tolerances were such that, for a truly repeatable process, the work should have been simply machined complete. Yes, the process required more “on-machine” time, but the overall process would be far more repeatable, and the job routing would be far simpler. Besides, the time that the tool actually contacts metal is a small slice of the entire design-build-delivery process.

Similar thinking goes with the company’s interpretation of one-piece flow. A laser operator might be tempted to run a batch of parts through, then pile them in a stack at the bend cell. But in many cases, and particularly for complex work that’s never been run (which is most of the shop’s product mix), that laser operator doesn’t process the batch. Instead, he laser cuts one or a handful of pieces, forms them on the brake, and fixtures them in welding. This dry run ensures every step occurs as intended.

After that, he’ll run a batch to complete the run. In such an environment, where nearly every job is a new job, rework can be a costly form of waste. Combined with processes built around flexibility—quick change at the brake, organized vertical remnant rack (with stickers detailing dimension information and material certs) at the laser—that one-piece-flow “trial run” ultimately reduces the chance for rework.

“I tell people, ‘I don’t need you to perform a certain amount of cutting per day. I need this job to ship in fewer days.’ That throws everyone off,” Hester said. “But when they see everything flowing through the shop, a lightbulb goes off. In one sense, we need to go slower at each station to go faster overall as team.”

Don’t Design Nonsense

New engineers at APE undergo a unique experience. They go through orientation, and then, shortly after their start date, Hester introduces them to the shop floor, including the press brake.

A plate with counterbored holes is cleaned after being machined.

“I tell them, ‘You’re going to learn to run a press brake, because I don’t want you designing nonsense.’ When they gain at least a basic proficiency, they realize how frustrating some formed features really are.”

He described one job involving a four-sided box that would have been simple to bend, save for one additional return flange that required tall goosenecks to provide sufficient clearance, and the bend sequence required some careful juggling to ensure the operator could access every bend line. The design also made tolerances overall much tighter—all to avoid some welding.

If the design successfully eliminated all welding for the job, it would have been well worth the complex brake setup. But the part needed to be welded in numerous places, regardless. Getting rid of that additional flange increased welding time slightly, but it made forming far faster and more repeatable.

Hester added that meetings about these kinds of parts involve a give and take among engineers and operators. In fact, the shop’s brake operator enjoys challenging work. (“He’s amazing. He can bend dang near anything.”) So, if engineers simply asked him if he could form a certain workpiece, he’d likely say yes and spend serious time perfecting the setup.

The idea is to get everyone thinking about what makes sense for the overall process. After all, customers aren’t paying for a mindboggling brake setup or an amazing weld fixture. They’re paying for good ideas delivered on time.